WEBVTT

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(Breathes in)

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(Breathes out)

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So, I didn't always make
my living from music.

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For about the five years after graduating

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from an upstanding
liberal arts university,

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this was my day job.

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(Laughter)

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I was a self-employed living
statue called the Eight-Foot Bride,

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and I love telling people
I did this for a job,

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because everybody always wants to know,

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who are these freaks in real life.

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(Laughter)

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Hello.

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I painted myself white
one day, stood on a box,

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put a hat or a can at my feet,

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and when someone came by
and dropped in money,

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I handed them a flower --

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and some intense eye contact.

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And if they didn't take the flower,

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I threw in a gesture
of sadness and longing --

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as they walked away.

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(Laughter)

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So I had the most profound
encounters with people,

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especially lonely people

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who looked like they hadn't talked
to anyone in weeks,

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and we would get this beautiful moment
of prolonged eye contact

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being allowed in a city street,

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and we would sort of fall
in love a little bit.

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And my eyes would say --

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"Thank you.

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I see you."

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And their eyes would say --

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"Nobody ever sees me.

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Thank you."

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I would get harassed sometimes.

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People would yell at me from their cars.

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"Get a job!"

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(Laughing) And I'd be, like,

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"This is my job."

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But it hurt, because it made me fear

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that I was somehow doing
something un-joblike

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and unfair, shameful.

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I had no idea how perfect
a real education I was getting

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for the music business on this box.

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And for the economists out there,

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you may be interested to know I actually
made a pretty predictable income,

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which was shocking to me,
given I had no regular customers,

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but pretty much 60 bucks on a Tuesday,
90 bucks on a Friday.

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It was consistent.

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And meanwhile, I was touring locally
and playing in nightclubs

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with my band, the Dresden Dolls.

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This was me on piano, a genius drummer.

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I wrote the songs, and eventually

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we started making enough money
that I could quit being a statue,

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and as we started touring,

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I really didn't want to lose this sense

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of direct connection with people,
because I loved it.

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So after all of our shows,
we would sign autographs

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and hug fans and hang out
and talk to people,

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and we made an art out
of asking people to help us and join us,

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and I would track down
local musicians and artists

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and they would set up
outside of our shows,

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and they would pass the hat,

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and then they would come in
and join us onstage,

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so we had this rotating smorgasbord
of weird, random circus guests.

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And then Twitter came along,

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and made things even more magic,

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because I could ask instantly
for anything anywhere.

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So I would need a piano to practice on,

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and an hour later I would be
at a fan's house.

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This is in London.

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People would bring home-cooked food to us

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all over the world backstage
and feed us and eat with us.

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This is in Seattle.

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Fans who worked in museums and stores

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and any kind of public space
would wave their hands

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if I would decide to do
a last-minute, spontaneous, free gig.

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This is a library in Auckland.

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On Saturday I tweeted
for this crate and hat,

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because I did not want to schlep them
from the East Coast,

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and they showed up care of this dude,
Chris, from Newport Beach,

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who says hello.

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I once tweeted, "Where in Melbourne
can I buy a neti pot?"

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And a nurse from a hospital drove one

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right at that moment to the cafe I was in,

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and I bought her a smoothie

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and we sat there talking
about nursing and death.

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And I love this kind of random closeness,

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which is lucky, because I do
a lot of couchsurfing.

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In mansions where everyone
in my crew gets their own room

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but there's no wireless,

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and in punk squats,

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everyone on the floor
in one room with no toilets

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but with wireless,
clearly making it the better option.

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(Laughter)

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My crew once pulled our van
up to a really poor Miami neighborhood

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and we found out that our couchsurfing
host for the night

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was an 18-year-old girl,
still living at home,

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and her family were all undocumented
immigrants from Honduras.

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And that night, her whole family

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took the couches and she slept
together with her mom

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so that we could take their beds.

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And I lay there thinking,

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these people have so little.

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Is this fair?

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And in the morning,

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her mom taught us
how to try to make tortillas

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and wanted to give me a Bible,

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and she took me aside and she said
to me in her broken English,

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"Your music has helped
my daughter so much.

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Thank you for staying here.
We're all so grateful."

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And I thought, this is fair.

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This is this.

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A couple of months later,
I was in Manhattan,

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and I tweeted for a crash pad,
and at midnight,

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I'm on the Lower East Side,

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and it occurs to me I've never
actually done this alone.

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I've always been with my band or my crew.

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Is this what stupid people do?

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(Laughter)

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Is this how stupid people die?

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And before I can change my mind,
the door busts open.

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She's an artist.

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He's a financial blogger for Reuters,

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and they're pouring me a glass of red wine

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and offering me a bath,

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and I have had thousands of nights
like that and like that.

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So I couchsurf a lot.
I also crowdsurf a lot.

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I maintain couchsurfing and crowdsurfing

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are basically the same thing.

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You're falling into the audience

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and you're trusting each other.

