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Author Topic: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT  (Read 25092 times)

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Shinra

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #100 on: September 12, 2012, 05:22:50 PM »

Hey guys, slow down the internet lynch mob. She's not being nearly as unreasonable as enraged people on the internet are making her out to be.

1. She is self-publishing an album and artbook which is probably going to run her many hundreds of thousands of dollars in start up costs and printing fees. While she will certainly recoup those costs, it will be a while before she does. Without the money she got from the kickstarter, she never gets the money she gets from the album. What sane bank is going to give somebody a bank loan to publish an album, considering the notorious reputation of musicians not making any money? There's a reason that the recording industry exists today and has been so successful for so long.

2. It costs money to rent venues. Bars, concert halls and outdoor arenas do not offer their space for free. Musicians make their money at these events by promoting their record. A significant chunk of the kickstarter is just going to go to getting their band in the door and on the stage. They are unlikely to make any money from any tour gigs.

3. She IS paying a backup band. She's collecting volunteers for additional slots in that backup band. She had conceptual ideas that would have required more money from the kickstarter and rather than scrap them she is giving fans an opportunity to meet her, play with her band, and walk away with memorabilia, a full stomach and a good memory. She is not recruiting people to tour with her, but is looking for musicians to play one or two songs at each given venue. Here's the blogpost causing the outrage where she says as much: Amanda Palmer's blog.

I know 1.2 million dollars seems like a lot of money but the money collected was never to just fund the tour in the first place and chances are pretty good she's going to be reaching into her own pocket (and her husband's) to cover production costs and tour expense. She could have just cut the extra parts from her tour altogether, which would have probably been fine, but I would definitely call the opportunity to share the stage with Amanda Palmer an opportunity for an amateur musician. Considering, again, she's not likely making any money off the shows, how is this legitimately different from busking for change?

edit; Rico's post indicates Palmer is probably making money or breaking even off the tour dates. Probably a lot more profitable when you're playing bars and small venues, so I stand corrected there, but the post corroborates pretty much everything else. There's no way she cut a profit on that kickstarter at the end of the day. Reward fulfillment alone is killing half of it.
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Rico

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #101 on: September 12, 2012, 05:26:04 PM »

Oh, hey, she already wrote her own thing.
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Shinra

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #102 on: September 12, 2012, 05:27:19 PM »

How much is it worth in album sales and concert tickets if fans decide you're a nasty tight-fisted fuck?

It's not really the fans doing the outrage, it's mostly people unfamiliar with her work that were directed to the fiasco by outrage bloggers. There's tons of comments on her blog entry that are pretty much "I have never heard of you before, BUT YOU'RE A BITCH"
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Beat Bandit

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #103 on: September 12, 2012, 05:48:55 PM »

It's true that this could still be either way depending on what they have / need as far as the band goes, but seriously look at the postings in date order.

Starting from the Kickstarter you have her talking about getting an orchestra together to play with them.

Then on her post-kicking blog she writes about how she needed all that kickstartin' money. Yeah a lot of it went to stuff that wasn't essential, but it was making the show / product better.

In the requests for people she's asking for a string quartet and 'all the horns'. Now I've never toured with a band before, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't able to just hire the essentials and fill in the rest as is appropriate. This seems more like a situation where some songs just wont be played if they don't have the right people available.
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Joxam

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #104 on: September 12, 2012, 05:55:51 PM »

Nah, probably not. Live bands and recorded albums are two different beasts entirely. I mean hell, Led Zeppelin was a three piece. I'm sure they can do all their songs in some fashion with the essential band. She's talking about ONE practice before the extra people play with her live band, she is clearly just doing this for the fun of it.
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Shinra

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #105 on: September 12, 2012, 05:58:11 PM »

It's true that this could still be either way depending on what they have / need as far as the band goes, but seriously look at the postings in date order.

Starting from the Kickstarter you have her talking about getting an orchestra together to play with them.

Then on her post-kicking blog she writes about how she needed all that kickstartin' money. Yeah a lot of it went to stuff that wasn't essential, but it was making the show / product better.

In the requests for people she's asking for a string quartet and 'all the horns'. Now I've never toured with a band before, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't able to just hire the essentials and fill in the rest as is appropriate. This seems more like a situation where some songs just wont be played if they don't have the right people available.

They only need a couple of horns total acc. to her blog entry; I think when she said all the horns, she meant any brass horn would do.

Quote
Nah, probably not. Live bands and recorded albums are two different beasts entirely. I mean hell, Led Zeppelin was a three piece. I'm sure they can do al their songs in some fashion with the essential band. She's talking about ONE practice before the extra people play with her live band, she is clearly just doing this for the fun of it.

