0:00:10.101,0:00:16.140
(Breathes in, breathes out)

0:00:17.435,0:00:21.480
So I didn't always make my living from music.

0:00:21.480,0:00:23.649
For about the five years after graduating

0:00:23.649,0:00:27.016
from an upstanding liberal arts university,

0:00:27.016,0:00:31.103
this was my day job.

0:00:31.103,0:00:35.671
I was a self-employed living statue called the 8-Foot Bride,

0:00:35.671,0:00:39.239
and I love telling people l did this for a job,

0:00:39.239,0:00:41.266
because everybody always wants to know,

0:00:41.266,0:00:44.400
who are these freaks in real life?

0:00:44.400,0:00:46.210
Hello.

0:00:46.210,0:00:49.071
I painted myself white one day, stood on a box,

0:00:49.071,0:00:51.479
put a hat or a can at my feet,

0:00:51.479,0:00:53.675
and when someone came by and dropped in money,

0:00:53.675,0:01:01.736
I handed them a flower and some intense eye contact.

0:01:01.736,0:01:03.207
And if they didn't take the flower,

0:01:03.207,0:01:07.673
I threw in a gesture of sadness and longing

0:01:07.673,0:01:11.738
as they walked away.

0:01:11.738,0:01:15.060
(Laughter)

0:01:15.060,0:01:19.384
So I had the most profound encounters with people,

0:01:19.384,0:01:21.249
especially lonely people who looked

0:01:21.249,0:01:24.345
like they hadn't talked to anyone in weeks,

0:01:24.345,0:01:28.118
and we would get this beautiful moment

0:01:28.118,0:01:32.629
of prolonged eye contact being allowed in a city street,

0:01:32.629,0:01:36.004
and we would sort of fall in love a little bit.

0:01:36.004,0:01:41.766
And my eyes would say, "Thank you. I see you."

0:01:41.766,0:01:44.294
And their eyes would say,

0:01:44.294,0:01:50.481
"Nobody ever sees me. Thank you."

0:01:50.481,0:01:52.357
And I would get harassed sometimes.

0:01:52.357,0:01:54.321
People would yell at me from their passing cars.

0:01:54.321,0:01:56.602
"Get a job!"

0:01:56.602,0:02:00.041
And I'd be, like, "This is my job."

0:02:00.041,0:02:03.774
But it hurt, because it made me fear

0:02:03.774,0:02:07.431
that I was somehow doing something un-joblike

0:02:07.431,0:02:10.887
and unfair, shameful.

0:02:10.887,0:02:16.019
I had no idea how perfect a real education I was getting

0:02:16.019,0:02:18.755
for the music business on this box.

0:02:18.755,0:02:20.254
And for the economists out there,

0:02:20.254,0:02:23.859
you may be interested to know I actually made a pretty predictable income,

0:02:23.859,0:02:25.562
which was shocking to me

0:02:25.562,0:02:28.171
given I had no regular customers,

0:02:28.171,0:02:31.459
but pretty much 60 bucks on a Tuesday, 90 bucks on a Friday.

0:02:31.459,0:02:32.996
It was consistent.

0:02:32.996,0:02:35.490
And meanwhile, I was touring locally

0:02:35.490,0:02:37.592
and playing in nightclubs with my band, the Dresden Dolls.

0:02:37.592,0:02:40.068
This was me on piano, a genius drummer.

0:02:40.068,0:02:42.101
I wrote the songs, and eventually

0:02:42.101,0:02:46.091
we started making enough money that I could quit being a statue,

0:02:46.091,0:02:48.443
and as we started touring,

0:02:48.443,0:02:50.560
I really didn't want to lose this sense

0:02:50.560,0:02:53.822
of direct connection with people, because I loved it.

0:02:53.822,0:02:57.007
So after all of our shows, we would sign autographs

0:02:57.007,0:03:00.248
and hug fans and hang out and talk to people,

0:03:00.248,0:03:05.310
and we made an art out of asking people to help us

0:03:05.310,0:03:07.966
and join us, and I would track down local musicians

0:03:07.966,0:03:12.292
and artists and they would set up outside of our shows,

0:03:12.292,0:03:13.951
and they would pass the hat,

0:03:13.951,0:03:15.501
and then they would come in and join us onstage,

0:03:15.501,0:03:20.331
so we had this rotating smorgasbord of weird, random circus guests.

0:03:20.331,0:03:23.220
And then Twitter came along,

0:03:23.220,0:03:25.568
and made things even more magic, because I could ask

0:03:25.568,0:03:28.035
instantly for anything anywhere.

0:03:28.035,0:03:30.100
So I would need a piano to practice on,

0:03:30.100,0:03:33.308
and an hour later I would be at a fan's house. This is in London.

