Part Of The Reason To Buy Is Actually Asking For Money

from the and-talking-about-money dept

A bunch of folks have been sending over Amanda Palmer's latest blog post, where she discusses the importance of content creators today getting used to both asking for money and talking about money. This came after a couple people suggested to her that she not be so open about money issues in talking about her various business model experiments. Amanda notes that it's becoming the new norm to talk about money, and it shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. Part of the whole process of connecting directly with fans is that you take out the middleman, who had a variety of jobs, but one of them was asking for money. So if that middleman is gone, then the only person left to ask for money is the artist, and this shouldn't be seen as bad.

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.

artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks. please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money. dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don't fight it.

unless you've been living under a rock, you've surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
how you do it is a different matter.
maybe i should be more tasteful.
maybe i should not stop my concerts and auction off art.
i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot.

BUT ... i'd rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground (with the help of an incredibly responsive and positive fanbase) for other artists who i assume are going to cautiously follow in our footsteps. we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now.

i don't care if we fuck up. i care THAT we're doing it.

She goes on to compare the new model to her experience busking in the past. In a separate discussion I had with Amanda a few months back, she referred to the new business model, "power busking." I agree almost entirely with her on this... with one, perhaps crucial, quibble. I get a little wary of focusing too much on the "busking" aspect, as it feels a little too close to the give it away and pray model, that isn't really a complete business model. I tend to believe that if you give people a real reason to buy (i.e., something scarce and valuable, offered at a reasonable price), then it's not "busking" at all. It's not "asking for money" at all.

It's offering a great deal that people want to buy. It's the difference between the PBS telethon fundraising effort and people gleefully snapping up merchandise from a TV show or movie. It's not about asking for money. It's about providing a "reason to buy" in the form of scarce offerings that are made more valuable thanks to the content that is being shared. From there, you're not begging for money, but you're offering up a great deal to fans who are thrilled to exchange their money for what they get in return.

So, I absolutely agree with almost all of what Amanda is saying, and think it's great that she's being so open about her experiments (and, yes, I know, I've been bad about giving up the data on our own experiment, which is entirely due to being too busy to just focus and write up what we learned... but it's coming soon!). But, I think that one way to get beyond the issue of "asking for money" and making that feel crass, is not to think of it as busking or asking for money or begging for money, but to focus on experimenting with ways to offer up scarce value that people simply want to pay for, rather than feel goaded into paying for it.

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The Details Behind Amanda Palmer's Amazing Impromptu Music Video

from the connecting-with-fans dept

On Friday, we posted a guest post from singer Amanda Palmer, all about her thoughts on connecting with fans. If you didn't get a chance to read the whole thing, at the end she included a music video that she did. However, the story behind that music video is so good that it deserves a separate post of its own. We already know that Amanda has been a big fan of using Twitter to reach out to fans, and she did exactly that in this case -- but not to film a video. Just to hold an impromptu "flash gig" on the beach with two days' notice. Cool idea. Other bands should try that as well.

And then... one of her fans suggested the morning of the gig that she learn this song by Cat Stevens. So she did. And she went to the beach and a bunch of her fans showed up and she played some music and everyone was happy. And then they realized that the setting was great to film a music video. One of the people there was Danna Kinsky, who hardly knew Amanda, but is a filmmaker, and had her camera. Another person there was Lindsey Barnes, a photographer, who agreed to shoot some photos of the group. And, with the help of Kirsten Vangsness to corral and organize people, they created an impromptu music video...

The whole thing was thought up, organized and completed in 20 minutes. There was some after the fact editing and sound work, which appears to have taken a few weeks, but the end result is really amazing. It's a better music video than an awful lot of expensive professional music videos... and it was a spur of the moment thing. As the video notes at the end, musicians shouldn't fear Twitter, but learn to embrace it:

It's really an amazing example of what you can do by connecting with fans. We're so thrilled that Amanda is taking part in our CwF + RtB experiment, that this week's special promo is that you can just buy her book and CD by itself (the book is signed by both Amanda and Neil Gaiman), or for a little bit more, you can also buy the whole Techdirt Music Club and get a bunch of other stuff as well. If you just want the Amanda Palmer stuff separate from The Music Club, it's only available until midnight August 10th, so don't miss out...