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I once asked an opening band of mine

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if they wanted to go out
into the crowd and pass the hat

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to get some extra money,
something that I did a lot.

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And as usual, the band was psyched,

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but there was this one guy in the band

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who told me he just couldn't
bring himself to go out there.

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It felt too much like begging
to stand there with the hat.

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And I recognized his fear

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of "Is this fair?"

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and "Get a job."

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And meanwhile, my band
is becoming bigger and bigger.

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We sign with a major label.

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And our music is a cross
between punk and cabaret.

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It's not for everybody.

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Well, maybe it's for you.

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(Laughter)

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We sign, and there's all this hype
leading up to our next record.

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And it comes out and it sells
about 25,000 copies

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in the first few weeks,

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and the label considers this a failure.

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I was like, "25,000, isn't that a lot?"

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They said, "No, the sales are going down.

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It's a failure."

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And they walk off.

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Right at this same time,
I'm signing and hugging after a gig,

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and a guy comes up to me

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and hands me a $10 bill,

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and he says,

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"I'm sorry, I burned
your CD from a friend."

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(Laughter)

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"But I read your blog,
I know you hate your label.

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I just want you to have this money."

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And this starts happening all the time.

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I become the hat after my own gigs,

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but I have to physically stand there
and take the help from people,

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and unlike the guy in the opening band,

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I've actually had a lot
of practice standing there.

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Thank you.

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And this is the moment I decide

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I'm just going to give away
my music for free

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online whenever possible,

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so it's like Metallica
over here, Napster, bad;

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Amanda Palmer over here,

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and I'm going to encourage
torrenting, downloading, sharing,

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but I'm going to ask for help,

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because I saw it work on the street.

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So I fought my way off my label,
and for my next project

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with my new band,
the Grand Theft Orchestra,

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I turned to crowdfunding.

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And I fell into those thousands
of connections that I'd made,

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and I asked my crowd to catch me.

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And the goal was 100,000 dollars.

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My fans backed me at nearly 1.2 million,

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which was the biggest music
crowdfunding project to date.

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(Applause)

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And you can see how many people it is.

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It's about 25,000 people.

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And the media asked,

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"Amanda, the music business is tanking
and you encourage piracy.

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How did you make
all these people pay for music?"

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And the real answer is,
I didn't make them.

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I asked them.

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And through the very act of asking people,

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I'd connected with them,

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and when you connect with them,
people want to help you.

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It's kind of counterintuitive
for a lot of artists.

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They don't want to ask for things.

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But it's not easy.

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It's not easy to ask.

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And a lot of artists have
a problem with this.

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Asking makes you vulnerable.

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And I got a lot of criticism online,

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after my Kickstarter went big,

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for continuing my crazy
crowdsourcing practices,

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specifically for asking musicians

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who are fans if they wanted
to join us on stage

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for a few songs in exchange
for love and tickets and beer,

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and this was a doctored image
that went up of me on a website.

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And this hurt in a really familiar way.

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And people saying,

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"You're not allowed anymore
to ask for that kind of help,"

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really reminded me of the people
in their cars yelling, "Get a job."

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Because they weren't
with us on the sidewalk,

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and they couldn't see the exchange

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that was happening
between me and my crowd,

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an exchange that was very fair
to us but alien to them.

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So this is slightly not safe for work.

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This is my Kickstarter
backer party in Berlin.

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At the end of the night, I stripped
and let everyone draw on me.

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Now let me tell you,
if you want to experience

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the visceral feeling
of trusting strangers --

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(Laughter)

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I recommend this,

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especially if those strangers
are drunk German people.

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(Laughter)

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This was a ninja
master-level fan connection,

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because what I was really saying here was,

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I trust you this much.

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Should I?

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Show me.

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For most of human history,

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musicians, artists, they've been
part of the community.

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Connectors and openers,
not untouchable stars.

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Celebrity is about a lot of people
loving you from a distance,

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but the Internet

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and the content that we're freely
able to share on it

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are taking us back.

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It's about a few people
loving you up close

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and about those people being enough.

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So a lot of people
are confused by the idea

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of no hard sticker price.

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They see it as an unpredictable risk,
but the things I've done,

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the Kickstarter, the street, the doorbell,

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I don't see these things as risk.

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I see them as trust.

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Now, the online tools

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to make the exchange as easy
and as instinctive as the street,

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they're getting there.

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But the perfect tools
aren't going to help us

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if we can't face each other

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and give and receive fearlessly,

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but, more important --

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to ask without shame.

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My music career has been spent

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trying to encounter people on the Internet
the way I could on the box.

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So blogging and tweeting
not just about my tour dates

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and my new video
but about our work and our art

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and our fears and our hangovers,

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our mistakes,

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and we see each other.

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And I think when we really see each other,

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we want to help each other.

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I think people have been obsessed
with the wrong question,

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which is, "How do we make
people pay for music?"

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What if we started asking,

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"How do we let people pay for music?"

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Thank you.

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(Applause)