Data Music Science

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hey Amanda hi so before you started tell me a little about your background uh well I'm a musician I I started out as a kid being very very into music and

theater and always wanting to do both and then in my mid-20s I started a band called The Dresden Dolls and went off onto the great road of rock and roll and major labels and touring the world again

and again again and you know making old fashioned record albums and all that and then in 2008 I went solo and that sort of jettisoned me off into a a sort of a DIY career where I really didn't want to

work with a major label because I found that not working I had really embraced the Internet as especially like in the mid-2000s with my blog and then with Twitter and all sorts of forums in

social media and I've basically been you know spent I've spent the past few years the past few years for me I've actually been very reflective going like oh my god what just happened you know in my

path from being a street performer which is what I was doing in my early 20s to you know going the traditional band route to trying to figure out how to just work directly with people on the

Internet to share my art and get paid and and that's sort of where I am now right now I'm pregnant and about to just do like a baby project my brain is melting so we so I was talking earlier

Zoe Keaney about this that you guys both have very independent views and very sort of control over your music but very different takes on how to monetize it yeah her is a classically trained

cellist who gets used in TV shows and you started out please put some money in this empty guitar case yeah how has that informed what you expect technology to do for your music

uh well I always look at technology as a as a friendly bit suspicious tool and so you know every time a platform has popped up to make things easier you know when email showed up and

when myspace showed up and forums showed up I embraced that because you know I saw that email mailers were sort of taking the place of having to go down to Kinko's and make flyers and put them up

on on signposts and stuff and and you know as every platform has come and gone I've just sort of migrated sort of like to where the people are and you know with with Twitter sort of being a weird

exception which is I adopted Twitter pretty early and I brought a lot of people into Twitter and then Twitter sort of caught up and became sort of less of a clubhouse and more of a

mainstream idea that people understood but I've always approached every internet platform and every Internet tool with the suspicion that it may not last and that actually what's very

important is that the art and the relationships that I'm building are authentic enough that even if the internet disappeared tomorrow or even if face back Facebook collapsed or Twitter

collapsed or what-have-you or all of our email went down I'm not so reliant on the internet itself that I couldn't somehow piece things together and so I've always just been very slutty

and I think I'll use whatever is available to to forward my agenda of connecting with people but I will also like I also approached everything with a level of you know skepticism that these

things definitely will come and go and they're not in my control so had you been an artist in the 70s or 80s you'd be very dependent on someone sending you like a printed report each quarter for

song sales and that would be the end of it really today you know we have someone with music as a service through streaming platforms you get to see like a count of clicks and skips and all that

kind of stuff is that better or worse for your relationship with the audience I don't look at it that's yeah I mean the funny thing about me is that I'm

very nerdy in certain departments and I really will analyze certain things but other things I will just flat out ignore and it's been really like it's been really interesting watching my own

evolution as as like an artist with knowledge and you know looking at you know iTunes versus YouTube counts versus you know what people are discussing when they're discussing me on Twitter or when

they're discussing me on Facebook or where they're sharing their experience of what songs they love with other fans or with strangers and one of the things and it's funny we were just in a session

talking about this you know when you are a when you are forced as an artist as most of us are to basically market your own music and be your own brand and all that kind of thing you can really get

sucked down you know you get to sort of like choose your own rabbit hole that you're gonna that you're going to chase and I think you know I still put a lot of weight on the live experience I love

performing live and I can sort of tell what resonates and what works when I'm in front of a bunch of people and and it's also very interesting to see what resonates and works on the

Internet and you know I had kind of I don't want to call it a throwaway song but a sort of a very you know what felt like a small unimportant song on a weird little you know side project record that

I just happened to make into a music video because I just happened to be in an abandoned space with a filmmaker friend and said hey let's just like knock off the music video here we're

here today it's this cool space lip-synched it and then I just lip synced it with zero budget and zero script and zero plan and we just kind of fooled around for a couple of hours and

he pasted it into a video and that has become one of my most watched YouTube videos which then means that that has become one of the most resonant songs with my fan base which means that

when I play it live everyone's heart goes pitter-patter and and I can't take YouTube and and and the fact that we had the technology to make a video on zero budget and just put it up for shits and

giggles on the fly for granted right and so I also try not to take Twitter for granted I mean I just wrote a whole book about how I wound up having success with crowdfunding and it's very easy I think

