I was driving up Vancouver Island with Julia and her parents, celebrating a birthday in Qualicum and eating dinner at this great new place in the Cowichan Valley called Amusé, when I brought up Amanda Palmer.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda Palmer is a 36 year-old performer and songwriter from New York who is married to Neil Gaiman. She’s also has a gift for social media and the ukulele. I provided a little backstory on who she was and about this funding platform called Kickstarter as we drove past Ladysmith. The condensed version reads: “Amanda Palmer has raised just under $1.2 Million and that’s insane”
The interesting part being that she only needed $100,000. “Why didn’t it cut her off after that?”, Julia’s mom asked. “Why so much? What will she do with the rest?”, asked Julia’s dad. I’m not sure if I had the right answer to either, but I responded with a shrug: “She’s popular on the internet and Kickstarter, in a way, is the world’s biggest internet popularity contest, I guess”. She’ll probably buy a house. We all agreed that was a good idea. I also let them in on a bit of backstory about the platform. Not backstory, more like hidden catch or piece of fine print.
Kickstarter uses a payment platform under Amazon, which means that Amazon provides all the backend transactions for your “donation” (or whatever term you’d like to use). Amazon charges a 3-5% fee on all transactions. Kickstarter also charges 5%, although I’m not entirely sure what for.
Boring math ahead:
- Amount proposed for marketing • $100,000
- Amount raised as of May 31 2012 • $1,174,396
- Amount going to Amazon/Kickstarter (10%) • $117,439
Yes, I left off the remaining $1,056,957 that Ms. Palmer earned over the course of the 30 days (?) that the campaign ran. Because, well, she can do whatever she wants. She’ll probably do something really bizarre and it will go straight to the front page of Reddit and the internet will turn into an animated GIF of a pizza. The problem is with that $117k that goes to Amazon et al. Sure, Palmer’s money could fund TEN $100,000 projects just like hers, but Amazon has no pressure to do anything with that money that you didn’t know that you gave them. According to my math, everyone who pledged under $25 - All your money went to Amazon. You got a digital album, and none of your money made it to Amanda Palmer.
Well, you sound cranky, Aidan. Looks like someone else did something groundbreaking and you’re left feeling a little bit like.. maybe I’m jealous? Maybe that’s it. I feel like I will probably never have that level of monetary success, I’m not entirely sure if the music and art that I make will ever move people enough to spend thousands of dollars to help me create it. Mostly I’m just thinking about this new landscape that artists and others are living in and I’m not entirely sure that I agree with it. Is that because I’m still on the outside of the bubble? Possibly. But crowd-sourced funding or not, it’s been part of my story thus far. I’m sure many of those reading this found me through some form of internet-related company. I truly love the idea that this is a network of ideas and opinions.
Crowd-sourced is a great idea. It’s direct, it allows for amazing ideas to turn into real physical things, and it’s low risk for both sides. It needs work. We haven’t figured out the balance between funding great ideas and overfunding internet buzz. It’s a fundamental change that I feel is going to make the internet a more moral (and yet still wildly dynamic) place to work and create.