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Amanda Palmer Talks About Connecting With Fans: Fans WANT To Support Artists

from the and-so-they-do dept

With our CwF + RtB experiment in full swing, we've asked some of the participating artists/authors to provide some guest posts about their own experience with new business models and new promotions. Amanda Palmer, one of the artists involved in our Techdirt Music Club, is someone you're hopefully familiar with by now. She's really been at the forefront of experimenting with these sorts of business models and agreed to write a guest post about her experiences.

As part of this, we're also doing an early announcement of the special promotion that we'll be running next week only. If you don't want the entire Techdirt Music Club, you can just order Amanda Palmer's part: the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book of photographs and short stories -- signed by both Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman -- and Amanda's signed CD as well. That's available now... but only through August 10th until midnight PT.

And here's Amanda's post:

i've been talking with a lot of folks lately about "why this works". the things i find myself saying over and over to people is that twitter and the new networking technologies are simply new tools for artists who have been super-connecting with their fans all along.

i started my band in 2000. we didn't play rock clubs. we played in our friends houses, in our own houses, in art galleries, in lofts, at parties. then we gradually brought the party indoors, into clubs that would book us once they knew we'd bring in 50 drinking/paying bodies. i treated our email list like gold. i obsessively stayed up all night and added named after every show. we took the time to meet every single fan who wanted to meet us after every show (i still do this, and i know that brian does it in his current punk band, world/inferno). but this wasn't because i felt it was mandatory....i did this because we LIKED it.

i got into music-making in the first place because i was so hungry to just CONNECT WITH PEOPLE. to me, the meeting&greeting was part of the reward, not a chore. but not all bands think like this. we were lucky. we liked it.

i'm still lucky, because i STILL LIKE IT. i actually love sitting down for an hour or two and bantering back and forth with my fans on twitter. they're all intelligent, funny, cool people. very few of them are mundane or obnoxious. very few of them ask stupid questions. there's a huge amount of respect between me and the fans and between the fans themselves. i feel proud that my music has brought all these freaks together, and i still like attending the party.

for artists who have NO desire to do this, it's quite a quandary nowadays, because many fans have come to expect it.

it's a slight catch-22: it's impossible to hide and it's impossible to fake.

and artists who have huge walls about what they're willing to share can end up seeming irritated....and letting someone else tweet for you is the kiss of death. the last tweet a fan ever really wants to see is : "hey THE ARTIST'S fans!! check out THE ARTIST'S new single, available now on itunes!!!" people hate that shit. not when you know you can go somewhere else and get: "fucking hell, let me share with you guys i'm feeling..."

re: the connecting to fans, and giving them a reason to buy....

what i've found is that once people trust and love you as an artist, some percentage of them will buy ANYTHING if they know the actual exercise is to simply put money in the artist's pocket. case in point: when i did my hock-weird-shit-from-my-apartment webcast auction a few months ago, fans wrote in asking if they could bid on the glasses and wine bottle we were drinking from. the answer: fuck yes. why not? they sold for a few hundred dollars each. the reason? these fans knew that it wasn't the objects themselves that were important. they knew that i was raising rent money, and they wanted to help; wine bottle was pure symbolism.

another fan tweeted in that they'd love to get involved by buying a signed postcard for $20...would i do that? when i told them that sure, i'd do it, 70 other fans wrote in and wanted one for themselves.... and most of them KNEW that i have a section of my website that states clearly that if you simply send me your address, i'll send you a signed postcard...FOR FREE!

but they wanted to help. and be involved. and involved them i did...before ending the webcast i read off a list of all their names. i knew they'd dig that...and i hadn't promised anything. i just knew that being recognized means so much when you're sitting randomly alone behind your computer, watching a webcast, feeling only slightly connected.

so:
connecting with fans, if they LIKE YOUR ART, automatically gives them a "reason to buy", even if it's NOT ART, because they want to SUPPORT YOUR HABIT.

i think we're going to see more and more of that as fans come to realize that the music is free but comes with the emotional price-tag of supporting the artist in any way the artist puts their proverbial hat out (merch, mementos, special packages, literal/web-based tip jars...or wine bottles).

