Amanda Palmer Talks About Record Labels, Art, Commerce & Retiring To Open A Juice Bar

Music Industry

from the free-to-be dept

We’ve discussed in the past some of Amanda Palmer’s business model experiments, and she’s guest posted on this site herself about connecting with her fans. Last month she finally was “freed” from her major record label deal and celebrated that fact. Anyway, she’s in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend performing both Saturday and Sunday… and then on Monday, she’ll be teaming up with Ok Go, the band that similarly just celebrated being “dropped” from their label, to do a combination webcast/art contest. As she prepares for all that (and is in the middle of a tour) she took some time to answer a few quick questions about the whole process of freeing oneself from a major record label deal…

You’ve been fighting your (old) label, Roadrunner for a while now, in response to your feeling that it didn’t do much (if anything) to support your last album. As of a few weeks ago, you’re now officially free from that label. What can you tell us about how those discussions went?

Well, I made it clear to the label a good year and a half ago that i wanted out of the relationship – it was clear to me that things had fallen apart as soon as I went on tour with Who Killed Amanda Palmer, my solo record, and there wasn’t any promotion. They’re a hard bunch of people to figure out. I think the thing that bothers me most about their system was the difficulty of finding out the Real Truth about things. I’m a generally straight shooter, often to my own demise, and I find it incomprehensible when people play giant games and tell giant stories that are misleading just as a matter of day-to-day business. I just can’t function that way.

Of course decisions get made, things change in a moving marketplace – but the label would just keep me totally in the dark about decisions. It became intolerable to feel like there wasn’t even an inkling of a partnership. I’d finally been in the business long enough to realize that the people you work with are your Life. And life’s too short to not work with people you love. I don’t care if I never see a cent they owe me, it’s worth it to be free. Everything ahead of me will be so much more joyful, and every penny I earn will feel more joyful.

With both you and Ok Go recently celebrating getting out from under a major label contract, is this a beginning of a shift in how bands view label relationships? For years, the goal was always to get a major label contract and musicians would celebrate getting that deal. Now musicians are celebrating being “dropped” from major labels. Is this a turning point in how musicians interact with labels? Do you see yourself working with a label in the future? If so, how would you structure the relationship?

I have nothing against Labels at all. Labels are groups of people, trying to work. I like people, and I like work. But I think that the collapsed system has made it so hard for them to work well.

If I signed with another label, it would have to be a very personal partnership between me and a group of people that I really trusted to understand my bigger picture.

I would sit down with folks and seriously drill them on what they believed. I’ve made enough mistakes at this point, I’d proceed with extreme caution and not lock myself into a long-term deal.

Labels are REALLY useful. Any touring band who’s successful knows that you can’t tour and run an office at the same time. But I think the functionality is going to change…I think labels are going to basically dissolve into promotional companies, now that hard-copy music is going bye-bye.

You’ve also been pretty active in experimenting with all sorts of creative business models — and not being ashamed to ask for money. Is there anything in your experiences that you think are applicable to others, or are they more specific to your circumstances? Also, what did you do that didn’t work?

I think asking for money is generally considered shameful in the art and music world; it has been for ages. Art has this untouchable romanticism constructed around it; this cultural ideal about artists and how they shouldn’t touch money because it strips away the integrity of their art. But that’s obviously bullshit, especially if you look throughout history and see that artists have ALWAYS needed to fund themselves and their work creatively, sneakily, with gusto and with shamelessness. The only mistake I think I’ve made is not making the connection sooner. I think I was still living in the delusion back when we signed. Living inside this idea that we, as major-label-artists, would get to live on the Special Cloud of Art without Commerce. If I’d been thinking ahead, I would have been training and educating our audience form the very start to support us directly.

One of the complaints that people have leveled towards a model that involves using social media to talk with fans is that it takes away from their ability to make music. As someone who uses tools like Twitter, blogging and video streaming all the time, what are your thoughts on that?

If people are complaining that social networking is taking away their ability to make music, they’re mistaking “ability” with “priority” and they’re being pussies.

There’s no rule that says that if you join twitter you had to hang your guitar on the wall and let it collect dust – that’s just a fucking myth we tell ourselves to excuse ourselves from work when we find networking fancy and shiny and tempting. Networking and twitter and all the things that connect bands to their fans and to their fellow artists can be INSPIRING and DISTRACTING, depending how you use them. It’s just a tool, like the telephone. You choose when to pick it up. If you’re strong, you know how to prioritize your life. I’m not saying I’m GOOD at it, but I see where the lines are and I know when I’m falling into the over-communication ditch…then I scrape myself off, unplug, let my brain turn back into a creator’s brain, and strap myself there until I have something interesting to bring back to the mac.

What’s next for Amanda Palmer?

My new huge exciting project is an album of Radiohead ukulele covers (no, really) that I’m releasing on digital and vinyl only this july. It’s a really gorgeous record. Right after that comes out I’m starring in the musical “Cabaret” this fall at the American Repertory Theater, directed by my old high school mentor Steven Bogart, who was the same one that co-created the Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired musical I did last year. I miss and love the stage…rock world gets a little old sometimes. After that, I don’t know, I’ll probably open a juice bar and retire. But I’ll tweet about exciting juice combinations every morning.

Filed Under: amanda palmer