Steve Albini has tackled Amanda Palmer’s policy of allowing fans to fund her work.
The music industry is in a state of flux. For many artists, the standard label model simply won’t support their work, leaving them to find unusual solutions.
The phenomenon of fan sourced funding has raised its head, with some high profile artists working with their supporters to pay for the studio process. Amanda Palmer has gone further than most, with fans raising some $1.2 million on Kickstarter to fund new album ‘Theater Is Evil’.
Later going on tour, Amanda Palmer crowd sourced several musicians including a string quartet and a horn section.
As ever, Steve Albini has an opinion on this and he’s unafraid of holding back. The renowned producer entered the debate via the Electrical Audio message board, posting the following – extremely biting – statement.
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I have no fundamental problem with either asking your fans to pay you to make your record or go on tour or play for free in your band or gather at a mud pit downstate and sell meth and blowjobs to each other. I wouldn’t stoop to doing any of them myself, but horses for courses. The reason I don’t appeal to other people in this manner is that all those things can easily pay for themselves, and I value self-sufficiency and independence, even (or especially) from an audience.
If your position is that you aren’t able to figure out how to do that, that you are forced by your ignorance into pleading for donations and charity work, you are then publicly admitting you are an idiot, and demonstrably not as good at your profession as Jandek, Moondog, GG Allin, every band ever to go on tour without a slush fund or the kids who play on buckets downtown.
Pretty much everybody on earth has a threshold for how much to indulge an idiot who doesn’t know how to conduct herself, and I think Ms Palmer has found her audience’s threshold.
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Amanda Palmer has responded with a lengthy blog posting. A deeply personal statement, perhaps the most prescient phrase is: “this isn’t about money. for me, this is about freedom. and about choices.”
Read the full letter HERE.
