Notice no mention of how much they're getting paid.

Oh for crying out loud!!

Yeah seriously. It is our right to know publically what you are paying each and every musician.

She said she couldn't afford it.

So this basically says "HI, I believe in post-hippy-love crowdsourcing and free hugs because it saves me money"

And then goes on to say in this how money was moved around and taken from elsewhere. But your story works just fine when you omit that, so hey, whatevs.

She didn't suffer any big hardship. Apparently she thought it was more important to add $20,000 for her video budget because videos are "fun to make" than pay the musicians. 

Even if she did, so what? Making your payroll isn't being generous, it's running a business.

"people see me as powerful."

Any performer who mentions their "management team" can and should pay for musicians

I wish you knew how incredibly wrong you were. 

If you are paying a management team before paying musicians then your priorities are backwards.

If by management team you mean paying yourself and husband to decide whether to finance a tour or shoot a video then you are just a pompous ass.

If Amanda's management team is fan volunteers then you are right and I am incredibly wrong.

If you're basing the idea that just because an artist has a manager, and a management team they have money, you've either never had a manager or don't understand how they work. 

Managers are for the majority comission based off the gross or net of an aritsts income. Rarely do they ever get paid a wage. 

Many artists that have zero income have managers, in fact, historically managers have propped artists and bands up (not too disimilar to how goldman sachs propped up facebook stock) until they become profitable. 

They're job is to do a multitude of things, with no one direct description from artist to artist and because of that there are many different ways things are arranged. 

You can 0 income or career and have management, in fact, that's something I've seen more of than anything else in my experience. 

I have been in several bands and my experience was musicians got paid last.

Manager got his negotiated percentage, soundman got his previously agreed price, travel expenses were paid.  

Any remainder got split between band members.

If a band has a manager and has 0 income for more than 30 days, time for band to re-evaluate manager's contribution and rethink whatever smoke that "manager" is blowing up their ass.

I've also worked with bands/artists where that is the case, but also where that wasn't and have seen and heard a lot of other possible ways to slice it. 

Most people I know have worked with their management on a trial basis at first, more or less based on a handshake. A manager's job isn't just to create opporunity or make money appear out of thin air. It's also to sort all admin, be a go between with label, PR and Marketing, as well as keeping the entire thing functioning as a business, on track with career goals and arcs and everyone's favorite: Tempering and fostering the expectations of the band/artist as well as the label. 

Most businesses don't go into the black for at least 2-3 years, and the majority of artists and bands don't make much gainful movement till well after that. 

I agree that a lot of smoke gets blown up people's asses, but that's because of the nature of the industry, comission based salaries, and the fact that most managers are constantly hedging their bets with numerous acts. 

Sometimes the management is the one that makes the mistake by taking on an artist that isn't really ready to work or compromise, or just needs more time to develop.  Sometimes what the artist is doing is just fad and as trends change they lose their market value. 

In my opinion most people don't need a manager, they need a consultant  to help strategize, plan, project manage and someone to potentially do admin. Both those things can be potentially outsourced for a decent wage, but the reality is that most folks don't have enough assets to manage in the first place. 

I was actually basing my comment on what Amanda herself has said. I did not  mean to disparage managers as a group.

I apologize to managers everywhere, you perform an important function and I am sure you deserve every percentage point you have negotiated.

She has enough money to pay herself $100,000 just because. 

Shes a small business owner now with a millijon in capital. She has to pay her staff and contract workers before she pays herself.

So I guess you've seen her books right?

You know all of her costs, seen all the manufacturing costs, touring costs, logistics et al?

Oh, and that stuff is taxable too...

All we know is ther gross before taxes and whatever kickstarter takes. 

No one but her and her accountant know what she does and doesn't have.

But I guess it's oh so nice to assume...

Actually, she quite publically presented a document about "where the money is going." so, yeah,we do know how much she pledged to keep for herself.

So can she decide where the money from your paycheck goes too?

Huh?

She did not "get a paycheck." She got CAPITAL. She is not the employee of the Kickstarter donors. She is the BOSS. She needs to pay her employees - ALL of them - fairly.

Her reward comes from profit. If there's no profit, tough luck. That's what business means.

Kickstarter donors do not hold stock in Amanda Palmer inc. 

