The Queen Of Crowdfunding, Amanda Palmer, Joins Patreon

The most successful crowdfunding-musician has joined the on-going crowd funding site, Patreon. Amanda Palmer famously smashed the Kickstarter record for a music project when over 25,000 fans pledged nearly $1.2 million to her project for her latest album, Theatre Is Evil. If you didn’t hear about her from her Kickstarter, you definitely heard about her when the media jumped all over her for asking her local fans to join her on stage for a few songs at her show… for free! Gasp!

This normally wouldn’t be a big deal. How many times have you seen famous artists invite their musician friends to sit in with them at their show? Of course for free. The reason this blew up was because Palmer had just raised over a million dollars and everyone thought she’s now rich and is stiffing her musicians. (Not to mention that no one uttered a peep when the Polyphonic Spree CHARGED their fans $1,500 to perform with them.) Well, she did pay her TOURING musicians. But she asked her fans in each town to join her on stage and play a few songs. Jam, if you will. Musician unions came out of the woodworks to chastise Palmer (while people, head cocked, exclaimed “there are musician unions?!”), along with nearly every music blog and industry talking head.

But none of them understand Amanda Fucking Palmer. She doesn’t look at her fans as numbers on a spreadsheet.

She never has. She looks at them as friends. Comrades. Companions. She has built up an intimate relationship with her fans over the years – from her earliest house concerts in Boston with The Dresden Dolls, to her tours around the world while on Roadrunner/Warner records. And of course, she continued the relationship with her fans, after loudly leaving her label (because they didn’t understand why they should fund a website outside of “the album cycle” – among other thing).

I first heard about Amanda Palmer during her battle with Roadrunner when they didn’t want to release her music video because they thought her belly was too big – which then inspired people to contribute over countless photos of their bellies to her Myspace page. Then to a blog. Which eventually turned into The Belly Book – 600 pages of bellies.

And then, shortly after leaving her label she made waves when she raised $19,000 in 10 hours on a Friday night, on a whim, to create a T-shirt idea she had. Her sole promotion was Twitter.<!–/*
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// ]]>Palmer has mastered The Art Of Asking. She first talked about it openly in her wildly popular Ted talk (which went crazy viral – with over 10 million views) and more extensively in her new book of the same title. Which I have read and it’s incredible. I highly recommend it to everyone.

+Amanda Palmer Releases Her New Book. And You Should Buy It

Patreon, which I have written about extensively here, here, here and here, is Crowdfunding 2.0.

It’s the future. It’s the answer to the antiquated album cycle. It’s THE solution for artists in the 21st century. It hasn’t quite cracked mainstream. But it will. Maybe this collaboration with Palmer will do it. For those just discovering Patreon, it is a way for supporters, patrons if you will, to support the creators they love. They pledge a certain amount of money per piece of content or per month.

Jack Conte of the YouTube sensation Pomplamoose, created Patreon because his band had over 100 million views on YouTube and wasn’t seeing much ad revenue. Definitely not livable income. Instead of joining the hoards and bitching about low YouTube payments, he decided to go straight to his fans – bypassing the middleman completely. And Patreon is now wildly successful.

Aside from raising over $17 million in funding, there are over 225,000 patrons paying 12,000 creators over $2 million EVERY MONTH. The model is working.

Palmer discusses her vision for her Patreon on her page writing:

“I’ve gotten to know myself. as a creator, as a songwriter, and as a recording artist, I thrive on instant gratification and a direct mainline to my audience without having to go through labels, distributors, the machine, the mass media. I love making things and INSTANTLY sharing. and I know my fanbase: you’re smart, kind, supportive, future-embracing people.”

I think patreon is a revolution in music-release and art patronage: i’m planning to release pretty much ALL MY CONTENT for free: on youtube, bandcamp, my site, wherever.”

Patreon is for constant creators. Kickstarter is to raise a bulk amount for one big project. Palmer explains that she doesn’t want to “exhaust the fanbase” by running multiple Kickstarters to keep her funded. Sure, her Kickstarter raised over a $1 million, but most of that went into the rewards (these were pre-orders of lots of STUFF – not just free money). She is not going to be creating as much physical stuff to give away this time. But lots of art. Palmer is charging “per item of content.” Or per “thing” as she puts it in her Patreon welcome video. For $3 per thing patrons will be emailed downloads of any content she creates (mp3, pdf, etc). For $5 per thing, patrons get the emails and also get random surprises emailed once and awhile. For $10 or more, patrons will be invited to a monthly webcast in which she’ll perform and chat with her patrons. For $100 or more (PER piece of content – which have already sold out in the first 2 hours), patrons will get a personal email or phone call and will get personalized postcards from her travels. Along with VIP access to her shows.

The Patreon welcome video is a fantastic answer to her Kickstarter video – shot in the same manner, flipping text boards (ala Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video) explaining her vision:

“It doesn’t matter if 100 or 10,000 people decide to TRY this thing with me. I am still going to make All The Things. All The Time. For Everyone. No Matter What. With whatever I have. I don’t know what I’m going to make first or what the fuck is about to happen. It’s going to be amazing. You’re just going to have to trust me. Thank you for going on this adventure with me… again.”

Ari Herstand is a Los Angeles based singer/songwriter and the creator of the music biz advice blog, Ari’s Take. Follow him on Twitter: @aristake

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Source: Industry News