Tag: "Amanda Palmer"

There’s never a dull moment for The Flaming Lips. Whether they’re filming NSFW videos with Amanda Palmer, beating Jay-Z’s record for most live concerts played in 24 hours, releasing music inside of gummy skulls, or rolling around in giant plastic balls at their live shows, Wayne Coyne and company are always on the lookout for their next thrill. So of course, the announcement of the April 2 release of their album The Terror wasn’t complete without an additional surprise out of left field; this Super Bowl Sunday, they will be performing a new song, “Sun Blows Up Today,” in a Hyundai commercial during the big game. The 60-second spot, an advertisement for the Hyundai Santa Fe, will feature the band hanging out on a suburban rooftop playing the new tune, which will be available for 100,000 free downloads from the Hyundai website and as a bonus track on the digital album.

According to Coyne, the “great, very strange, beautiful, emotional record” was written between sessions for the band’s previous 2012 release The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. You can find the official track list for The Terror, as well as a still from the upcoming commercial, below the jump.

Continue reading ‘Flaming Lips Reveal New Album, Upcoming Super Bowl Spot’

Welcome to the new music economy, where distribution channels are paved with fiberoptic cable and shipments are packed into .zip files. The greatest aspect of the music industry in its current form is that there’s a lot of money to be grabbed. It’s just that the methods of securing said cash may require a bit of attention and diligence outside of the realm of music creation.

Nobody is selling records. But there are still tours to plot, t-shirts to sell, and music to put out. In the vacuum created by a lack of revenue from music sales, crowdfunding has taken hold as an appealing, if not the only, viable alternative. And as crowdfunding becomes bigger and moves more into the mainstream, the innovation in the use of the medium is growing as well.

What I’m saying is, what you can crowdfund is limited only by the scope of one’s imagination.

Continue reading ‘Is There A Limit To What Can Be Crowdfunded?’

• This could be either amazing or terrible.
• #hash
• “We need an M.D!”
• Oh, so now you do, Amanda.
• Don’t put your money down just yet.
• What’s a Google?

With record labels in a precarious spot, many up-and-coming bands have been turning to crowd funding as a way to raise money for touring, recording, merch production and more. Major artists have taken note, with acts like Secondhand Serenade and The Voice‘s Nakia using the “rewards for pledges” model through sites like Kickstarter, ArtistShare and more.

Shortly after their long-awaited reunion, Ben Folds Five decided to test out this innovative new platform to help fund their first record in thirteen years. In exchange for donations, the band is not only offering prizes like signed vinyls and t-shirts, but they’re also helping to promote the music, art, videos of their fans. They’ve even offered to call each fan who downloads their new song “Do It Anyway” or makes a pledge a Vice President of Promotions for their de facto record label, encouraging them to add “#ImaDamVP” on the end of their promotional tweets. We caught up with Ben to discuss the progress of the campaign, Kickstarter goddess Amanda Palmer and why we should help fight for continued arts funding.

OS: How is the record progressing? Can you estimate a release date at this point?

BF: I think we should be doing this in early September. Sometimes we’re late, but I think that should do it!

OS: Why did you choose to use a pledge model for funding this record?

BF: Looking at all our options, we had spoken to PledgeMusic a couple months ago. We thought that no matter how we do it, we may include that route, somehow. Last weekend, we started realizing, “Well, we’re going out on tour and it would be fun to put out something we recorded,” because we’re excited about what we’ve recorded, but we’re not on any kind of label or anything. We put it out free on a couple fan sites, which crashed pretty immediately. The next day, there were about 100,000 downloads out there. We thought, “Oh shit, we gotta put the record on sale.” You can’t be promoting it and then not pre-selling it too. The industry’s already screwed up enough as it is without shooting yourself in your own foot. We scrambled the next day to get it up and Pledge had been someone we’d been talking to, and we just did it.

OS: What made you choose PledgeMusic over other services, like Kickstarter or ArtistShare?

BF: I don’t know much about all of them, so I’m not good about shopping around. But what was compelling to me was that, in our position, I didn’t think it was really necessary to flash the sales number. That’s the way Kickstarter does it, Amanda [Palmer] did it that way and it’s been really great.But I play these things by feel, and that didn’t feel right to me. I likened it to sitting in a restaurant where, next to the food, the tally is turning over while you’re eating to see how much money is going to the restaurant…it’s not necessary to know that. But I think it’s really interesting, especially with Amanda Palmer’s campaign…it gives people an insight.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Ben Folds Talks Crowd Funding, Amanda Palmer and A New Kind of Fan Community’

Despite what Florence and The Machine may say, the dog days aren’t over just yet.  In fact, they’re just beginning.  With the summer heat coming on in full force, it’s the perfect time for a new selection of July Editor Picks.  Roll down the windows and turn up this summery mix of indie pop, hard rock, hip hop and country.  Or, if you’re hiding inside and blasting the AC, put on some of the more chill, contemplative tracks.  Get over to the OurStage Facebook page to snag the mix for free download, or listen to it on 8tracks along with the past Editor Picks playlists.

Weapons of Audio “If You Want Me” – Big crunchy guitars and high falsetto vocals.  Imagine Bon Iver fronting Motley Crüe with a hell of a lot more sex appeal.

Sidney York “Dick & Jane” – Is it possible to create a perfect indie pop song without whistling, ukelele and lyrics about bicycling around town?  Not likely.

Chuck Elmore “Saying I Love You” – Elmore’s smooth vocals and slide guitar mix together the best parts of country, folk and pop.

David Costa “To Die For” – Building to a killer hook in the chorus (pun intended), this hip hop cut balances melody with angry, lovesick rhymes.

