The art of asking

Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.

(Breathes in)

(Breathes out)

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

For about the five years after graduating

from an upstanding
liberal arts university,

this was my day job.

(Laughter)

I was a self-employed living
statue called the 8-Foot Bride,

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

because everybody always wants to know,

who are these freaks in real life.

(Laughter)

Hello.

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

put a hat or a can at my feet,

and when someone came by
and dropped in money,

I handed them a flower...

and some intense eye contact.

And if they didn't take the flower,

I threw in a gesture
of sadness and longing...

as they walked away.

(Laughter)

So I had the most profound
encounters with people,

especially lonely people

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

and we would get this beautiful moment
of prolonged eye contact

being allowed in a city street,

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

And my eyes would say...

"Thank you.

I see you."

And their eyes would say...

"Nobody ever sees me.

Thank you."

I would get harassed sometimes.

People would yell at me from their cars.

"Get a job!"

(Laughing) And I'd be, like,

"This is my job."

But it hurt, because it made me fear

that I was somehow doing
something un-joblike

and unfair, shameful.

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

for the music business on this box.

And for the economists out there,

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

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

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

It was consistent.

And meanwhile, I was touring locally
and playing in nightclubs

with my band, the Dresden Dolls.

This was me on piano, a genius drummer.

I wrote the songs, and eventually

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

and as we started touring,

I really didn't want to lose this sense

of direct connection with people,
because I loved it.

So after all of our shows,
we would sign autographs

and hug fans and hang out
and talk to people,

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

and I would track down
local musicians and artists

and they would set up
outside of our shows,

and they would pass the hat,

and then they would come in
and join us onstage,

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

And then Twitter came along,

and made things even more magic,

because I could ask instantly
for anything anywhere.

So I would need a piano to practice on,

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

This is in London.

People would bring home-cooked food to us

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

This is in Seattle.

Fans who worked in museums and stores

and any kind of public space
would wave their hands

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

This is a library in Auckland.

On Saturday I tweeted
for this crate and hat,

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

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

who says hello.

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

And a nurse from a hospital drove one

right at that moment to the cafe I was in,

and I bought her a smoothie

and we sat there talking
about nursing and death.

And I love this kind of random closeness,

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

In mansions where everyone
in my crew gets their own room

but there's no wireless,

and in punk squats,

everyone on the floor
in one room with no toilets

but with wireless,
clearly making it the better option.

(Laughter)

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

and we found out that our couchsurfing
host for the night

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

and her family were all undocumented
immigrants from Honduras.

And that night, her whole family

took the couches and she slept
together with her mom

so that we could take their beds.

And I lay there thinking,

these people have so little.

Is this fair?

And in the morning,

her mom taught us
how to try to make tortillas

and wanted to give me a Bible,

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

"Your music has helped
my daughter so much.

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

And I thought, this is fair.

This is this.

A couple of months later,
I was in Manhattan,

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

I'm on the Lower East Side,

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

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

Is this what stupid people do?

(Laughter)

Is this how stupid people die?

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

She's an artist.

He's a financial blogger for Reuters,

and they're pouring me a glass of red wine

and offering me a bath,

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

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

I maintain couchsurfing and crowdsurfing

are basically the same thing.

You're falling into the audience

and you're trusting each other.

I once asked an opening band of mine

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

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

And as usual, the band was psyched,

but there was this one guy in the band

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

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

And I recognized his fear

of "Is this fair?"

and "Get a job."

And meanwhile, my band
is becoming bigger and bigger.

We sign with a major label.

And our music is a cross
between punk and cabaret.

It's not for everybody.

Well, maybe it's for you.

(Laughter)

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

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

in the first few weeks,

and the label considers this a failure.

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

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

It's a failure."

And they walk off.

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

and a guy comes up to me

and hands me a $10 bill,

and he says,

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

(Laughter)

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

I just want you to have this money."

And this starts happening all the time.

I become the hat after my own gigs,

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

and unlike the guy in the opening band,

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

Thank you.

And this is the moment I decide

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

online whenever possible,

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

Amanda Palmer over here,

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

but I'm going to ask for help,

because I saw it work on the street.

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

with my new band,
the Grand Theft Orchestra,

I turned to crowdfunding.

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

and I asked my crowd to catch me.

And the goal was 100,000 dollars.

My fans backed me at nearly 1.2 million,

which was the biggest music
crowdfunding project to date.

(Applause)

And you can see how many people it is.

It's about 25,000 people.

And the media asked,

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

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

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

I asked them.

And through the very act of asking people,

I'd connected with them,

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

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

They don't want to ask for things.

But it's not easy.

It's not easy to ask.

And a lot of artists have
a problem with this.

Asking makes you vulnerable.

And I got a lot of criticism online,

after my Kickstarter went big,

for continuing my crazy
crowdsourcing practices,

specifically for asking musicians

who are fans if they wanted
to join us on stage

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

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

And this hurt in a really familiar way.

And people saying,

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

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

Because they weren't
with us on the sidewalk,

and they couldn't see the exchange

that was happening
between me and my crowd,

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

So this is slightly not safe for work.

This is my Kickstarter
backer party in Berlin.

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

Now let me tell you,
if you want to experience

the visceral feeling
of trusting strangers...

(Laughter)

I recommend this,

especially if those strangers
are drunk German people.

(Laughter)

This was a ninja
master-level fan connection,

because what I was really saying here was,

I trust you this much.

Should I?

Show me.

For most of human history,

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

Connectors and openers,
not untouchable stars.

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

but the Internet

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

are taking us back.

It's about a few people
loving you up close

and about those people being enough.

So a lot of people
are confused by the idea

of no hard sticker price.

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

the Kickstarter, the street, the doorbell,

I don't see these things as risk.

I see them as trust.

Now, the online tools

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

they're getting there.

But the perfect tools
aren't going to help us

if we can't face each other

and give and receive fearlessly,

but, more important...

to ask without shame.

My music career has been spent

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

So blogging and tweeting
not just about my tour dates

and my new video
but about our work and our art

and our fears and our hangovers,

our mistakes,

and we see each other.

And I think when we really see each other,

we want to help each other.

I think people have been obsessed
with the wrong question,

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

What if we started asking,

"How do we let people pay for music?"

Thank you.

(Applause)