Part Of The Reason To Buy Is Actually Asking For Money
from the and-talking-about-money dept
A bunch of folks have been sending over Amanda Palmer's latest blog post, where she discusses the importance of content creators today getting used to both asking for money and talking about money. This came after a couple people suggested to her that she not be so open about money issues in talking about her various business model experiments. Amanda notes that it's becoming the new norm to talk about money, and it shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. Part of the whole process of connecting directly with fans is that you take out the middleman, who had a variety of jobs, but one of them was asking for money. So if that middleman is gone, then the only person left to ask for money is the artist, and this shouldn't be seen as bad.artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.She goes on to compare the new model to her experience busking in the past. In a separate discussion I had with Amanda a few months back, she referred to the new business model, "power busking." I agree almost entirely with her on this... with one, perhaps crucial, quibble. I get a little wary of focusing too much on the "busking" aspect, as it feels a little too close to the give it away and pray model, that isn't really a complete business model. I tend to believe that if you give people a real reason to buy (i.e., something scarce and valuable, offered at a reasonable price), then it's not "busking" at all. It's not "asking for money" at all.
artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.
artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks. please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money. dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don't fight it.
unless you've been living under a rock, you've surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
how you do it is a different matter.
maybe i should be more tasteful.
maybe i should not stop my concerts and auction off art.
i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot.
BUT ... i'd rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground (with the help of an incredibly responsive and positive fanbase) for other artists who i assume are going to cautiously follow in our footsteps. we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now.
i don't care if we fuck up. i care THAT we're doing it.
It's offering a great deal that people want to buy. It's the difference between the PBS telethon fundraising effort and people gleefully snapping up merchandise from a TV show or movie. It's not about asking for money. It's about providing a "reason to buy" in the form of scarce offerings that are made more valuable thanks to the content that is being shared. From there, you're not begging for money, but you're offering up a great deal to fans who are thrilled to exchange their money for what they get in return.
So, I absolutely agree with almost all of what Amanda is saying, and think it's great that she's being so open about her experiments (and, yes, I know, I've been bad about giving up the data on our own experiment, which is entirely due to being too busy to just focus and write up what we learned... but it's coming soon!). But, I think that one way to get beyond the issue of "asking for money" and making that feel crass, is not to think of it as busking or asking for money or begging for money, but to focus on experimenting with ways to offer up scarce value that people simply want to pay for, rather than feel goaded into paying for it.
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Filed Under: amanda palmer, asking for money, business models, busking, music, reason to buy, rtb
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due?
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Re:
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Asking, free, and pay-what-you-want
I understand the idea of giving something away for free as a sample or to increase visibility. But, perhaps using Amanda Palmer as a place to start, I'd like to see what the TechDirt folks have to say about which is the better approach: levels of products at set prices, or pay-what-you-want for everything.
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Getting something
I know the t-shirt wasn't a $30 shirt. But something makes me feel more appreciated and more useful buying a shirt from them which probably nets them $20 than if I just gave them $20. Plus, now I have a shirt which has their logo on it and might help them further down the road with advertising and word of mouth.
Sometimes I think it's just as simple as letting the customer know that their purchase of X product helps the artist/gym/charity/whatever keep the lights on.
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Re:
So busy I can't spellcheck properly... :) Thanks... fixed..
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Re: Asking, free, and pay-what-you-want
We've discussed it a bit in the past... I'm not a huge fan of the "pay what you want" model, even though some artists have found success with it.
I think pay what you want puts too much pressure on the fans to decide what's appropriate. It actually creates more of a mental transaction barrier than just setting a price.
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Buy some thumbdrives.
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What you can sell
Please don't try to sell me something that cost you nothing.
I mean buy music in the sense of "pay for it to be created".
When you do that you really are paying for something because you choose who you fund - and plausibly you could also buy some influence over what is created. (For example there are certain singer/song combinations that I would find interesting).
Of course the ordinary public would have to club together to do this but the internet makes that possible and maybe the current entertainment industry could have a role in organising it...
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"i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot."
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You can say that again. In fact, just keep repeating that line until your lips fall off. Given your own admission of still being "more or less in debt" and how you still "struggle to pay the rent sometimes" I am often amused to see you being put on a pedestal and pointed to as a positive example for the way things are heading.
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She sounds like a badass
I recently emailed AT&T something along the lines of "Why can't you, a giant cell company, offer service at the same price as Boost even though they are relatively tiny compared to you?" (Sorry, I know this sounds like advertising. I apologize.) Frankly, I'm sick of paying them for what I feel is very poor service.
Anyway, I got a marketing response rather than a human response. "We offer rollover, we offer 3G, we offer free back rubs for long term customers blah blah blah" It was this long, inane description of everything I already don't care about. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm glad the artists have to be their own 'marketers' now, because I'm sick of the candy-coating that goes with professional marketing. It's not $14.95, it's $15!
Amanda Palmer, keep on being a badass!
[end rant]
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It is not that difficult.
- Ask for money to produce the recordings. It doesn't hurt and if one puts a meter on a website people will know when to donate or not.
- There are deals to be make with business.
- There are merchs you can sell, like stickers, T-shirts(don't forget them), caps, books, lyrics with autographs in a nice paper, digital music in a higher quality like FLAC, you give the MP3 away, but if they want a better sound quality fans can pay for it.
