Amanda Palmer, tritter works better than a label
Editor – artist Amanda Palmer wants to drop her label, or have them drop her. She is running a serious campaign to make that happen.
From Amanda Palmer and Bob Lefsetz
From: Amanda Palmer
Subject: re-Please Drop Me
my label-dropping game has become very fun. please pray for me.
it’s a lesson in how the future of music is working – fans are literally (and i mean that….literally) lining up at the signing table after shows and HANDING me cash, saying “thank you”.
i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called “head of digital media” of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that “it hasn’t caught on here yet” was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans – who couldn’t attend the show – showed up to get their records signed.
no manager knew! i didn’t even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park! life is becoming awesome.
also interesting: i brought a troupe of back-up actors/dancers on the tour (we were only playing 300-1000 seaters) and had no money to pay them, so we passed the hat into the crowd every night. each performer walked from each show with about $200 in cash. the fans TOOK CARE OF THEM. they brought us dinner every night, gave us places to sleep. (i couldn’t afford to put up that many people in hotels).
all sans label, all using email and twitter. the fans followed the adventure. they LOVED HELPING.
so?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMi7wRfmoMs
the times they are a-changing fucking dramatically, when pong-twittering with trent reznor means way more to your fan-base/business than whether or not the record is in fucking stores (and in my case, it ain’t in fucking stores).
twitter is EVERYTHING that you explain in your rants: it is a MAINLINE insta-connection with the fans. there is ZERO middleman.
my fans hung out with me all day on twitter today while i unpacked weird tour shit, fan art, gifts and paraphernalia that usually just ends up in my closet or in the trash and took pictures of it for them.
xa
Molly
I’m already a fan and I don’t even have my sound working. I can hardly wait to hear how you sound. Great head on your shoulders!
Molly
KL
Well, if you didn’t have Roadrunner or a middle-man, wouldn’t you then have been someone who had no-one and no controversy to use for personal branding?
Instead of coming across as a paranoid and demanding whiner and explaining what Twitter – in an obviously condescending way, by judging how you refer to her/him as “the so-called head of digital media” – is, you could have encouraged the person and engaged in an informative and positive dialogue.
Maybe that information about whether it has caught on or not was not intended as a brush-off, but a matter of speech in what could have been a conversation. Maybe she/he had a bad day; having been told about an illness, quarreling with the boss, or maybe even being occupied with other stuff than something that is relatively more valuable to the long-term growth (Twitter may eventually die, and the music industry is still more valuable than it was before the CD format was introduced, so stop complaining.)
Or maybe they were just tired of dealing with you (or other similar thinkers), encouraging you to become insulted so they won’t have anything more to do with you.
There is a reason why Roadrunner does things the way they do, and it’s their right to make their priorities. They have created a lot more success than you and you obviously should have done more research before you made the decision to sign the contract.
You clearly have a responsibility to work together with your label. It’s not a one-way street. Now you are just projecting your own bad decision upon them.
You are right about the bottlenecks coming down, but one day you may need a middleman to organise real-life stuff (merchandise, concerts), pay bills etc.
From how you come across in this publicly disgraceful way, I am not sure I ever want to be that middleman. Even though I am also actively using Twitter and other social networks.
Without the Blonde
Right. On!
Without the Blonde
Oops… just in case it wasn’t clear… Right ON to Amanda, not the KL post above me – seriously… *yawn* to them.
JoJo the Monkey Boy
I have a question though- who will pay for your albums? They ain’t cheap (I don’t have to tell you) and if you want something that sounds even decent aren;t you going to have to drop $5k+ per song? If your fans take acre of you that much, then bravo to them (and to you!)!
Another question- did you gain your notoriety from your being on the label or were the fans there before? I think for a lot of artists a label (a good one) is able to provide the means and the contacts to get done that which the indie artist is unable to do. I feel like there needs to be some synergy there somewhere.
But I guess it ultimately depends on your expectations as an artist and the money it takes to keep you going- and it sounds like you have that going for you, so then I wish you well in your label firing! 🙂