how much do you think the hardcore fans who buy the $300 vinyl/art-print bundles would simply buy a random pretty book of monochrome prints by an unknown artist in a bookstore?

my guess: they will look at the bundle book a few times, admire it, appreciate it, put it on the coffee table or the bookshelf. and they will listen to the vinyl....probably. but are most of those people vinyl-philes? art print collectors? the point is, they will get two other things that are more important: bragging rights and the knowledge that they were singlehandedly involved with and supporting an artist's personal enterprise. because they love the artist, and they want to support him/her, period.

but the nature of fandom & its responsibilities is going to have to change to the same extent that the musicians are going to have to look at their lives & livelihoods (as "working musicians") more honestly.

as musicians rely more and more on fans/listeners/audience within this kind of honor system, the fans/listeners/audience will have to ante up or the system just won't work.

my hope is that the future culture of music will equate the pleasure of hearing a brand new band in a teeny club with the moral responsibility to toss them a few bucks to keep going, instead of just walking into the night, feeling lucky.

p.s. i created this video about a month ago with my fans at the beach at the tail end of a twittered flash-gig in LA. watch it, it's awesome.

Thanks Amanda! To get the signed book & CD check out the Amanda Palmer Special, or get the entire Techdirt Music Club for just a little more. Or, if you want to go all out before midnight PT on Monday the 3rd, if you buy both the Techdirt Music Club and the Techdirt Book Club before midnight PT, August 3rd, we'll throw in a free Techdirt hoodie, or a free lunch with Mike Masnick.

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A Closer Look At How Amanda Palmer Connected With Fans To Become Successful

from the it-ain't-'cause-of-the-label dept

We've written a few stories about Amanda Palmer, and her amazing success in connecting directly with fans (and her struggle to get dropped by her major record label), but none got quite as much attention as the last one about her massively successful Twitter experiments last month. The comments on that post got pretty involved, with Amanda herself stopping by to clarify some points. Some people argued that the only reason she had a fan base at all was because of her major record label association, and also claimed that the label financed the album -- which Palmer denied, noting:

for the record, i actually fronted ALL of the money for this record, because the label wasn't interested in supporting the effort.... i put in my own 200k (much of it borrowed) to make the record. the label picked it up, but i was never fully paid back (long, vile and complicated), which added insult to injury when they did FUCK all to promote the record.

Even more to the point, others are pointing out how much of her core loyal following had nothing to do with anything done by the record label. Hypebot asked Emily White, who's had a long history with Amanda and her work, to weigh in on how she built up her fanbase, and how much impact the record label had. The answer is that the label didn't do very much at all. It got some new markets interested... briefly... but those fans didn't stick around. The true fans were the ones who found out about Amanda and the Dresden Dolls via word of mouth. A few key excerpts (though you should read the whole thing):

I tour managed The Dresden Dolls from 2003-2006 and later co-managed the band as well as managed the launch of Amanda Palmer's solo career. The band self-booked a spring 2004 tour around SXSW hitting everything from sports bars to a bbq restaurant. They had no label, publicist, radio promo, agent, etc. to help book or promote the shows. Before hitting the road, I thought, "who is going to turn up to these shows outside of the Northeast? (as the band is from Boston). How will anyone know about them?"

But kids DID turn up. Whether it was 100 folks in Carbondale, IL or the amazing show Appalachian State University students put together in Boone, NC, the tour was a smashing indie success. I asked the fans at the merch table and the folks who helped us put the shows together how they knew about the band. The answers were consistently along the lines of "my cousin in Vermont IM'd me," "my boyfriend sent me a CD from Boston," or "someone forwarded me one of their mailers." It was true word-of-mouth about an incredible new band, fostered by Amanda and Brian's commitment to playing killer shows, writing personalized mailers and signing an autograph for every fan who wanted one, no matter how many hours it took.

....

