Stop trashing artists who disclose their finances

boing
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No we haven’t done our own indie tour, but we do have a grasp of basic mathematics and what is involved on going on a tour and the knowledge a lot of bands playing that size of venue or even smaller ones make a significant proportion of their income (even basically all of it for the ones who tour worldwide all the time) from music to know it’s not a loss maker to fill venues of that size unless you make it one.

I know people from a very critically acclaimed and in relative terms successful indie band in the UK who tour every year at least once a year and they all have jobs and simply wouldn’t tour unless it was viable.

The problem with their reaction is that they didn’t seem happy, if they’d said they’d made some mistakes and we are going to learn from them fine. They didn’t that. said you can’t make money from touring, and were really stupid and snotty about it.

I might be wrong but Amanda Palmer also seemed to downplay the significance of her contributors and how it was only breaking even and I get the impression if it was what it was like she wouldn’t have got so much crap and/or shouldn’t have backed down if it was how she said.

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I was one of those musicians and I love to talk about it!

There was a general call on her website for anyone who wanted to be part of the the backing band and to send an email with a youtube link. We were promised fun, hugs and possibly free beer (depending on availability). No promise of money or exposure.

We got sheet music emailed to us, there were a few spots where you could solo improvise a phrase if you wanted but it wasn’t exactly jamming. I played the show the day after the album dropped and got the sheet music that morning so I had to do more reading that I am usually comfortable but it wasn’t anything an average high school band geek couldn’t learn in one rehearsal. I ended up with a $100 gratuity I wasn’t expecting after the fact partly because of the kerfuffle. That $100 wouldn’t get you an hour of union musician, which is fine. They need to eat and have health insurance. Music isn’t just a business, it is an activity between people. AFP was talking with the audience before her set about how bands that get hired guns to tour with and how they can look pretty and sound great but don’t actually add that much to the show other than expense. AFP and the GTO ft Justin (dingo) Sabe might have sold 3 extra tickets (and would likely have had maybe 6 who would try to get guest listed on my name) but having someone that you might have seen around playing in other bands adds more value than just a perfect read from someone who is out of the door after they get the check. I don’t think I was starving any working musician, certainly none have called me a scab to my face. I have been intense discussions with friends who didn’t blame me for playing and were criticizing her strongly and have also asked me for similar favors with their big name touring acts. I do know that I got to play one of the best shows I have seen in a bucket list venue. We didn’t have any of us in the monitors and all the cell phone videos were too close and you could only hear the guitar amp so I don’t even know if my mic was live. I do know that I got recognized in line for a different show the next week and that was pretty cool.

The postscript is that the tour and album did fine. It didn’t net a million dollars, but it payed the band up front and didn’t put anyone into debt. The pickup musicians came out of the music video budget. From someone who started with dubbing tapes and burning CD’s (back when that was new technology) and then having a label pulling promotional funding because an album didn’t break in the first two weeks this KickStarter model is a huge success. Especially because the usual business model is closer to something like gambling or how we ended up in the mortgage crisis.

For Pomplamoose, they jumped right into a mid sized tour and did ok and opted to not have to be scrappy. It wasn’t paying for trashing hotels, drugs and rehab and hot tubs full of popular brand champaign, but they didn’t catch bed bugs staying in some squat while their new lighting rig was stolen out of the van. They invested and can go out next year and break even or come out ahead. They just happened to do it bigger than the local band not being able to afford tolls on the way back from their first away gig or the band that is paying for play on the radio, had a gig that was mostly comps in LA and doesn’t realize that this is all coming out of their advance (which is like a loan that no sane business person would approve)

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Interstitial ad between the wedding vows?

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I’ve seen riders for bands that she’s claimed that didn’t give her a ‘living wage’ that opening acts got. They get a LOT more support than is listed in her screed. Things like talking about having to bring along her own audio engineer? No. You only do this if you need dynamic changed during the show – the tour engineer is going to set levels perfectly for the venue, and then give general levels for support acts. A tour as big as she claims she wasn’t given living wage for, the one where her and her partner were given a base of $3k a week, didn’t include the fact she was most likely given 3 squares and per diem on their days off. Last tour I did was a top 10 tour for the year, and our supporting artists were taken care of (pretty much as good as the hired gun artists like myself that were not a part of the core band, but there as part of the touring band).

I know this stuff because riders got traded all the time…I use to own a business that had one of the first online MI job boards had these shared all the time so that folks knew what they could negotiate. There was just a lot left out in her post that most pros know is the case.

My argument is that she is trying to claim something that just leaves a lot out. And there have been publicity tours I’ve done where the artist KNEW they were going to lose money, and this was considered advertising. I’d done a few 6 week tours during album release because radio play and album sales were more important.

As for exploitation of artists? Its happened in the past. When people think they have no means of negotiation, they get screwed. Especially when you are doing music that is interchangable to the listeners. I hate to say this, but the race records back in the day really had white listeners that didn’t care who they listened to, so long as they got something in the vein that was ‘forbidden’. Doesn’t make a great way of negotiating. These days, the artist has the upper hand. At least when you move out of the pop world where most artists are manufactured by a team who could easily make any half way decent artist cookie cutter. Folks like Palmer and Pomplamoose dictate their terms.