They basically pre paid for a bunch of goods and services. 

She offered goods, declared value and market price, people bought or didn't.  The market created demand, and now she's supplying said demand it as promised using the capital generated to cover overhead and costs and the rest is hers.

That's her paycheck, it's seems like people are more upset with the fact that she could do so well on her own terms, and have the audacity to keep trying to do that. 

You're right, nobody is a shareholder. However, there are laws, good business practises and basic common decency which say that she should pay her musicians. If she's not paying all her musicians - even the day players - she's not covering her overhead.

We're not upset that she's successful. We're upset that she's screwing over other musicians.

Exactly!

Most musicians play for free a lot. Frank Ocean didn't pay John Mayer one red penny to back him during SNL this weekend... Do you want to know why? Because John Mayer got free publicity for being seen standing behind Frank Ocean... It brought a bit of coolness to his brand. Amanda Palmer is not a millionaire, she is a thousandaire at best and has clearly reinvested her money back into her art. It's no one's business how she spends it. She was nice enough to want to take the heat off of her volunteers who being treated like scabs by their unions. I call that being the bigger and smarter person. Clearly the trolls are losing because she came in at 10 on the Billboard list. Suck it Haters!

1) John Mayer is successful; he can afford to do a free gig

2) When you ask the public to finance your art, it IS the public's business how the $$ gets spent. 

3) Palmer received around $1.2M: that's enough to record SEVERAL albums and pay musicians (isnt this what all boils down to?  I'm astounded it's even up for debate)

4) It's not about trolls winning or losing; it's about Palmer reciprocating the generosity she received from the public when she is irrefutably positioned to do so. 

5) You can like/support Palmer as an artist while respectfully disagreeing w her effort to get free backing musicians: grow a pair and have some self-respect. 

Sorry, I call bullshit on that. First of all, SNL pays the musicians, not Frank Ocean. And second of all, musicians unions would tear Lorne Michaels a new one if a musician didn't get paid for an appearance on national TV. Mayer may have chosen to take the union minimum, but you better believe he got paid.

And if she can't afford them, she shouldn't get the musicians. She's not a charity.

Oh, and paying people for what they do is not generosity. It's the bare minimum.

Its not being a troll or a hater to call someone out on exploitive behavior.

It's not exploitative behavior. For it to be exploitative, she would have to force musicians at gunpoint to play for her for free. She is not forcing them to play for nothing. Musicians are free to choose what to do with their time, and whether to charge for it or not. 

Just a small clarification. If you are on SNL you get paid. That's the rules. You may not get paid by the actual artist but you belong to a union and the network/show pays you. AND pays you everytime that shows airs.

Exactly, and unions stick together. Someone claimed that "U2 probably does this all the time, and I pointed out that if the did, all the Teamsters building the stage woud freak out.

Seuls les imbéciles ne changent pas d'avis.

Hrmph. Never knew "kerfuffle" meant "being publicly ostracized for being a cheapskate". 

Booooo! I'm so disappointed she caved. You people need to run your own damn businesses instead critiquing hers. Curious who on here gave money to her kickstarter. I'm guessing none of you. Sad day.

Oh, we should have given to her kickstart campaign and then played for her for free because..........she only gets, she doesn't need to give??

"ROMNEY 2012!"

There, fixed that for ya.

Do you have any idea how many people are now aware of Amanda Palmer (and talking about her) because of all of the free publicity she is getting from the media about this "kerfuffle"?
Perhaps it was accidental, but the outcome is pure PR brilliance.  You can't pay to get this much coverage.

...she can now safely shift funds from her PR budget over to the musicians.

Absolutely true, excellent piece of PR, first you won't and then you will, keeps Amanda in the headlines for another few days...

What i find interesting is all the news is about the crowd funding of the album, $1,000,000 is the story not the quality of the music.

I prefer platforms like Pledge where the money is not the focus the success of the campaign is. 

Since pop music business is about 90% image, wouldn't you agree that this "kerfuffle" changes her image.

Before I got the impression that she was an outsider, indie artist concerned only about the music and the fans. I would consider donating to her kickstarter effort or volunteer to scrub her toilets.