And because of that decision [to sign with a major label], the band did receive pockets of radio success in markets like St. Louis and Arizona. The attendance at those shows spiked in 2006 when a few Dolls songs were receiving airplay. Awesome, right? Well, now it's 2009 and we've returned to some of those markets. Many of those radio fans don't turn up anymore. Yet, the hardcores or "1000 true fans" are still there, just like they have been since they organically founded The Dresden Dolls back in the day. They still line up outside for hours, know every word of every song (whether or not it has been released), and wait around for Amanda's autograph. They don't need a top down marketing plan to tell them what to like. And who are the new hardcore Dolls/ Amanda fans? They are the younger siblings and friends of the original fans, who continue to spread the gospel about an artist who's work they love so much they can't not talk about.

Once again, if you can connect with fans, and give them a true reason to buy, they will. That doesn't mean labels are useless. If they can help artists better connect with fans and provide more reasons to buy, they can absolutely be helpful. But that's just not the way many old school label folks work these days. Some of them are finally getting it (and I've actually had some really great conversations lately with record label folks who are figuring this out). But for artists who can (and want to) do it themselves, there are an increasing number of wonderful opportunities.

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Amanda Palmer Connects With Fans, Gives 'Em A Reason To Buy... And Makes $19k In 10 Hours

from the that's-the-way-to-do-it dept

We keep talking about artists who are connecting with fans, and giving them a reason to buy, and it seems like every day we hear of more and more new and creative ways that artists are doing this -- even as the naysayers stop by daily to insist it's impossible for such things to scale. It's a blast to see it scale more and more every day and prove them wrong. The latest example comes from Amanda Palmer -- who we've written about a few times before. She's the singer who has been fighting with her major record label (Warner Music's Roadrunner) for not just being a pain to deal with, but for making it harder for her to both connect with fans and give them reasons to buy. For example, she got caught in Warner's stubborn decision to fight YouTube over payments, and had all her videos taken down from YouTube against her wishes. So, at a concert, she told fans to upload the video to YouTube as she sang a song begging her label to drop her.

But, even as she's stuck on the major label, she's shown that by connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, they absolutely will support her. Back in April, we wrote about how she got her fans to help support the backup dancers on the tour, since they had no money to pay them, but the fans came through with money/food/lodging.

However, now she's going much further, much of it using Twitter to closely connect with fans. She recently explained three separate experiments, all done on a whim this month, which allowed her to bring in $19,000, and all of which show those same basic characteristics: connect with fans and give them a reason to buy. The story is so good that I ended up including the whole thing, because it's too good not to read -- but check out Amanda's site directly.

this story has just been blowing people’s minds so i figures i should write it down.

1.
FRIDAY NIGHT LOSERS T-SHIRT, $11,000

about a month ago, i was at home on a friday night (loser that i often am when i’m not touring, i almost never go out) and was, of course, on my mac, shifting between emails, links and occasionally doing some dishes and packing for a trip the next day. just a usual friday-night-rock-star-multi-tasking extravaganza.

i twitter whenever i’m online, i love the way it gives me a direct line of communication with my fans and friends.

i had already seen the power of twitter while touring…using twitter i’d gathered crowds of sometimes 200 fans with a DAY’S notice to come out and meet me in public spaces (parks, mostly) where i would play ukulele, sign, hug, take pictures, eat cake, and generally hang out and connect. this was especially helpful in the cities where we’d been unable to book all-ages gigs and there were crushed teenagers who were really grateful to have a shot at connecting with me & the community of amanda/dolls fans.

i’d also been using twitter to organize ACTUAL last-minute gigs…i twittered a secret gig in LA one morning and about 350 folks showed up 5 hours later at a warehouse space….i played piano, filmed by current.tv, and then (different camera crew) did an interview with afterellen.com.
the important thing to undertsand here is that the fans were never part of the plan..,i basically just INVITED my fans to a press day, the press didnt’ plan it…i did.
i was going to be playing in an empty room and doing q&a with afterellen on a coach with only the camera watching.
it was like….why not tell people and do this in a warehouse instead of a hotel lobby or a blank studio? so i did.

it cost me almost nothing. the fans were psyched.

but back to the bigger, cooler story….

so there i am, alone on friday night and i make a joke on twitter (which goes out to whichever of my 30,000 followers are online):

“i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER, motherfucker.”
9:15 PM May 15th from web

one thing led to another, and the next thing you know there were thousands of us and we’d become the #1 topic trend on twitter.
zoe keating described it as a “virtual flash mob”.