Yeah, I'm thinking the same. She seems pretty lassiez-faire about what she actually needs which tells me that while some songs probably have a specific set of instruments, she can probably add them or remove them and do just as well. If she wasn't doing this, it's not like she would have just gone ahead and hired people - she probably would have just cut the strings/brass she didn't already have in her touring band and play the songs without them. Some of the Dresdon Dolls' best live performances (IMO) were literally just Amanda Palmer singing to piano, so it's not like she's not experienced in going without.
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TA

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #106 on: September 12, 2012, 05:59:48 PM »

How much is it worth in album sales and concert tickets if fans decide you're a nasty tight-fisted fuck?

It's not really the fans doing the outrage, it's mostly people unfamiliar with her work that were directed to the fiasco by outrage bloggers. There's tons of comments on her blog entry that are pretty much "I have never heard of you before, BUT YOU'RE A BITCH"


Outrage Bloggers are pretty much the worst people, if you think discourse is a good and important thing, which it is.
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Joxam

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #107 on: September 12, 2012, 06:04:45 PM »

Honestly this is probably only a thing because the type of musicians she's looking for (orchestral musicians) have unions, coupled with the standard bitching people do every time a very well funded kickstarter isn't used in the exact manner they seem to think if should be.
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Mongrel

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #108 on: September 12, 2012, 06:19:40 PM »

Yeah, that was a really bad way for me to put that. I actually don't care about it at all and I actually do already have a fair idea of what it costs to tour and produce an album. I was just glibly trying to get across the idea that Optics Are Important. I.E. if your fans start to think of as a greedy fuck or whatever other nasty things, there's a good chance many of them will cease to be fans.

I mean if she is in fact paying a backup band, that's good! So it's really more of a communications problem that it even got to this point. And yeah, outrage bloggers digging for shit to start lynch mobs with.
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Shinra

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #109 on: September 12, 2012, 06:54:59 PM »

Honestly this is probably only a thing because the type of musicians she's looking for (orchestral musicians) have unions, coupled with the standard bitching people do every time a very well funded kickstarter isn't used in the exact manner they seem to think if should be.

I think this about hits the nail on the head. I am a big supporter of unions but sometimes they do shit that just makes me shake my head, and this is a perfect example of it. While I appreciate that unions work very hard to make sure their members don't get taken advantage of, I don't think it was ever the intention of Amanda Palmer to take advantage of anybody - these are jobs that are literally either volunteer or nonexistent. There never would have been a paid position in the first place. At the very least, the performers are going to get free drinks, some t-shirts and CDs and some clips of them playing with a live band on stage, which they might be able to use as part of their resume. While "portfolio work" is usually a euphemism for "I'm too cheap to pay my employees" I really just don't feel like that's the case here.
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Royal☭

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #110 on: September 12, 2012, 07:09:18 PM »

Why not just start another kickstarter to pay band members?

I think this about hits the nail on the head. I am a big supporter of unions but sometimes they do shit that just makes me shake my head, and this is a perfect example of it. While I appreciate that unions work very hard to make sure their members don't get taken advantage of, I don't think it was ever the intention of Amanda Palmer to take advantage of anybody - these are jobs that are literally either volunteer or nonexistent. There never would have been a paid position in the first place. At the very least, the performers are going to get free drinks, some t-shirts and CDs and some clips of them playing with a live band on stage, which they might be able to use as part of their resume. While "portfolio work" is usually a euphemism for "I'm too cheap to pay my employees" I really just don't feel like that's the case here.

UGGGHHHH FUCK YOU

The thing is, everything you said is a blatant lie. Anything that is "You can put this on your resume" is bullshit. Nobody cares much about that shit. What makes this stupefying is that she's going out of her way to pay a bunch of other people then asking the touring musicians to play for free. Either don't get them or find a way to pay. What probably makes this post outrageous to a lot is that Amanda Palmer is VERY popular in the "Artists Should Get Paid" community. And her she is, asking that community to do work and not get paid.

Mongrel

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #111 on: September 12, 2012, 07:17:53 PM »

I do think that if you're going to specifically set yourself out as an example of "Artists should get paid" then the onus is kind of on you to follow through with that.
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Joxam

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #112 on: September 12, 2012, 07:28:54 PM »

I actually have to say that even using here numbers, 35000 dollars is on the small side. I really do think she could have set aside money to pay these people. I guess the crux of getting mad about or not depends upon whether or not you think she is doing it in order to save that money or if you think she's doing it because she wants to jam with her fans.
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Shinra

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #113 on: September 12, 2012, 07:30:30 PM »

Why not just start another kickstarter to pay band members?