0:03:33.308,0:03:35.804
People would bring home-cooked food to us

0:03:35.804,0:03:39.628
all over the world backstage and feed us and eat with us. This is in Seattle.

0:03:39.628,0:03:43.334
Fans who worked in museums and stores

0:03:43.334,0:03:46.614
and any kind of public space would wave their hands

0:03:46.614,0:03:50.181
if I would decide to do a last-minute, spontaneous, free gig.

0:03:50.181,0:03:53.301
This is a library in Auckland.

0:03:53.301,0:03:58.161
On Saturday I tweeted for this crate and hat,

0:03:58.161,0:03:59.999
because I did not want to schlep them from the East Coast,

0:03:59.999,0:04:01.753
and they showed up care of this dude, Chris

0:04:01.753,0:04:05.366
from Newport Beach, who says hello.

0:04:05.366,0:04:09.089
I once tweeted, where in Melbourne can I buy a neti pot?

0:04:09.089,0:04:11.880
And a nurse from a hospital drove one

0:04:11.880,0:04:13.848
right at that moment to the cafe I was in,

0:04:13.848,0:04:15.249
and I bought her a smoothie

0:04:15.249,0:04:18.183
and we sat there talking about nursing and death.

0:04:18.183,0:04:20.976
And I love this kind of random closeness,

0:04:20.976,0:04:24.890
which is lucky, because I do a lot of couchsurfing.

0:04:24.890,0:04:28.880
In mansions where everyone in my crew gets their own room

0:04:28.880,0:04:31.658
but there's no wireless, and in punk squats,

0:04:31.658,0:04:34.837
everyone on the floor in one room with no toilets

0:04:34.837,0:04:38.654
but with wireless, clearly making it the better option.

0:04:38.654,0:04:40.579
(Laughter)

0:04:40.579,0:04:42.982
My crew once pulled our van

0:04:42.982,0:04:46.933
up to a really poor Miami neighborhood

0:04:46.933,0:04:49.358
and we found out that our couchsurfing host for the night

0:04:49.358,0:04:52.382
was an 18-year-old girl, still living at home,

0:04:52.382,0:04:57.006
and her family were all undocumented immigrants from Honduras.

0:04:57.006,0:04:59.503
And that night, her whole family

0:04:59.503,0:05:02.782
took the couches and she slept together with her mom

0:05:02.782,0:05:05.542
so that we could take their beds.

0:05:05.542,0:05:08.046
And I lay there thinking,

0:05:08.046,0:05:11.087
these people have so little.

0:05:11.087,0:05:13.806
Is this fair?

0:05:13.806,0:05:16.362
And in the morning, her mom taught us how

0:05:16.362,0:05:18.914
to try to make tortillas and wanted to give me a Bible,

0:05:18.914,0:05:24.827
and she took me aside and she said to me in her broken English,

0:05:24.827,0:05:29.802
"Your music has helped my daughter so much.

0:05:29.802,0:05:33.846
Thank you for staying here. We're all so grateful."

0:05:33.846,0:05:37.702
And I thought, this is fair.

0:05:37.702,0:05:41.383
This is this.

0:05:41.383,0:05:43.997
A couple months later, I was in Manhattan,

0:05:43.997,0:05:46.537
and I tweeted for a crash pad, and at midnight,

0:05:46.537,0:05:48.441
I'm ringing a doorbell on the Lower East Side,

0:05:48.441,0:05:50.907
and it occurs to me I've never actually done this alone.

0:05:50.907,0:05:52.453
I've always been with my band or my crew.

0:05:52.453,0:05:56.945
Is this what stupid people do? (Laughter)

0:05:56.945,0:05:59.432
Is this how stupid people die?

0:05:59.432,0:06:01.498
And before I can change my mind, the door busts open.

0:06:01.498,0:06:05.016
She's an artist. He's a financial blogger for Reuters,

0:06:05.016,0:06:07.330
and they're pouring me a glass of red wine

0:06:07.330,0:06:08.501
and offering me a bath,

0:06:08.501,0:06:13.456
and I have had thousands of nights like that and like that.

0:06:13.456,0:06:17.481
So I couchsurf a lot. I also crowdsurf a lot.

0:06:17.481,0:06:20.809
I maintain couchsurfing and crowdsurfing

0:06:20.809,0:06:23.097
are basically the same thing.

0:06:23.097,0:06:25.601
You're falling into the audience

0:06:25.601,0:06:27.097
and you're trusting each other.

0:06:27.097,0:06:29.717
I once asked an opening band of mine

0:06:29.717,0:06:32.240
if they wanted to go out into the crowd and pass the hat

0:06:32.240,0:06:34.368
to get themselves some extra money, something that I did a lot.

