The Art of Asking

If you haven't seen Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking, it's worth the watch. Palmer, the fiery former lead singer of The Dresden Dolls and now a solo artist, addressed a crowd to introduce the idea of asking the audience to pay for music.

There are a lot of good points made in her talk, including the idea of Kickstarters or audience funded projects. Amanda makes valid points about the artist-audience connection and repeatedly puts forward the importance of the audience-artist relationship, rather than the sales or money made.

She discusses her experiences crowd surfing, including a time she stayed with illegal immigrants. And, while her talk is interesting, one can't help but feel confused by the real idea behind her points.

Is the idea that she wants the audience to get the music for free or that she wants the audience to pay for the music? She keeps honing in the point of asking the audience to pay, yet she never gives us any way of doing so, making for a confusing end to her speech. Most artists that are influencing the idea of free-music are artists that have been around for years and have banked at least 7 figures throughout the course of their career. How could these artists ask the audience to fund their projects? Then again, the artists who are successful shouldn't necessarily be expected to work entirely for free. Just because they are intensely successful doesn't mean they should stop getting paid for the work they do.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, it's difficult for people in this economy to shed money for new albums, no matter how much they love the artist. The idea of sharing makes sense, at least from the consumer's perspective. Most friends bond over a shared love of music and want nothing more than to share music with one another. In all honesty, what is the harm in sharing music? Sometimes music isn't provided in certain areas of the world and it's hard to believe that it's illegal to share music with someone who doesn't have the ability to actually find the music in order to pay for it themselves.

Amanda's speech offered an entertaining and intelligent list of questions for future music executives and artists to answer. Is sharing music really all that bad? What is the value of music sharing?

The art of asking really is quite a complex art.