And back to the point, I like both of their music, I have mutual friends with Palmer in Boston. She is talented and a great business woman. Again, my biggest complaint is that she goes out of her way to play the victim and underdog when she really isn’t. She gets her way and is successful because of it. Same with Pomplamoose. They made a LOT of money off of just videos, enough to buy a million dollar house outright, and they started a business that specifically targets video artists like their own. They did a publicity tour that seems to care more about publicity and comfort than making money. They have a well funded industry darling startup that is co-owned by the principles in the band at about 50%, and they are using their tour to get more money out of this. Conte keeps repeating he isn’t “taking a salary” without indicating that as co-owner, you generally don’t take a salary. You get paid when the company makes money. Which his tour made certain it had more publicity so he can get more interest in it.

I’m not trying to be flippant or anything about this. I just find too many artists like to act as if they are ripped off when it is anything but. No one wants to admit music is a business and should be run as one. And the good folks, like Palmer and Conte both do. And it is the most prudent business folks that scream the loudest that they are not a business.

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No citation there that I see.

So what you’re saying is that it’s really all about ethics in music journalism?

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I’m not sure who ‘they’ is in your comment. If ‘they’ is Pomplamoose, then I don’t see how you claim that they didn’t seem happy, or that they said you can’t make money from touring or why you would claim they were really stupid and snotty about it.

I read the financial disclosure linked to in the article and I found it engaging and informative, and I think that Pomplamoose’s attitude towards this tour is nicely summed up in the first paragraph:

“Pomplamoose just finished a 28-day tour. We played 24 shows in 23 cities
around the United States. It was awesome: Nataly crowd surfed for the
first time ever, we sold just under $100,000 in tickets, and we got to rock out with people we love for a full month. We sold 1129 tickets in San Francisco at the Fillmore. I’ll remember that night for the rest of my life.”

It seems to me that although they ran the tour at a $12K loss, they had a great time and appreciate the incalculable value the tour brought. Further, they make it clear that although they are a very hard working pair of artists, the sum of their endeavors generates for them a comfortable living. I personally am proud of them for the result of their hard work, and especially for Jack Conte’s founding of Patreon as it has great potential to expand the possibility for ‘creatives’ to make money directly from their efforts. I wish both of them great success and I thank them for the work they have done to help others also enjoy success.

Maybe you and I are reading different articles, I don’t know.

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Not sure how I can cite anything. I’m talking about experiences from 10 years ago. And I’m not in music journalism. So good on you.

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I think the argument here is that these artists (and most artists who do this) are not disclosing their finances. They’re disclosing the balance sheet or “accounts payable” for a particular project.

I applaud that type of transparency, and there definitely needs to be more openness and support. How much does it cost to go on tour? How much does booking, salary, food, and so on, cost? What are the averages, what can one expect? For many new bands, they set out to do live shows with no idea what kind of money will change hands. If more artists disclosure what a typical live show “take” is and what tours typically cost up front, it can only help other bands – not only in the sense of having that upfront knowledge, but also when it comes to negotiation.

The type of transparency that some people here and some people elsewhere on the internet are complaining about is the real “financial disclosure” of the band or person. Amanda Palmer does not disclose her finances – she has never said what her average annual income works out to be, or what her tax return last year looked like. That’s her choice, but there have been posts on Boing Boing and on author blogs about how often a new, hot author is not some upstart with bootstraps. Instead, they’re actually from a very rich family and, even if they themselves don’t have a large bank account, they have connections to people high-up in the writing world.

For example, one criticism I’ve heard about the show Girls is that all the female stars are daughters of famous people, but the men are just male actors. One can’t say that Allison Williams is working due to her creative drive and willingness to take any job – she doesn’t have to. That’s fine! But if someone who is well-off financially discloses the finances of a creative endeavor, I think it’s going to come back around that they receive some criticism for giving the impression that the success or failure of a project rests solely on that project.

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I believe that jjsaul was making a somewhat underhanded “gamergate” jab at you…

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This article about Zoe Keating and her finances seems relevant to this conversation:

And there is this:

And there have been cases of pop stars playing for really questionable dictators as well.

And in what other fields would we demand that sort of information? Why do we need our musicians to be dirt poor in order to be worthwhile to listen to? The problem seems to be we demand some kind of authenticity out of artists, and we get pissed off when we find out that they might not be living in a shithole apartment, scrapping by on tours out of vans.

Can you point out an example of that on BB?

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When people ask me to play for “exposure”, I start asking them questions about how many people will hear me, what contacts I’ll make, how much merchandise I can expect to sell, and what important people will be there to see me. They usually get huffy, and I have to explain the difference between “exposure” and “working for free”.

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I get asked to play a lot of free gigs for nonprofit groups I’m friendly with. I finally had to establish ground rules. I have a page where they can see my standard rates. I then tell them that I’m happy to play for nothing, but I won’t work for free- And what can they offer me.

9 times out of 10, I’d be willing to do the show for nothing, but I want some kind of acknowledgement that I’m providing a professional service that I normally get paid for. I don’t care if it’s $10 for gas and a ham sandwich- It’s the principle of the thing.

