Marillion, Amanda Palmer and the future of music

[dmarkfie]

As many may recall, years ago, Marillion had their 1997 North American tour funded entirely by fans. This resulted in the limited CD MarillionRochester. This could be called proto-kickstarter In fact the Tour and Tour Fund were actually audience initiated as opposed to fan initiated.

At the time, Marillion received a lot of press for this. Since then Marillion blazed a trail in the pre-kickstarter world of crowd-sourcing.

In today's world we now have things such as bandcamp, kickstarter, etc... to help artists reach an audience and be free of corporate limitations.

This past week, musician Amanda Palmer gave a wonderful talk on a possible future for art -that takes as it's seed the traditions of the troubadour, ministrel, and street performaner and moves past Marillion's early efforts.

The talk can be found at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palm...of_asking.html

And even more than art, the talk looks at how do we trust one another.

While not for everyone, I do think she offers one possible answer.

David

[moecurlythanu]

Yeah, there's already a thread on it.

[JKL2000]

I haven't watched the interview yet, but I think one thing that helps with crowdfunding, and for a pretty big band Marillion does this exceptionally well, is for the artist to be accessable to the fans/funders. I and so many other Marillion fans have had.so many chances to interact with the band , crew, and other fans over the years. Listening parties, signings at conventions (conventions period!), helping out at conventions, etc. Lucy Jordache is easily reachable by email. My point is that.they're very good at involving the fans while still having the.space to carry on with what they want to do. 3rDegree and Bill Berends are both.good example of less massive artists being very good at involving the funders in their efforts (my voiceover on 3erDegree's recent CD is proof of that!) Bill Berends' recent solo album was funded, written and recorded, then released in an impressively brief amount of time. This puts the feeling of patronage into crowdfunding.

I've helped fund a few other projects, and I think I'd only do so for an artist I was able to make some kind of connection with. Temember, both Bowie and Todd Rundgren have done things of this nature, but they are such remote artists that I don't think I would consider funding them.

Oh, Jay Tausig's year-long subscriptions are so far a great value and working well.

Does anyone know what success Bowie and Rungren had? Rundgren was allowing people to subscribe to content from him, and Bowie was selling stock in himself.

Also, there's Neal Morse's Inner Circle and Eddie Jobson's Zealot's Lounge.

[bRETT]

Does anyone know what success Bowie and Rungren had? Rundgren was allowing people to subscribe to content from him, and Bowie was selling stock in himself.
.

Both of these were duds, seeminly due to bad planning/lack of follow through by Bowie and Todd. Mike Peters/The Alarm had a great one a few years back, though....The subscription deal was four four singles with B-sides followed by an album, but they wound up delivering FIVE albums in the course of a year.

[roylayer]

The funniest thing is that the Marillion tour was mentioned in the latest issue of Maximum PC (a computer magazine) in an article about crowd funding. I nearly fell off my chair when I read it!

[mozo-pg]

As many may recall, years ago, Marillion had their 1997 North American tour funded entirely by fans. This resulted in the limited CD MarillionRochester. This could be called proto-kickstarter In fact the Tour and Tour Fund were actually audience initiated as opposed to fan initiated.

David

I own the double CD.

[JKL2000]

I own the double CD.

Yes, I have the Marillionrochester set too. Or should I say Marillonrochester?

Also, Piston Broke. Good times...

Both of these were duds, seeminly due to bad planning/lack of follow through by Bowie and Todd. Mike Peters/The Alarm had a great one a few years back, though....The subscription deal was four four singles with B-sides followed by an album, but they wound up delivering FIVE albums in the course of a year.

Yeah, I have that set of Mike Peters/Alarm CDs. Good stuff! Overall though, Mike is too prolific for me to keep up with. God bless him, though!

[Sordel]

I love Amanda Palmer's music but I can't bear her "in person" (never having met her, of course!), even when she's talking good sense. When she stands on that orange crate my eyes start rolling and then her "drama school monologue" delivery just drives me mad.

[arise_shine]

Gotta mention (again) that Metroschifter (indie band) was doing this years before Marillion did it, and I'm sure others did it before them. </hipster>

[markwoll]

I saw this today, don't know how authentic it is. Sort of tangentially related:
freemusic.jpg
mark

[JKL2000]

I love Amanda Palmer's music but I can't bear her "in person" (never having met her, of course!), even when she's talking good sense. When she stands on that orange crate my eyes start rolling and then her "drama school monologue" delivery just drives me mad.

Get some fucking normal eyebrows godammit!

[Sordel]

I saw this today, don't know how authentic it is. Sort of tangentially related

It doesn't look authentic to me, but it's a nice point well made. I actually think that Amanda Palmer is right about the idea that musicians should have more of a sense of their self-worth and therefore be able to ask for help when they need it. Unfortunately, following that logic can end up in a situation where a musician ends up being a little too comfortable asking for help. Amanda Palmer sometimes appears like the top tier of a pyramid selling scheme: telling everyone that they too can work this little hustle but silently appending in her own mind ("just as long as we don't run out of suckers").