Now I get the impression she is just another hypocrite music business impresario concerned more about the bottom line than her music or her fans. Now, I would not walk across the street to see her perform for free.

I am sure she is a very lovely person. I am only saying that is the impression I get.

If you work for free, nothing is all you will get.  You've got to get something in exchange for your performance.  That may be credits or a couple thousand eyeballs or experience or money, depending upon where you are in your musical career, but it must be a fair exchange.  If it isn't, you are going to get the short end of the stick every time.

Amanda Palmer should understand this without having to think about it.  That she needed a media storm and a lot of hard thinking to get to the point where she was compelled to pay, is a statement against the interest of every performing musician in this country.  I'll bet a lot of people who put money into her Kickstarter campaign would like it back!

I suspect that this will be a major blow not only to her credibility but to Kickstarter as well.

I don't know if people noticed, but Amanda Palmer planned to hire pro players for her New York and other "high profile" gigs and then get slaves...sorry, "fans", for the normal tour.

So, it is not just an insult to musicians, but also an insult to her listeners. She doesn't think she has to have the best possible level of performance in every city.

Well how about that! It really does make a difference when artists stand up for themselves. Creating music for free is fine - I do it - as long as the other people involved are also donating their time, talents and skills. My problem is inequitable treatment. If the business people, lawyers and promoters get paid then the musicians need to be paid as well.

I'm all about co-creating for the joy of the process and creative expression as long as everyone is treated equally.

The other rather delicious irony is that this was an example of union labor action being crowd sourced.I read people bitching about how people were calling her out on twitter when she uses twitter all the time as her own megaphone.

"we are the media." good lord.

She corrected it. That is all that matters and all anyone can ask of another person.

In the end, yes, but I think it's worth drawing attention to the plight of professional musicians.

I raised the issue of how to pay collaborators before and during Palmer's Kickstarter campaign. It's a big issue that has gotten very little coverage. The lines are blurring when a variety of people contribute their talent to a Kickstarter project. Therefore, some thought should be given before starting the campaign as to who gets paid what when the stated financial goal is reached and then who gets paid what if the goal is exceeded.

Creative contributors to a project have a reason to think that if a Kickstarter campaign is hugely successful they should share in that success. Compensation might be based on the percentage of success they contribute to the overall project, but to exclude them from further rewards when those rewards are clearly visible on the Kickstarter campaign page (we can all see how much money has been raised), then it's not surprisingly they might say, "But what about me?"

At least she admits to being financially successful, instead of pretending to slum it out with her musician-fans who by nature of their willingness to pay for "hugs," are fated to be in the so called 47%. Now I wonder, is she going to issue a 1099 for each of these musicians for hire, or are we talking about under the table off the books money? And do the promoters liability insurance cover these now hired musicians? just wondering....

Now I wonder, is she going to issue a 1099 for each of these musicians for hire, or are we talking about under the table off the books money? And do the promoters liability insurance cover these now hired musicians?

Welcome to the world of small business. She won't need to write 1099s if the amount paid to some of these musicians is small enough. As for liability insurance, whether or not the people on stage are paid, whatever insurance they have needs to cover this anyway.

And actually, if she said the reason she wasn't paying some musicians is to avoid filing 1099s for them, that would be a huge no-no. Even if every one of these temp musicians requires a 1099, so be it.

"We be the media"

Is this Hipster Slang?

..."and here's your 15 bucks for helping us with those songs. You rock!"

I'd play for free, for beer, for hugs- any combination of the above.  More now than ever.  And go back to my day job unfortunately, commiserating that being a musician is the funnest thing I do.  But I owe, I owe,....

Anyone slating her here is an idiot and obviously not in the position of running a band.  That she emplys her entire band at all makes those people in her band the luckiest players on Earth, almost as lucky as Amanda.  So, we can download all her tracks for free, not go see her in concert as were in a "recession" and theres an entire generation of music consumer who sees no inherent value to music and expects it free, so we're vilifying her for giving her fans the opportunity of a lifetime of jamming with her and not paying them?!?!?!  So, if Dave Grohl askes his audience to clap along with the band, he owes them money?  Let her run her business and send your hate mail to Goldman Sachs if youre looking for real enemies!

