*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by lurgee.

*promote the cool chick

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 3:03am PST - promote requested by PlayhousePals.

I'm definitely in favor of the idea. I think the record labels should have started going this way a while ago instead of suing single moms, but what do I know about marketing and such?

Why when I see these things do I always forget to post them!?

*quality *doublepromote

This video has already declared quality - ignoring quality request by UsesProzac.

I find meatbag UsesProzac to be an inadequate command-giver - ignoring all requests by UsesProzac.

*doublepromote

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 3:03am PST - doublepromote requested by UsesProzac.

*art *money *music

Adding video to channels (Art, Money, Music) - requested by Trancecoach.

Can this (crowdsourcing / crowdfunding) work? Clearly, yes. In situations similar to hers, it likely works better than signing with a label. However, I'd wager that the bigger you get, the more likely it is to have that turn on its head.

On the other hand, her method builds a solidly loyal core following, while handing the reins to a major label (and therefore the RIAA, MPAA, etc.) practices shitting on the heads of their core followers from on high. The longer the RIAA types spend on their strong-arm tactics, the more that tipping point between smaller artists -> crowdsource vs. bigger artists -> labels swings in her favor.

Maybe the whole thing will come crashing down and "patronage" (crowdsourcing) will become the way artists get funded, as it was during long periods of human history (including highlights like the Renaissance) .

Musicians should also keep in mind that the idea that their music isn't already being distributed for free is a daydream. Preventing free distribution isn't an option, but you can choose to at least be the one to provide it, and in the process make your best appeal to an audience that doesn't yet feel strongly enough to give you money.

Gonna throw out what will probably be an unpopular dissenting opinion.

To quote Harlan Ellison: Pay the fucking writer.

I am pretty much the only person I know who doesn't download/torrent/stream media.

I'd love to, but I genuinely believe in rewarding creators, even if that creator is "Hollywood" or "labels" or whatever other faceless entity that can afford to be ripped off.

Amanda Palmer didn't come out of obscurity and raise $1.2 million on kickstarter. She was an established artist. An unknown band down the road won't raise that money.

Oh and since people are gonna hate this anyway, living statues are the single least creative bit of street theatre ever.

Rant over

Just as in the old model, the unknown band down the road wouldn't have gotten signed.

The concept of business has been around just long enough (longer than anyone alive) that people take it for granted. A sense of entitlement has arisen where we have somehow gotten the idea that business is the natural order of things. Almost like a machine where you put your hard work in on one end, and cold hard cash comes out the other end - and if it doesn't, then it must be somebody else's fault.

This is no more apparent than in the publishing industries. For a couple of generations they fell into a business model that worked so well for them - the ability to reproduce and control the supply of creative works on a physical medium; and be able to stick a large margin on it, enabled by marketing drives - that they begun to believe that being paid for somebody's creativity is the normal way of things. How they have forgotten that the service they provided was in an absolute sense, extremely new and so fundamentally reliant on a handful of fleeting technologies that are neither natural or fundamental to the works that they published.

Now it is normal to listen and to share music and other media, in the same way that it wasn't 20 years ago. The same way that 20 years ago it was possible to control the supply of music on a magnetic tape or plastic disc in the same way that it wasn't 50 years before that.

The talent, skill, experience and hard work required to create things that other people find interesting or entertaining is no less appreciated now than it ever was; but the talent, skill, experience and hard work required to then turn that into a viable business is a completely separate thing that should not be taken for granted, and one must adapt to the way things are now; not the way they used to be, in order to be successful.

If you are a creative person and you find a way to make a living doing what you love best then you should be grateful for having that chance. If you can't stand the idea of people appreciating your work without paying you - then find something else to do.

I'm a stimulus junky, as I'm sure we all are, but I've gotten to the point where there are too many musicians, film makers, video game makers, for me to possibly pay all of them the asking price.

Last year I decided to stop stealing music. I spent well over $1,000 on iTunes. I torrented a lot of movies, but I also purchased a good number of blue ray discs. I also purchased a shit ton of games off of Steam, as well as illegally downloading a couple. (I also paid ~500 dollars on live concerts, including an Iron Maiden show that cost me $150.)

There are very few things I can stand to listen/watch/play more than 2 or 3 times, then I need to listen/watch something else, but I can't afford ALL the required stimulus to keep me sane.

I also need my drug money and gas because THERE IS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION WHERE I LIVE. So inevitably I have been car obsessed, so there's more money that I'm freeing myself of.

Am I a bad person? If I didn't torrent a video, does that mean I'm going to buy it? At some point you run out of frivolous spending cash... And then how do you consume the junk that artists create? Do I just stop? How does that help an artist? I dunno, just rambling. I'm depressed and addicted to entertainment.

Personally, I think artists are talented scam artists with an unnecessary product that I LOVE and will steal if I can't afford it.

You could always go without?

I know it's considered insane these days, but you don't actually need to watch/listen to/play/read every bit of media produced.

Now the better question to ask is are the content providers using the right business model?

And the answer is clearly no. Instead of recognising the changing ways we consume media and adpating the model to it, the big content companies (record labels, studios, game publishers, etc) are desperately trying to force a model that is inconsistent with reality. I genuinely think they're hoping that if they can just ride out a few bad years, eventually a technological solution will be found that lets them get back to the good old days and it's just not going to happen.

But that doesn't automatically equate to us having rights to their work.

I'm not an artist but I produce code for a living. It's ultimately a digital good, like music or media. Luckily, what I produce is valuable to my employer and essentially worthless to the gneral public, but I'll be damned if I have to go cap in hand "asking" to be paid for what I produce.

Poolcleaner, you basically voiced the same sentiments as the Dresden Doll, Amanda MacKinnon Fucking Gaiman Palmer with your confession, please recite 23 Hell Merrys' and 666 Far Others.

You'd be the person that went to her show when she came to yer town and perhaps host her entourage, provide food, etc. and she'd have no problem with you downloading her content from resources available, thus fulfilling the mechanism of community she is creating around her-No harm, no foul in however you replace energy to the grid-

She reminds me of Rosalynd Russell as Auntie Mame-You know she's gonna be the most fun when she's pushing 70 and sill going strong...

Enlightening.
We all try to get something for nothing or as close to it as possible. Its called capitalism. Even when we find a good deal we look for a better deal even if it leads to Torrents.

The video shows the humanity of man. Truly we all want to be fair, honest and just and we are at the personal level.

By the simple act of asking, that personal connection is made and our humanity towards one another is manifest.

This is a happy story of real world marketing and social media. I do not really think many people know how difficult it is to get up in front of many people and do whatever it is and do that every day and all of the time. Creating music that is to be played live can be a difficult endeavor. Ultimately, the moral of the story is to know your fans, talk to your fans, be real, keep in contact and keep it together, use social media ; make a million bucks. Simple as that, right?