0:06:34.368,0:06:36.513
And as usual, the band was psyched,

0:06:36.513,0:06:38.625
but there was this one guy in the band

0:06:38.625,0:06:42.740
who told me he just couldn't bring himself to go out there.

0:06:42.740,0:06:46.728
It felt too much like begging to stand there with the hat.

0:06:46.728,0:06:55.410
And I recognized his fear of "Is this fair?" and "Get a job."

0:06:55.410,0:06:58.856
And meanwhile, my band is becoming bigger and bigger.

0:06:58.856,0:07:01.130
We signed with a major label.

0:07:01.130,0:07:03.891
And our music is a cross between punk and cabaret.

0:07:03.891,0:07:06.096
It's not for everybody.

0:07:06.096,0:07:09.464
Well, maybe it's for you.

0:07:09.464,0:07:13.408
We sign, and there's all this hype leading up to our next record.

0:07:13.408,0:07:18.740
And it comes out and it sells about 25,000 copies in the first few weeks,

0:07:18.740,0:07:22.116
and the label considers this a failure.

0:07:22.116,0:07:24.667
And I was like, "25,000, isn't that a lot?"

0:07:24.667,0:07:27.300
They were like, "No, the sales are going down. It's a failure."

0:07:27.300,0:07:29.578
And they walk off.

0:07:29.578,0:07:32.609
Right at this same time, I'm signing and hugging after a gig,

0:07:32.609,0:07:34.753
and a guy comes up to me

0:07:34.753,0:07:37.025
and hands me a $10 bill,

0:07:37.025,0:07:38.379
and he says,

0:07:38.379,0:07:42.137
"I'm sorry, I burned your CD from a friend."

0:07:42.137,0:07:45.386
(Laughter)

0:07:45.386,0:07:48.851
"But I read your blog, I know you hate your label.

0:07:48.851,0:07:51.385
I just want you to have this money."

0:07:51.385,0:07:55.225
And this starts happening all the time.

0:07:55.225,0:07:58.690
I become the hat after my own gigs,

0:07:58.690,0:08:01.976
but I have to physically stand there and take the help from people,

0:08:01.976,0:08:04.185
and unlike the guy in the opening band,

0:08:04.185,0:08:08.215
I've actually had a lot of practice standing there.

0:08:08.215,0:08:10.331
Thank you.

0:08:10.331,0:08:12.482
And this is the moment I decide

0:08:12.482,0:08:15.274
I'm just going to give away my music for free

0:08:15.274,0:08:17.106
online whenever possible,

0:08:17.106,0:08:20.342
so it's like Metallica over here, Napster, bad;

0:08:20.342,0:08:23.130
Amanda Palmer over here, and I'm going to encourage

0:08:23.130,0:08:27.479
torrenting, downloading, sharing, but I'm going to ask for help,

0:08:27.479,0:08:30.999
because I saw it work on the street.

0:08:30.999,0:08:33.927
So I fought my way off my label and for my next project

0:08:33.927,0:08:36.631
with my new band, the Grand Theft Orchestra,

0:08:36.631,0:08:39.359
I turned to crowdfunding,

0:08:39.359,0:08:43.527
and I fell into those thousands of connections that I'd made,

0:08:43.527,0:08:46.295
and I asked my crowd to catch me.

0:08:46.295,0:08:49.343
And the goal was 100,000 dollars.

0:08:49.343,0:08:52.848
My fans backed me at nearly 1.2 million,

0:08:52.848,0:08:56.103
which was the biggest music crowdfunding project to date.

0:08:56.103,0:09:00.191
(Applause)

0:09:00.191,0:09:04.208
And you can see how many people it is.

0:09:04.208,0:09:08.239
It's about 25,000 people.

0:09:08.239,0:09:10.567
And the media asked, "Amanda,

0:09:10.567,0:09:12.941
the music business is tanking and you encourage piracy.

0:09:12.941,0:09:14.986
How did you make all these people pay for music?"

0:09:14.986,0:09:20.258
And the real answer is, I didn't make them. I asked them.

0:09:20.258,0:09:23.387
And through the very act of asking people,

0:09:23.387,0:09:25.836
I'd connected with them,

0:09:25.836,0:09:30.771
and when you connect with them, people want to help you.

0:09:30.771,0:09:34.545
It's kind of counterintuitive for a lot of artists.

0:09:34.545,0:09:36.200
They don't want to ask for things.

0:09:36.200,0:09:42.116
But it's not easy. It's not easy to ask.

0:09:42.116,0:09:44.331
And a lot of artists have a problem with this.