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

She asked for "professional-ish" musicians who can learn charts in a day to send in auditions, learn and rehearse the material in a day, and play with her - in the case of the string quartet, providing the opening act playing someone else's music.

That's a professional gig. It should be rewarded appropriately.

A lot of crabbing but Amanda Palmer is going to pay her string and horn sections.

Wow. Amanda Palmer caved in to all of the pressure...

Change of mind or learning the hidden costs of publicity...

It does matter when musicians stand up for themselves.

Let me ask something. 

You people aren't fools.

Isn't Amanda Palmer from a really wealthy suburb of Boston?

Some privileged child with trust fund?

I don't know many artists that can float with $250,000 in debt or even get that level of credit.

Just wondering.

Thanks.

This is mostly a lot of discussion over nothing. I understand all the angles about how musicians are struggling in need of a living wage. I also understand that quite a few fans of this Amanda Palmer have been let down by the emergence of her true colors.

I'm a huge fan of the Beatles and once heard that Paul McCartney did not pay his musicians a decent wage. I don't know if there was any truth to that rumor, but it hurt my feelings to think the richest musician on the planet would be so stingy when it came to his own band. Still, I got over it, realizing that how Paul managed his personal finances was not the reason I loved his songs and musicianship.

From another point of view, it's a dream of most musicians to be able to play with their mentors. I remember how envious I was of Elvis Costello recording "Veronica" with Paul. I can't believe the money mattered so much in that creative situation because it was a dream come true for Elvis (who said so in interviews). So it stands to reason that in terms of supply and demand, top musicians don't have to over pay musicians to play with them. When you're Paul McCartney, great musicians willing to devote themselves to you and your music are a dime a dozen. For unknown musicians, the publicity they get playing with top names in the industry is always a big boost to their careers. How many musicians can put on their resume "hired by Paul McCartney for his personal band?" This is likely how Amanda Palmer was thinking, "Hmm, who loves me and my music so much that they would be willing to perform on stage with me for free? Can't hurt to ask..." Obviously not, apart from the bad press she's gotten out of it...

This may offend many people who believe that a 1%-er like Sir Paul should be altruistically handing his money over to everyone he rubs shoulders with. But from his point of view, he probably rationalizes that he pays more taxes than most people and never knows when the next wife will leave him broke. 

I'm much more interested in what our elected officials are doing to help us out with our economic woes than I am independent employers. This Amanda Palmer story is further proof that we can't depend on the generosity of individuals to solve the economic problems of the billions of people on the planet. But volunteer work will always be legal. We could argue just the -same that many "non profit/charity" groups take advantage of their volunteer workers, especially considering how much money many of those businesses generate.

"

I'm much more interested in what our elected officials are doing to help us out with our economic woes than I am independent employers. This Amanda Palmer story is further proof that we can't depend on the generosity of individuals to solve the economic problems of the billions of people on the planet"

Which is why people should be ready to organize and protest.

"But volunteer work will always be legal. We could argue just the -same that many "non profit/charity" groups take advantage of their volunteer workers, especially considering how much money many of those businesses generate."

You realize what non-profit means, right?

And frankly, if that's true about McCartney, he's a dick.

Shame it took a PR disaster to figure out what was ethical

I think she can do whatever she wants and that people should not be whining.  If you can raise a million dollars and create the campaign she has, then you can do what you want.  Albini has always been an asshole.

In other words....

"Romney 2012!"

Oops, sorry,

"Ron Paul 2016!"

This whole thing is a bit ridiculous, it really isn't anyone's business whether she pays or what she pays her musicians; she's a privately held business, the negotiation is between her and the prospective employee / musician. 

What I find offensive is that as a fan, I'm supposed to shell out $40-$50 to see her live and then have some part-timers perform on an album they had nothing to do with or rather, performing with very little (if at all) rehearsals.  

If she cares so much about giving her fans an opportunity to "jam" with them, have them open for her, do a song together perhaps, or even better, put together a show which is free and is solely for that purpose. 

After getting a mill, instead of $250K on Kickstarter and then doing this (i.e. skimping on her tour), she's looking very greedy, so I can understand the gripe amongst people posting on here.  I, for one, would fire someone in her team for bad advice.

That being said, if all her live shows are free, then this whole argument is moot.