www.musicweek.com INTERVIEWAMANDAPALMER
blog thanking them for all the work they did. They might not have done it the way I liked and they may not have done an ideal job, but they absolutely were a part of this whole complicated story. For me to deny that would be insanity. But the important thing is this - my Kickstarter
success is an alchemy of 100 different things: my years on the label, the constant touring, the constant attention to my online presence, the music, the live performances themselves, the emotional content of the songs, how people share them, the artwork my fans have made… the list goes on and on. This wasn’t a one-time fluke of magic and timing. This success is the accumulation of 12 years of work, love and planning.
What advice would you give to musicians after hitting the seven-figure mark? There isn’t only one way. A label cannot give an artist a pre-packaged list of how to run their internet presence or communicate with their fans in the modern world. You can give them suggestions, but I’m an incredibly performance art-orientated over-social, crazy online personality: not every artist is that way or wants to be that way.
‘NO LABEL CAN MATCH THIS’
The former Dresden Doll has just raised a million dollars through crowd-funding – two years after Roadrunner terminated her contract
TALENT BY CRAIG SWAN
A
manda Palmer has always been a friend to both controversy and dedicated fans – just not always to record labels.
In April 2010, after a year of begging Warner-
owned Roadrunner to terminate her contract, she was finally set free. But to what end? What exactly could the artist - bereft of the company that helped fund her solo career and former band Dresden Dolls - hope to achieve all on her own? As it turns out, a gigantic amount. In an achievement that’s not so much ‘having
the last laugh’ as ‘belching guffaws into the faces of her career doubters’, Palmer’s just raised over $1m in crowd-funding via website Kickstarter for new album Theatre Of Evil. All of the money was donated by fans - and all of it sent with love. Surprisingly, Music Week finds Palmer (who was
once caught up in a very public dispute with Roadrunner over her slender tummy being dubbed too fat for promotional materials) offering platitudes to her former label’s execs. Without them, she admits, she may never have
been able to reach the notoriety needed to hit that magic million mark – but she qualifies that there were a multitude of other factors that came into play, too…
What was your initial ambition for the Kickstarter campaign? I read something about $100,000 being your goal… The $100,000 was a very fictional figure – not exactly randomly chosen, but this project was going to happen come hell or high water. It was a really conservative estimate that we would almost
definitely surpass but that wasn’t so low that we would be selling ourselves short. We sat down and said: ‘Okay, in the worst-case scenario; if there’s another 9/11 and a plague and a pox upon humanity and buildings fall down and people on my staff die, what’s the minimum amount of money we’re going to make?’
Did you ever think you’d hit the million mark? That was my fantasy. I did what anyone smart would do: I hoped for the best, but I didn’t nail my budget or my expectations anywhere specific. But I had a waking dream – a business conversation – with someone a year ago, where I said: “I want to be the first artist to crowd-fun a million dollars and I think I can do it with this record.” This Kickstarter record and campaign has been
years in the making: the fanbase has been 12 years in the making, 24/7 non-stop connection, hugs and crashing on floors; on this specific record, I’ve been in the laboratory of my own office or staff trying to figure out the best chemical combination of release, platform and timing – not to mention the making of the record itself.
What do you make of the argument that you need existing notoriety or fame to succeed with crowd-funding – and your ex-label’s marketing has given you that? The hype and the leg-up that the label gave me shouldn’t be dismissed. I think I get painted as an extremist who does nothing but give my label the middle finger and it’s absolutely not true. Even when I finally got dropped, I posted a
ABOVE The future?: Palmer created an online video (inset) explaining her crowd-funding mission to fans
Your lyrics and music is very personal – your fans feel like they know you because of them. Has that been integral to your Kickstarter success? Yes, but I don’t think it’s essential to have emotional music to have an authentic relationship with your fans. Look at all genres of music from classical to hip-hop - or even electronic music with no lyrics; those DJs sharing their lives and their experiences with their fans are having just as much success as someone like me who is singing songs about freedom, heartbreak and pubic hair.
Has any label been in touch to congratulate you – or offer you a deal? No, and it doesn’t surprise me one fucking bit. Seriously: who could offer me a better deal than what I’ve got? I’ve just created over a million dollars of capital via a personal contract with my fans that I won’t break, and throughout I have maintained total artistic control. There’s no label on the face of the earth that can offer me that – and they fucking know it.
BELOW Kicker: Palmer with her Dresden Dolls cohort Brian Viglione. The two have worked together for 12 years
If you had one lesson you think that the music industry could learn from your Kickstarter experience, what would it be? I have a mentor who raised me and taught me everything I know about how to treat people, about how to be in relationships and about how to move through the world. He’s not online – he doesn’t tweet. I had to sit down and explain the whole Kickstarter thing to him from beginning to end. He listened to the story, thought about it for a second and said: “If you love people enough, they’ll give you everything.” That pretty much sums it up. That is something a major label and a marketing company cannot do for you. You cannot fake a real relationship with your
fans. Give them yourself, your attention and your love and they’ll go to the ends of the earth for you.
15.06.12 MusicWeek 31
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