The most common arrangement is that if they’re a registered 501(c), I just give them an invoice for my full rate plus travel expenses, marked “Performance fee waived as charitable donation”. They give me a few dollars for gas, I take several hundred dollars as a tax writeoff. More importantly, they then have a hard number to point at and say “this is what this normally costs”.

I’m just in it for the art. I’m going to make art and release it out into the world regardless of whether I ever make a dime at it or not.

THAT SAID, if I have to spend 60 hours a week working two jobs, I’m going to put out an album every 5 or 8 years, because that’s what I can afford. If I can make enough money from music to only work a regular 40 hour week, I have more time and energy to make music. If I can make enough money selling downloads to not need a day job, I can put out a single twice a week.

This is where the subtle underlying economics come into play. It’s not about money per se, it’s that MONEY = TIME = ART. If my art matters to someone, I expect them to pay to have more of it.

It’s the principle of the thing that there’s art, and there’s business. Making art is pure joy. I do that for free every day. Loading and setting up and breaking down gear, booking shows, maintaining a website, marketing myself, submitting CDs for review, hiring people to back me up or design my CD cover or run sound, driving back and forth to gigs, trying to build an audience on Reverbnation or Facebook- THAT’S WORK. I expect to be paid for that, ESPECIALLY if I’m doing it on request.

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I go into a lot more depth on my blog, but that’s what I don’t think people understand. Pomplamoose is not a live band with a YouTube channel- They are a YouTube band which occasionally plays gigs for fun. As near as I can figure, they are likely making well over $350k a year*. The tour was ostensibly to build their fanbase, but realistically, it was a vacation they could write off.

*Sources for my calculations:
Jack admits $5,00/mo in iTunes sales
Pomplamoose Patreon page- 2 videos a month at $6,500
Jack’s Patreon page- 1 video a month at $5,390
Nataly’s Patreon page- 2-3 videos a month at $2,170
= a total of around $28,400 a month, or $340,800 annually.
Add to this an undisclosed amount from YouTube and other ads, endorsements, and sponsorships. Additionally, Patreon itself- As CEO, Jack does not draw a salary, but does own a substantial portion of the company that takes 5% commission of all monies collected, and recently raised $15million in venture capital.

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Wait wait wait… Neil Gaiman is a millionaire?!

lol I got too used with my favorite authors being destitute alcoholics.

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Yeah, I got the feeling she’d changed her story regarding the Kickstarter furor since the dramas about it, clearly in the interests of her current narrative.

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Drama attracts attention. And as a rising artist, it is sometimes useful to get attention – even while being annoying. Its one of these things that get old as an artist becomes established and a good artist finds other tactics. It is one of the reasons I can’t stand U2 anymore. The music isn’t bad these days, better than a lot of newer artists, but damn…I hear Bono coming on with some puppy that is going to be put down because a starving ethiopian has no access to an iPhone and the only that can stop it is downloading their free album that Microsoft and Google have conspired keep out of our hands because they clearly hate the ASPCA…well, it turns me off. Way too many established artists trying to be relevant by pushing faux authenticity (when they already have a compelling authenticity that they could sell based on their new perspectives), and choose to use drama as their selling mechanism.

It works for them, but it turns off the very people that supported them in the first place.

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If you can’t cite anything, perhaps you should have made it clear that when you said Amanda Palmer made ‘a million dollars’ that you were either hyperbolizing or really had no idea what she actually profited. It creates the impression you mean to malign her by inventing a fact (which I don’t think you intended to claim).

I see you mention several times that she pretends to be an ‘underdog’ and ‘a victim’, but I’m not really sure what that means or how you establish it. I know very little about Amanda Palmer other than she’s married to Neil Gaiman, she had a kickstarter, she is a musician, she has a book about her kickstarter experiences, she invites fans on stage, she doesn’t pay those fans and that fact makes some people upset. I really don’t grasp why people are as upset as they are about the whole thing, really.

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That’s all fine and good, but I only see you listing income, not expenses. How much do those videos cost to make? How much do they pay in taxes? According to the same article you link to, they say they pull in $2500/month total, after expenses. That’s $60K for the pair of them.

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We have mutual friends. Some that have worked with her. Sorry if this isn’t good enough. This isn’t hyperbole, nor is it a hard number to achieve when you are at her level. Nor does it last that long when you are living this life style…your cost of living goes WAY up. You are constantly needing to making it again and again.

I’m not UPSET about it, I’m disappointed. It is annoying. It makes musicians look bad. I come from a perspective of a former pro in the field. And my goal has always been to correct these sorts of misinformations about the industry when I comment, nothing more. Again, she thinks this works for her. I don’t. Talented artist that could do well without this sort of need to be seen in a different light.

Edit: A decade ago, I was making almost $200k as a hired gun (studio / tour / consultant with instrument manufacturers). My recent ex is a classical soloist and makes about $300k (touring mostly internationally, recordings…she does a lot of Disney stuff). And she isn’t really well known outside of her immediate circles.

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Or went to one of their shows.

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