0:09:44.331,0:09:46.572
Asking makes you vulnerable.

0:09:46.572,0:09:50.935
And I got a lot of criticism online

0:09:50.935,0:09:52.782
after my Kickstarter went big

0:09:52.782,0:09:55.564
for continuing my crazy crowdsourcing practices,

0:09:55.564,0:09:57.983
specifically for asking musicians

0:09:57.983,0:10:00.829
who are fans if they wanted to join us on stage

0:10:00.829,0:10:04.331
for a few songs in exchange for love and tickets

0:10:04.331,0:10:07.428
and beer, and this was a doctored image

0:10:07.428,0:10:10.756
that went up of me on a website.

0:10:10.756,0:10:13.997
And this hurt in a really familiar way.

0:10:13.997,0:10:16.971
And people saying, "You're not allowed anymore

0:10:16.971,0:10:18.735
to ask for that kind of help,"

0:10:18.735,0:10:23.303
really reminded me of the people in their cars yelling, "Get a job."

0:10:23.303,0:10:27.687
Because they weren't with us on the sidewalk,

0:10:27.687,0:10:31.233
and they couldn't see the exchange

0:10:31.233,0:10:33.270
that was happening between me and my crowd,

0:10:33.270,0:10:38.760
an exchange that was very fair to us but alien to them.

0:10:38.760,0:10:40.684
So this is slightly not safe for work.

0:10:40.684,0:10:43.356
This is my Kickstarter backer party in Berlin.

0:10:43.356,0:10:46.837
At the end of the night, I stripped and let everyone draw on me.

0:10:46.837,0:10:49.656
Now let me tell you, if you want to experience

0:10:49.656,0:10:52.735
the visceral feeling of trusting strangers,

0:10:52.735,0:10:54.837
I recommend this,

0:10:54.837,0:10:58.953
especially if those strangers are drunk German people.

0:10:58.953,0:11:03.595
This was a ninja master-level fan connection,

0:11:03.595,0:11:06.503
because what I was really saying here was,

0:11:06.503,0:11:09.103
I trust you this much.

0:11:09.103,0:11:13.223
Should I? Show me.

0:11:13.223,0:11:15.069
For most of human history,

0:11:15.069,0:11:20.411
musicians, artists, they've been part of the community,

0:11:20.411,0:11:24.834
connectors and openers, not untouchable stars.

0:11:24.834,0:11:29.176
Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance,

0:11:29.176,0:11:31.199
but the Internet and the content

0:11:31.199,0:11:33.807
that we're freely able to share on it

0:11:33.807,0:11:36.744
are taking us back.

0:11:36.744,0:11:40.452
It's about a few people loving you up close

0:11:40.452,0:11:44.939
and about those people being enough.

0:11:44.939,0:11:47.154
So a lot of people are confused by the idea

0:11:47.154,0:11:48.308
of no hard sticker price.

0:11:48.308,0:11:51.690
They see it as an unpredictable risk, but the things I've done,

0:11:51.690,0:11:53.874
the Kickstarter, the street, the doorbell,

0:11:53.874,0:11:56.002
I don't see these things as risk.

0:11:56.002,0:11:57.807
I see them as trust.

0:11:57.807,0:12:01.315
Now, the online tools to make the exchange

0:12:01.315,0:12:04.681
as easy and as instinctive as the street,

0:12:04.681,0:12:06.603
they're getting there.

0:12:06.603,0:12:10.202
But the perfect tools aren't going to help us

0:12:10.202,0:12:12.670
if we can't face each other

0:12:12.670,0:12:15.478
and give and receive fearlessly,

0:12:15.478,0:12:18.299
but, more important,

0:12:18.299,0:12:21.818
to ask without shame.

0:12:21.818,0:12:24.492
My music career has been spent

0:12:24.492,0:12:27.506
trying to encounter people on the Internet

0:12:27.506,0:12:30.003
the way I could on the box,

0:12:30.003,0:12:33.515
so blogging and tweeting not just about my tour dates

0:12:33.515,0:12:37.106
and my new video but about our work and our art

0:12:37.106,0:12:41.689
and our fears and our hangovers, our mistakes,

0:12:41.689,0:12:43.707
and we see each other.

0:12:43.707,0:12:47.558
And I think when we really see each other,

0:12:47.558,0:12:50.410
we want to help each other.

0:12:50.410,0:12:54.926
I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question,

0:12:54.926,0:12:58.540
which is, "How do we make people pay for music?"

0:12:58.540,0:13:00.988
What if we started asking,

0:13:00.988,0:13:05.632
"How do we let people pay for music?"

0:13:05.632,0:13:08.483
Thank you.

0:13:08.483,0:13:12.483
(Applause)