as people who use the internet to look back and sort of assume especially like I mean people here probably not because people here are very smart and savvy but it's very easy to look back and and

take all of these tools for granted and that of like oh of course that had to have happened because you know email came along or Twitter came along but when you actually sort of step back and

start analyzing it those things can really blow your mind it was like this wouldn't have happened and this wouldn't have happened in this wouldn't happen in a lot of ways the label one of the

things that publisher would do is give you a bag full of money so you could finish your work and then you were sort of beholden to them and you may never seen another penny for a long period of

time right but they had this function I'm gonna loan you the money upfront a bank and now you've got crowdfunding coming along and saying you can you can test the popularity of your ideas you

can do all the stuff you had tremendous success with that process yeah that sort of was like the last nail in the coffin of the things that the labels and publishers did in many ways because

because now I can publish my stuff with CD Baby to all the services it can find roots you know on indie blogs and then show up in Shazam which then drives its play on Spotify which drives its sales

and recommendation it's like there's a whole sprawl yeah and you can get the money upfront with crowdfunding platforms if you've got some kind of following yeah do we still need

publishers the unfortunate thing and I have learned this being the kind of artist that I am and especially the the album that I put out through Kickstarter was by all

definitions like the most like palatable radio-friendly really listenable high production record I'd ever made and I did none of the major label things

I sort of like had I took this leap of faith that like of course if the production value is high and the songs are touching and amazing and you know and the production is amazing and all

these things that it will now like magically float by itself because you know enough people have paid for it and are invested in it and will share the music and it will magically make its way

into you know not even make its way into the mainstream but make its way into the world um and that wasn't really the way it worked I was I really had and I've

talked with plenty of other artists about that the record was critically hailed like you know five stars across the critical board but I didn't have the machine

working for me and I kind of had to come to terms with the fact that the Machine still feeds what people listen to whether it's radio or what gets licensed to films or what music is playing when

you walk into a shop like the the ability of an artist to actually really like get over that mountain if you decide not to play the game is still your hands are still pretty tied then

again you know I actually got so much more control and to keep so much more money that you kind of you know right it's like like you want to have your cake and eat it too do you want total

control and to be able to do this direct to fan thing but sort of live off the grid or do you want to go live on the grid but I have to compromise things and you know and sort of play this weird

music industry game and you know most is tech at least giving you the choice I mean I think to it like it's a more porous border but it's still a border with guards right it's sort of the way I

look at it if you could get any data from the music you put out there what day did you wish you could get back that you would look at I would love to how many people have listened to the

complete album it's like authors I mean I've seen books where I want to know like we judged the the number of highlighted comments that decreased dramatically as he go through

the book as an indicator of whether they've actually read the book yeah I would love to know I would love to know something like that and I would love to know you know I would love to actually I

I would love to know when people and this is just a very nerdy part of me when people want to find out more about like Amanda Palmer's music where do they go to look do they Google do they go to

youtube and put my name in do they go to iTunes do they you know go to my website and click on the music like and that's you know those habits are a mystery to me I know what I do if I want if someone

tells me oh you've never heard so and says music you should definitely go check it out I know the you know the little shortcuts that I have to find you know where and and oftentimes it's just

going to YouTube especially because I want to see that person live right and I want to see them actually play their music do you think YouTube is a promotional platform a discovery

platform or a distribution platform today I right now I think it's both I think it's wearing two hats so I mean Taylor Swift leaves her stuff on YouTube because it's promotional takes a lot of

Spotify but YouTube is this largest source of revenue for India for the music industry in India yeah I think Taylor Swift is out to lunch of these she thinks that it's not both and I

think she probably knows it's both but in her case she needs to keep things kind of binary if she wants to make her simple argument um but clearly if Taylor Swift is on VEVO and VEVO is putting ads

before Taylor Swift songs she's making money right so yes it's promotional because you know it's free and her fans can go out and share her her videos but if she's also

making money you can't argue that it's strictly promotional shows that would just be a lie so there's an the immediacy with which we can find out and I remember I'm old enough to remember

the day when I heard a song and then I'd sit next to the radio the next night with my fingers sort of hanging over the record button just hoping that thing for the mixtape and I didn't want to pause

too soon and then get the Knicks and I'd like queue up the next song and I'd be working on that perfect mix tape for a month yep today someone says would even get song I

click on the link like is that there's a sense of I didn't have to work for that that I feel it you know I feel it I mean I feel that in in in so many ways especially like commitment to an artist