the way twitter works (if you don’t have it) is that certain topics can include a hashtag (#) and if a gazillion people start making posts that include that hashtag, the topic will zoom up the charts of what people are currently discussing. it’s a cool feature.

so anyway, there we were, virtually hanging out on twitter on a friday night. very pleased with ourselves for being such a large group, and cracking jokes.

how do you “hang out” on the internet? well, we collectively came up with a list of things that the government should do for us (free government-issued sweatpants, pizza and ponies, no tax on coffee), AND created a t-shirt.
thank god my web guy sean was awake and being a loser with me on friday night because he throw up the webpage WHILE we were having our twitter party and people started ordering the shirts - that i designed in SHARPIE in realtime) and a slogan that someone suggested: “DON’T STAND UP FOR WHAT’S RIGHT, STAY IN FOR WHAT’S WRONG”. neil gaiman and wil wheaton joined our party. the fdnas felt super-special.

by the end of the night, we’d sold 200 shirts off the quickie site (paypal only) that sean had set up.
i blogged the whole story the next day and in total, in the matter of a few days, we sold over 400 shirts, for $25/ea.

we ended up grossing OVER $11,000 on the shirts.
my assistant beth had the shirts printed up ASAP and mailed them from her apartment.

total made on twitter in two hours = $11,000.
total made from my huge-ass ben-folds produced-major-label solo album this year = $0

2.
WEBCAST AUCTION, $6000

a few nights after that, i blogged and twittered, announcing a “webcast auction” from my apartment.
it went from 6 pm - 9 pm, my assitant beth sat at my side and kept her eyes on incoming bids and twitter feed.
while we hocked weird goods, i sang songs and answered questions from fans. we wore kimonos and drank wine. it was a blast.

people on twitter who were tuned in re-tweeted to other fans. the word spread that it was a fun place to be and watch.
we had, at peak, about 2000 people watching the webcast.

at the suggestion of a fan early in the webcastm anyone could, on demand, send us $20 via paypal and we would chew,
sign and mail them a postcard. we sold about 70, and we read all those names at the end of the webcast and thanked those
people for supporting us. here’s how the sales broke down:

all the items were signed by moi and hand-packed by beth and kayla._ the items and highest bidders were as follows:_ hilary, ukulele used on the european tour: $640 _jake, “guitar hero” plastic guitar controller used in album promo shoot: $250_ lary b, copy neo2 magazine, plus two post-war trade slap-bracelets & a crime-photo set: $230_ devi, glass dildo, with subtley-sordid backstory: $560 _liz b., “hipsters ruin everything” t-shirt, made by blake (get your very own here!!!!): $155.55_shannon m., my bill bryson book, a short history of neary everything: $280_ nikki, huge metal “the establishment” sign, used at rothbury festival for the circus tent i curated: $450 _j.r., purple velvet “A” dress used in the dresden dolls coin-operated boy video shoot: $400_ jessie & alan: who killed amanda palmer vinyl: $100_ nikki: wine bottle, auctioned BY REQUEST!!! $320 _shannon w., torn-to-shit vintage stockings used in the who killed amanda palmer/ michael pope video series: $200 _jodi,
school-note-book break-up letter, written to amanda from jonas woolverton in 7th grade (i still haven’t emailed him about that….): $250_ daryl, ANOTHER wine bottle, by request, that we had LYING AROUND: $320
and…………..
reto emailed, having barely missed the wine bottle, and asked us to send him “something funny” for $129.99. we sent a heath ledger statuette.

total made on twitter in 3 hours, including the postcards, was over $6000.
again, total made on my major-label solo album this year: $0

3.
TWITTER DONATION-ONLY GIG, $1800

a few days later, i twittered a guest-list only event in a recording studio in boston, to take place a week later.
the gig lasted about 5 hours, all told, with soundcheck and signing. i took mostly requests and we had a grand old time.
first come, first served. the first 200 people to ask got in, for free. i asked for donations and made about $2200 in cash.
i gave $400 back to the studio for the space and the help. we sold some weird merch. i think we should call it an even 2k.

total made at last-minute secret twitter gig, in about 5 hours = $2000
major-label record blah blah blah = $0

…..and for fun, and to thank my fans for being awesome, i’ve been doing some twitter perfomance art, including answering their questions by magic-markering my body until it’s covered, and displaying time-lapse make-up application advice….but that’s another story.