I think this about hits the nail on the head. I am a big supporter of unions but sometimes they do shit that just makes me shake my head, and this is a perfect example of it. While I appreciate that unions work very hard to make sure their members don't get taken advantage of, I don't think it was ever the intention of Amanda Palmer to take advantage of anybody - these are jobs that are literally either volunteer or nonexistent. There never would have been a paid position in the first place. At the very least, the performers are going to get free drinks, some t-shirts and CDs and some clips of them playing with a live band on stage, which they might be able to use as part of their resume. While "portfolio work" is usually a euphemism for "I'm too cheap to pay my employees" I really just don't feel like that's the case here.

UGGGHHHH FUCK YOU

The thing is, everything you said is a blatant lie. Anything that is "You can put this on your resume" is bullshit. Nobody cares much about that shit. What makes this stupefying is that she's going out of her way to pay a bunch of other people then asking the touring musicians to play for free. Either don't get them or find a way to pay. What probably makes this post outrageous to a lot is that Amanda Palmer is VERY popular in the "Artists Should Get Paid" community. And her she is, asking that community to do work and not get paid.

That was completely uncalled for, dude. You're free to disagree with me but you don't need to be shitty about it.
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Royal☭

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #114 on: September 12, 2012, 07:43:34 PM »

Sorry, when your entire paragraph was "Dude, it's totally not exploiting musicians because they're musicians" I get kind of pissed. But please note, I struck out the fuck you.

Brentai

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #115 on: September 12, 2012, 07:47:30 PM »

Okay, read her thing.

Look.  Lady.

It's cool that you have a business plan here.  Most Kickstarters don't think of that shit!  So good on you for that.

So uh, given this, when you were line-iteming your expenses before you launched the Kickstarter, why didn't you tally it all up and go, "Gee, my choices are to either shaft some fellow artists, or, and you can do this, just ask for the goddam money you need."

This isn't the Republican party, baby.  You don't have to shaft the little guy because you're afraid of asking people to share their luck.  You just made a conscious decision to do that because...

I've no fucking idea why, really.  I guess your utopian rebuild of the entire music industry is still based around people with calculators juicing the blood out of musicians.  Only now the accountants use cruise control a lot more.

And

Well

I really hate to be the one that goes here, but for fuck's sakes

You've given more money than we're talking about here to Scientology.

So, you know, maybe dial back your "take back da power" schtick.  I can see a little cake coming out of the corner of your mouth.
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Brentai

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #116 on: September 12, 2012, 07:48:50 PM »

That was completely uncalled for, dude. You're free to disagree with me but you don't need to be shitty about it.

For fuck's sakes, grow your skin back.
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Rico

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #117 on: September 12, 2012, 09:58:50 PM »

Constantine is right in that this is not a résumé builder at all. That's just not a thing for this kind of gig. If "portfolio work" is really Palmer's idea here, then she is "too cheap to pay her employees"

However, I don't think Amanda Palmer is trying to get professional musicians for free. I think she thinks it's a fun opportunity for not-terrible amateurs to have a fun time being involved with music they're a fan of. This isn't really a thing that people have an opportunity to do and it is kind of neat. Professional musicians probably will not take part in this offer.
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Royal☭

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #118 on: September 13, 2012, 04:10:03 AM »

Oh, professional musicians will most definitely not take part in it. But in that regard, it's similar to someone who says "We don't need a photographer/web designer/graphic designer/programmer/whatever, my brother's son/daughter said they'll do it for free" with a shit-eating grin on their face.

Doom

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Re: KICKSTARTER KOMBAT
« Reply #119 on: September 13, 2012, 04:15:08 AM »

I think people take offense to the "well, after all the math, I have almost no money left!!!!!!" excuse because it seems to overlook the fact that being given $1.2 million dollars by other people(practically for free, yes I know the Kickstarters in question usually have intense talent, but it still wouldn't happen before the internet) in the first place is the sort of incredible windfall most of us will never realize and it's irritating to see the whole "Aww Shucks after all them there fees" reasoning, or perhaps the "poor me fulfilling my dream is expensive." Like Constantine said, there's a bit of a shit-eating grin there. Like Brentai said, ask for it? Maybe she's feeling a bit embarrassed that she didn't calculate such a thing in her original costs?

Yes, after all them there fees you have much less money then it appears you do. Of course, you could also have absolutely zero money and not do your project at all. Or God Help you, beg for support while working.

Edit: Is this the Kickstarter in question? Does it matter that she originally asked for $100k and got $1.2m? Her blog post suggests that she didn't intend to make a million dollars and this development may come directly from her poor planning instead of a "woe is me all these fees attacked me from nowhere death of a thousand cuts."
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