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DO musicians and artists need an equitable structure around them, or can they make it by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? The latter point of view has been promoted — perhaps incessantly — by onetime Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer, a talented musician and canny businesswoman who has become a Horatio Alger hero for the digital age.
Now let me make clear that I have nothing against Ms. Palmer — she is smart, hard-working, inventive, an alum of my alma mater and married to a writer (Neil Gaiman) whose novels I greatly admire. But her I-did-it-myself-and-if-you-can’t-you-are-lame point of view is so contradictory and tied up in personal privilege I don’t even know where to start. She often discusses — or writes about, or TED talks about — the years of struggling and “asking” it took her to become financially successful. But like many “winners” in today’s new economy, she talks less about the fact that she grew up in a wealthy town (the median home price in Lexington, Mass. is about $1.4 million) and had a serious safety net to fall back on. I have a feeling she graduated Wesleyan with far fewer student loans than I (or many who go to fancy schools) left with.
There are all kinds of other thing in her supposedly fool-proof Dale Carnegie-style lesson that aren’t persuasive. Among them: Palmer is famous for disrobing during her performances, and for some in her audience this is certainly part of the appeal of going to one of her shows. (She is nude, more or less, on the cover of her book.)
I have nothing against female nudity, onstage or off; we wouldn’t have a human race without it. But I’m not sure I want someone preaching the arts version of the prosperity gospel to set out a model by which musicians need to get naked in order to make a living. (Does Palmer — who is nearing 40 and has just announced that she is pregnant, intend this to be part of her business model for years to come? I certainly don’t hold it against her if it is, but is this really what it takes to make it in the 21st c?)
This post gets at the way at least some of Palmer’s maverick myth may be at least partly BS: That she has been lying or at least shading the truth in her valiant rugged-individualist struggles with her record label. (Shades of fellow Bay Stater, former Sen. Scott Brown.)
As for the larger Horatio Alger stories of which so many American are besotted, this column by the perceptive Michael Hiltzik on the “millionaire next door” scam is worth reading. Hiltzik is talking about “Millionaire” author Thomas J. Stanley’s claims about the beauty of the American dream.
But as Helaine Olen points out in the most clear-eyed valedictory to the late Stanley, his book “was already describing a vanishing world when it was published.” Fewer young people starting their careers today have had even the middle-class upbringing or family resources of so many of Stanley’s quiet millionaires.
That makes a big difference, because it’s rarely appreciated that many small businesses start with family investments. Remember Mitt Romney? As a presidential candidate, his advice to young students was: “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.” But what if your parents don’t have any money?
Olen reminds us that the Stanley millionaire model was a bit fraudulent from the start. Economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb noticed, in his own book, “Fooled by Randomness,” that the picture painted by “The Millionaire Next Door” was the product of survivor bias — “the authors made no attempt to correct their statistics with the fact that they saw only the winners,” he wrote. What of the millions of investors who invested in the wrong things or whose paving companies failed? They outnumber the winners by a large margin.
This myth will die very hard.
This is similar to the leaders of the life hacking, entrepreneur-podcast broadcasting school, who sell this Neo-Algerism. Tons of white- and class-privilege at hand, and who also happen (often) to be childless and single.
Well said
Solid points all the way around… This seems like total BS to me, as I honestly didn’t know much about her aside from a few articles I had seen… Prancing around on stage naked as a chick its no wonder she made a million… Everyone is so sexually obsessed in this country due to the subconscious programming its insane… I mean if her music was amazing I would be impressed by her acomplishments, but people these days have to make the side show and style way bigger than the music… People are trying way too hard… It’s a very sad sad time for music in general… The 5 % of musicians who are true to the art are very hard to find in my opinion… A lack of some form of sustainably harmonious lifestyle has destroyed music. A thing that was supposed to lift up mankind. Not something that was supposed to drag us all down into the pits of psychological hell and self sadism…
The principle spokesperson for entrepreneurship in classical music is Greg Sandow. Both he and his wife come from extremely wealthy families. Anne built her career working for years in NYC as a low paid stringer for the NYT – something she couldn’t have done without being bankrolled by her family. Greg lives from his family’s wealth.
