Amanda Palmer teaches you how to make money as a musician

You can't swing a guitar or the proverbial cat anywhere near the music industry right now and not hear someone's opinion about how artists can and should be making money on their own, with or without a label, with or without people paying for old-fashioned CDs.

I wouldn't mind fewer pie charts and boutique companies cropping up willing to "teach" bands how to do that—for a small cut, of course—and a few more artists like Amanda Fucking Palmer (her moniker of choice) willing to lay it all out like she does in this recent blog:

i ENJOY being the slightly crass, outspoken, crazy-(naked?)-chick-on-a-soapbox holding out a ukulele case of crumpled dollars asking for your money so that someone else a few steps behind me, perhaps some artist of shy and understated temperament, can feel better and maybe a little less nervous when they quietly step up and hold out their hat, fully clothed.

i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

i can’t help it: i come from a street performance background.
i stood almost motionless on a box in harvard square, painted white, relinquishing my fate and income to the goodwill and honor of the passers-by.

i spent years gradually building up a tolerance to the inbuilt shame that society puts on laying your hat/tipjar on the ground and asking the public to support your art.

i was harassed, jeered at, mocked, ignored, insulted, spit at, hated.
i was also applauded, appreciated, protected, loved….all by strangers passing me in the street.
people threw shit at me.
people also came up to me and told me that i’d changed their lives, brightened their day, made them cry.

some people used to yell “GET A FUCKING JOB” from their cars when they drove by me.

i, of course, could not yell back. i was a fucking statue, statues do not yell.

i did this for 5 years, and i made a living that way.
dollar by dollar.
hour by hour.
it was hard fucking work.

and for the last 10 years, i have been working my ass off in a different way: tirelessly making music, traveling the world, connecting with people, trying to keep my balance, almost never taking a break and, frankly, not making a fortune doing it. i still struggle to pay my rent sometimes. i’m still more or less in debt from my last record. i’ll lay it all out for you in another blog. it’s just math.

if you think i’m going to pass up a chance to put my hat back down in front of the collected audience on my virtual sidewalk and ask them to give their hard-earned money directly to me instead of to roadrunner records, warner music group, ticketmaster, and everyone else out there who’s been shamelessly raping both fan and artist for years, you’re crazy.

More threatening than artists talking about money, for my money, is artists talking about their feelings about money.

We worked with Amanda this spring to set up a secret Tweet-up show. She didn't pay us; we didn't pay her (that's how it goes with all our shoots and artists, by the way). We brought our cameras and she'll be in our show, Embedded, airing November 11. We're still not going to pay her for it in any way other than promotion, but she's an artist I'm proud to promote as many times as we can in as many ways as we have.

Watch Amanda sing "Dear Old House" and talk a little about the song on the Current Music blog here.