- A fan forum with some extra goodies on it.
- Paid live streams of shows.
- After the shows a DVD collection for fans.
- Biographic books.
I just get tired of listing all the things people are already doing it and make money out of it without the need for CD sales. What people don't realize is that the CD is a physical format the music was free already playing in radios, on the internet and in other places, so if you wasn't making money now is because you are not that good.
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Re: What you can sell
Indeed! The creation of new content is a great scarcity.
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Re: Buy some thumbdrives.
You know what? That's actually a real idea, particularly for small to medium sized live shows. You can set up a couple of laptops ready to transfer all the songs you heard at the show that evening (when the appreciation of the performance is stuck in their heads), just pay $5 to have the "tech" transfer them for you. Don't have a thumbdrive w/you? A small-margin transaction for one of ours will get you the songs to take home with you.
Any reason that wouldn't work?
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Re: Re: Buy some thumbdrives.
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Re: It is not that difficult.
What's interesting, though, is that most of the ways you list for making money are basically susceptible to everything that's killed CDs. You're still talking about selling infinite goods in a physical medium.
You list:
Ask for money to produce the recordings. It doesn't hurt and if one puts a meter on a website people will know when to donate or not.
OK, fine, begging. At this point you're "selling" a good feeling.
There are deals to be make with business.
Also known as "getting a job?"
There are merchs you can sell, like stickers, T-shirts(don't forget them), caps, books, lyrics with autographs in a nice paper, digital music in a higher quality like FLAC, you give the MP3 away, but if they want a better sound quality fans can pay for it.
FLAC is an infinite good. Stickers, T-shirts, caps, books, and lyrics (sans autographs) are all just infinite goods (art) that is printed on a physical medium. With on-demand services, anyone who can download the art can get these things put on the same media. It's slightly less convenient than burning a CD, but only slightly.
Autographs can make merchandise more "special," but what's the collectible value of an autograph anyone could get, that you can't even guarantee authenticate came from the original artist and not some assistant, or an autopen? Moreover, what's the value of having more than one autographed item from the same person? Diminishing returns hit you pretty fast.
A fan forum with some extra goodies on it.
Artificial scarcity.
Paid live streams of shows.
Artificial scarcity.
After the shows a DVD collection for fans.
Artificial scarcity. Digital good bound to a physical medium.
Biographic books.
Another digital good that's bound to a physical medium.
All of these business models either 1) rely on the same principle as selling CDs: taking an infinite good and putting it on a physical medium or 2) getting money by selling either good feelings or remission from guilt. As you pointed out, the former isn't a good business model. The latter, I suppose, works for some members of the two groups that use it: charities and beggars.
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The whole thing is the business model...
Madonna merchandise
Madonna posters are those downloadable too?
Not counting all the B2B(Business To Business) deals.
Paulo Coelho pirated his own books and made a killing, Cory Dotorow released his own work under creative commons and is doing fine.
YKK sells zippers and they are a giant in the market their phylosophy is "No one prospers unless he renders benefit to others."
Madonna books. She even sells children books WTF?
Madonna T-Shirts in the "Official Store".
So what Madonna, Paulo Coelho and others have that others don't? Madonna is not even in her hey days.
I think the real security net that artists have is the fan base they build when they are young, those are the people that will buy their stuff when they get old. Treat them with respect or face the consequences.
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Re: Asking, free, and pay-what-you-want
If what you are selling has a zero or near zero marginal cost to you then you are not selling it. You are either asking for donations to cover a past expense (producing the content) or to fund a future one (producing some new content). If you are asking for donations then the item being offered is really just a conveneient "choke point" for you to wave your collecting tin - like a charity collecting at the doors of a supermarket. In that case a "pay what you want" model is appropriate - but it is helpful to provide some suggestions so people do not get stressed over deciding what to pay.
However it is definitely better to find something scarce, then you can set a real price, and if it is a reasonably valuable thing you will be able to add enough markup to make a decent contribution to your fixed expenses.
The music industry's problem is that the thing it used to add the markup to (the physical CD) is now too cheap - and in any case has been supeseded by media (hard drive/flash memory) that are not tied to the content.
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@Richard
That is easy to answer:
You are selling the artist and his image, the artist is the real product, not the containers. The music can be free and still people will buy it if they get more then just the music.
Otherwise big names wouldn't be doing it. CD sales hurt only the label(manager) not artists and all the things labels(managers) do artists can find other people to do it for them with better conditions now.
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There is no payola on the internet.
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Re: Re: It is not that difficult.
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Re: There is no payola on the internet.
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What I do like about Palmer is that she is open to talking about the business of selling oneself and she gives real numbers. Too many artists/musicians/bands won't talk about income and expenses.
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Heh. You say that as if anything that anyone does that involves asking for money is exactly the same. Amanda has done a number of unique and different things (the flash mobs, the online auctions, the impromptu video, the photo book). I'd argue she's absolutely breaking new ground.
But, even if she's not... um... who cares? This isn't about "breaking new ground." It's about figuring out what works, so that we stop having to listen to artists insisting there are no business models.
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Re: Re: What you can sell
C'mon, who wouldn't want to download a handful of covers by Slayer for XMas?
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