James Undercofler has a blog here on AJ whose theme is entrepreneurship in classical music. He also teaches courses on the subject. The philosophy has been popular for at least 20 years, but has produced very few positive results. I have asked him repeatedly to provide examples, especially for independent musicians who are the vast majority of the people in the field. He never answers because he can’t.
Aaron Dworkin has been appointed Dean of the University of Michigan’s school of the performing arts. He said he will stress entrepreneurship, even though there is little evidence this philosophy brings significant results.
Entrepreneurship in the arts is a neo-con philosophy developed as a riposte to Europe’s public funding for the arts. It does not produces significant results. Public funding does. Hence these neo-con delusions.
Amanda Palmer deserves consideration for her idea of inverting the question of begging. Family wealth and nudity issues aside, her TED talk brilliantly forces consideration of the worth of the crowdfunding/entrepreneur model as opposed to the heartless giant music company model. Her kickstarter drew $1.4 million from 25,000 contributors, making it a huge success; coincidentally 25,000 albums sold was grounds for dismissal as a failure from the big record company. She’s onto something, though it’s not a model that will work for everyone.
As to entrepreneurship, it’s a poor substitute for a good job with lots of freedom and generous benefits, but to ignore teaching our arts students how to try to grow and sustain their careers, which are destined to be less stable and more freelance than any of us would like, would be dishonest. It’s not the music schools that created the mistreatment of musicians.
I think the problem is that the entrepreneurship model can give students false expectations. Teach it, yes, but be realistic. Don’t pretend to the students that it will solve the fundamental problems the arts in America face due to our lack of public arts funding like all other developed countries have long had. .
10 years ago I resigned my teaching position to become an musical entrepreneur.- introducing children to classical music through performance, books, sheet music, curriculum, games and animation.. It’s been a long haul and we’ve had to combine both a for profit and not-for profit approach.. It’s difficult in this country partly because raising money on the for profit side is hard to do- investors are not ready to think about this kind of approach readily. Often they have had little arts education so relating to the value of what artists do is hard for them and there is a discord between the idea of arts reaching the masses in such a way that it will create enough value for an investment. The Green Golly Project has been straddling these two approaches for a few years now. I also think that the definition of entrepreneur is different in business and at the music schools that are now offering entrepreneurship programs and maybe we have to think about the definition – a hybrid approach or something else entirely. I will be working with Juilliard students on April 1st as they get their program under way.
As a hobbyist artist, I haven’t needed my art to sell to make a living wage, but I still want to be successful and I have found the advice of sculptor Mark Edward Adams (in his blog: http://markedwardadams.com/blog) to be the most helpful. He finished his training at the worst time, 2007/2008 and has slowly but surely built a successful career. I think a lot of his advice is useful for musicians as well.
People who have already won the game have an odd tendency to be quite satisfied with the rules. This is especially true of those born in the winners’ circle.
Well said. I expect Ken recalls Molly Ivins’s line about George W. Bush: Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Ancient article, I know, but still I wanted to commend you on your insight. I knew Amanda before she was famous and yeah, it helps to spend a college year aboard soaking in tropes about Weimar Germany that you then appropriate for your first band, to inherit your parents’ old Volvo to drive your shit to gigs, to have health insurance your parents pay for, and to have a pocketful of wealthy family and friends to ask to fund your records (detailed in her book). It helps to be young, white, attractive, willing to get naked every chance you get (at so many parties!), and to shine a spotlight on your crotch while you play piano. And it helps to sleep with men who are more successful and wealthier than you whenever possible. (And maybe even marry them? Though I have no insight into her relationship with Gaiman, though it seemed typical of the Amanda I knew). Anyway, so irritating that she wrote a book about privilege without ever naming it.