when you go out and you you buy the album because you heard the one song on or saw the one song on MTV and you go you know you pedal your dirt bike to the mall and you go to music land and you

find the tape and you shoplift it or you buy it or whatever then but then you have it and you want to listen to the whole even liner notes you look yeah and I mean also I mean I used to do this

thing especially if I was covering songs but even just as a fan I would sit there with my record and the needle on the record I'm like right down song lyrics oh yeah because you couldn't find them

anywhere if they didn't come with the vinyl you had to like sit there and write them down and and you know I I feel very grumpy going like oh those are the good old days but there was a I feel

like there was a level of commitment to the artists output because it was so difficult to obtain and once you got the album you were of course you were gonna listen to the whole thing because there

was a scarcity and there was a limited number of records that you could pull off the shelf at any given time and since you couldn't just skip through it you know you weren't gonna get up like

half a song into that and like go and like clean the record off and change it and put on another record you were gonna sit with that artist and you know and you might decide like I really only like

side one so I'm only gonna listen to side one but I wonder you know as I wonder with everything else happening to us in terms of what we will commit to in what way and for how long

and how long can we sit with something whether it's an article or a book or an artist you know what's gained and what's lost and that to me is like it's a quantity equality dilemma and you know I

still think of albums as really complete works of art you know I can't think about my favorite bands of the 80s and the 90s without thinking of these complete albums that to me were like

worlds you know like like entire books or like entire films that really sort of hung together and and lived in one place and Zoey and I were just talking about that I mean she's actually you know she

was saying that an album for her it's like she wants to kind of make it all at one time and make one big statement and put it out kind of like you would put on an opera and I'm getting you know I'm

deliberately trying to detach myself from that and just say like you know I wrote a song I have this patreon I'm just gonna put it out I'm just gonna put it out and at some point maybe I will

collect everything together so that the mainstream media people of the world can have an amount of Palmer record but maybe that format really is dying and I just yeah number of people I've talked

to you said you used to buy an album then we listened to a single if now we buy a single and we and we look at the Instagram or we look at the stubs or whatever there's yeah these subsets so

let me ask you one last question about about taste making so Rishi Malhotra at seven says there's a lot of algorithms that will tell you what song you should play next but he also says that you know

there's there's a need for curation Apple hired Zane Lowe to come in and and sort of program stuff because he's such an influencer music you talked about the industry in the game in the industry

needing to play the game so you get airtime so people find out who you are but if an algorithm concludes that you know Amanda Palmer is the right thing to play after that song because that song

is just perfect maybe the right key and it's all right sentiment and people who stick around listening to it and so on at some point the algorithms gonna be like someone's

gonna rate an algorithm that's got it gotta actually balance the best song and the one that's commercially viable that someone has Paola in there right what do you think the future of

this weird human machine playlist generating robot is gonna do to music I don't have an answer to that but I do know that it's you know it's having having been on the other end of the

speakers listening to like The Dresden Dolls station on Pandora right and going like yeah what's the worst match that you saw I'm not gonna tell you comes up and

you're like what yeah the funny thing is Huey Lewis and the news having been a huge influence on me I'm not ashamed to say in 1982 and 83 but makes a lot more sense actually was more like 1986

because I was like 10 then that was also that was like heavy duty MTV was my like church at which I worshipped and that was just you know that was that time and I feel like I I owe more to Huey Lewis

in the news and have more connection with Huey Lewis in the news than I do with some of these bands that The Dresden Dolls would get grouped with where the music doesn't feel resonant

but because of certain it's got the same things it gets sort of tossed in there and I go you know that's not really the way it works that's not really the way art works it's not really the way

feelings work and yes like you can definitely say like okay like piano minor key chick singer did it did it did it did it today but I would love to believe because I am you can call me a

pessimist or an optimist in this department or you can call me Alan I or whatever but I would love to believe that there is a really big important x-factor that that that humans making

machines cannot solve for and you know the same way I really don't want to live in a world where we agree that because is you know Google can scan every great artwork in the world and generate

wonderful new masterpieces for our walls and our museums and like why don't we just agree that that's not a good idea and that we would rather have and that we would rather live in a world with a

more organic process which is not to say that AI is not useful and machines are not useful and that math is not useful but you know but where's the fucking romance in algorithm in ourselves to

death I that it just seems too scary awesome I think that probably should be the front cover of the report oh yeah well then thank you so much