TOTAL MADE THIS MONTH USING TWITTER = $19,000
TOTAL MADE FROM 30,000 RECORD SALES = ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

turn on, tune in, get dropped!!!!!

love,
amanda fucking palmer
http://www.amandapalmer.net
http://www.dresdendolls.com

There are so many different examples buried in there of both connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, it's worth reading multiple times. So, go on, naysayers in the comments. Point out, yet again, why this is the exception, and explain why other artists can never do their own creative means of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy. We'll chuckle, and watch as more and more figure it out.

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Amanda Palmer Shows How Her Fans Support Her

from the connect-with-fans... dept

One of the most amazing things to me about those who think that we need stronger copyright laws or that the music industry will "die" if we don't enforce copyright laws more stringently is what they're really saying about fans: they're saying that fans don't want to support artists. However, as we've seen over and over and over again, that's simply not true. Fans have no problem supporting musicians, if those musicians make an effort to connect. The idea that fans will suddenly stop supporting artists is shown to be false over and over again. The latest example comes from Amanda Palmer -- who's been on something of a crusade to get out of her record label contract with a subsidiary of Warner Music, Roadrunner Music. In an email to Bob Lefsetz, she talks about the support her fans are giving (voluntarily) as well as how she's better connecting with her fans via Twitter (despite the record label saying Twitter wasn't worth bothering with):

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?

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.

Connect with your fans. Give them a reason to buy and they'll support you. This doesn't require DRM, lawsuits, collective licensing, blanket licensing or even copyright. It's a model that works today and works well for musicians of all stripes (though, you actually have to be good... no new model works that well for bad musicians).

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Amanda Palmer Asks Fans To Upload Her Anti-Record Label Song To YouTube

from the nice-going-warner... dept

You may recall (of course) that Warner Music and Google are in a fight over YouTube. Warner Music is demanding that Google pay more than Google thinks is reasonable, so now all Warner Music Group videos have been pulled from YouTube. Of course, this is actually pissing off numerous Warner Music musicians, who realize that YouTube (even if not paying directly for their videos) benefits their careers greatly. One such artist is Amanda Palmer -- who is signed to Roadrunner Records, a subsidiary of WMG. She was one of the first to complain about Warner pulling her videos from YouTube. Now she's going even further. Rose M. Welch sends in a link to a YouTube video of a recent Amanda Palmer concert where she first tells the camera operator to make sure he puts the video on YouTube so she can watch it, and then sings a song to her record label, demanding they drop her:

Yup. That decision to demand a few extra pennies from Google while pissing off your artists, sure makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

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Warner Music Musicians Pissed Off About YouTube Dispute

from the as-they-should-be dept

Warner Music's dispute with YouTube, where Warner Music suddenly claims that YouTube needs to pay more has been pretty silly from the outset. We pointed out that Warner has almost no leverage here. Warner Music needs YouTube a hell of a lot more than Google needs Warner Music to allow its content on YouTube. As if to drive that point home, some Warner Music artists are up in arms over the latest moves. Amanda Palmer, an artist signed to Warner subsidiary Roadrunner, is not at all happy about where things stand:

in other words, roadrunner is a subsidiary of warner and i'm stuck in hell with madonna and the other poor bastards, because warner wants more money. even worse, warner has almost no bargaining power...they're not even in the top ten of labels who have huge artists with material streaming on youtube. they're just starving for cash right now and they're doing anything they can think of to come up with cash. it's abSURD. they are looking for money in a totally backwards way.

money that, i should point out, i would NEVER see as an artist. if they got their way and youtube decided to give them a larger revenue share of the videos, it's very unlikely it would ever make its way into the artists' bank accounts....

did i mention that being on a major label is starting to seem like.....not such a grand idea?

You can bet that there are many more musicians feeling similarly right now -- and it's only going to make it more difficult for Warner Music (or any of its subsidiaries) to sign new artists or to retain the ones (like Amanda) who feel screwed over by the latest move -- all of which Warner will surely claim were done in order to "protect the interests of the artists."

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