Jesse Thomas “You I Want” – Clear some nice, comfortable space in your head, because the chorus of “You I Want” is going to spend a lot of time in there.

Clarensau “I Would Trade (Grandpa’s Song)” – Tight male-female harmonies and a haunting cello line combine on this solemnly beautiful track.

Boys “Gossip” – A rollicking sonic romp complete with crunching guitars, vocal acrobatics and a spot-on use of snapping percussion.

Joanna Erdos & The Midnight Show “Sexy Secrets” – If Regina Spektor and Amanda Palmer had a kid (I’ll leave the “how” out of this) it would undoubtedly be Joanna Erdos.

Although Twitter has only been around since 2006, it’s becoming hard to think of a celebrity, store or brand that isn’t tweeting. For bands, Twitter can be an incredibly powerful tool for promotion, networking and keeping in touch with fans.

Let’s take a look at some artists who are experts in the “Twitterverse.”

Boston’s self-proclaimed “piano slayer” and singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer is a prime example of a musician using Twitter in all the right ways—and she has more than 400,000 followers to prove it! In addition to being able to get hundreds of fans to secret shows and last-minute meet-and-greets, Palmer also discovered how to make money on Twitter.

At 9:15 p.m. on May 15th, 2010, Palmer tweeted a call to arms for “the losers of Friday night on their computers.” Thousands of fans responded to her and sent Tweets ending with “#LOFNOTC.” Within minutes, the phrase became the number one trending topic in the world.

One of the tweets that started it all.

Taking a slogan suggestion from a fan, Palmer took out a marker and designed a T-shirt for her legions of fellow “losers” that read: “DON’T STAND UP FOR WHAT’S RIGHT, STAY IN FOR WHAT’S WRONG.” Her web designer created a simple PayPal site to order the shirts, and more than 400 were ordered in merely two hours. In the same week, she made over $7,000 by hosting a Webcast auction and a “twitter donation-only” gig.

OurStage artist Andrew Belle is also a tweet fiend. Belle keeps his Twitter page filled with continuous updates on where he’s playing next, links to his videos and photo updates from his tour. A few weeks ago, Belle was selected as MTV’s Needle in the Haystack. He joined OurStage via Twitter for a “Tweet & A” interview, which was broadcast to his thousands of followers.

Andrew Belle gives advice to new artists during his OurStage "Tweet & A"

Andrew tweeted about his plans for the future and his touring schedule and he even tweeted a picture of himself bumping into Dave Matthews while having lunch. The “Tweet & A” not only gave Andrew’s fans an update on his musical career, but also allowed them to get to know him better as a person.

Having a Twitter account can be one of the best free marketing tools for your band. Make sure to keep your page updated and use your tweets not only to promote, but to reach out to your fans. Follow Amanda Palmer’s lead and create an engaged fan community around your music.

Happy Tweeting!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been at a concert and, during a lull in the set, heard someone yell “Freeeee Biirrdd!” Without fail, this happens at nearly every concert I’ve attended. It happened at the Lady Lamb the Beekeeper show, the Amanda Palmer show (she actually started playing the opening riff), at the Tegan and Sara show and more. So, why is it that everybody yells “Free Bird”? There are many theories about the how the cliché term came about, but if I were to venture a guess I would say part of it has to do with the fact that everyone loves a good cover song. For unknown bands who aren’t quite at the point where they have audience sing-a-longs, a cover can be a great way to make a connection with the audience. Even for bands that play to an audience full of fans, it can be a great way to re-engage the crowd—keep them on their toes and make sure they’re having fun.

Jukebox the Ghost

In an interview with Jukebox the Ghost, the band mentioned one of their favorites songs to cover is “Temptation” by New Order. They said, “We’ve used it a lot of times as our “hail Mary pass” if we’re not sure people are having a good time — dance songs never fail.” Looking back through “Tour De Force” history, you’ll see many artists share a similar train of thought. While on the Spring Break Forever Tour, Bess Rogers had everyone rocking out to her rendition of “Pour Some Sugar On Me”. And later, as part of the Ingrid Michaelson band, she and her bandmates did a hilarious version of “Toxic” by Britney Spears complete with a very well choreographed dance. Other memorable TDF covers include Steel Train’s raucous cover of “Under Pressure” during the Tegan and Sara show at The Orpheum and Amanda Palmer’s spirited rendition of “Creep” which began her intimate set at Northeastern University.

Continue Reading Tour De Force

Name: Amanda Palmer. Facts: Known as the lead singer of the Boston-based band The Dresden Dolls and solo artist extraordinaire; famous for making $19,000 in 10 hours using purely her wit, charm and the Twittersphere (see her blog on why she’s not afraid to take your money and her theory of virtual crowdsurfing); infamous for being naked often and melting faces of the young and old alike with only her voice, a piano and/or her little red ukulele.

Amanda Palmer’s method of playing live shows and touring is similar to most everything else she does, unconventional, yet brilliant and occasionally unplanned. For her, touring does not necessarily mean having set dates so it pays for fans to follow her on Twitter since she often announces secret or unplanned shows, not to mention free tickets and guest lists spots to those that are . An impromptu LA show was announced this November over Twitter that ended up yielding a full house.  Each show is a total AFP  experience. Before the show on her latest tour of the Northeast, she held a confession booth in some type of janitor’s closet. She tweeted the location (with the option of bringing beer if so desired) and fans lined up to tell their secrets. During her performances she answers “Ask Amanda” questions collected in the box on the merch table, and auctions off a piece of art painted live by an artist in the crowd. And she has no qualms about walking amongst her fans during a show wielding only a megaphone or ukulele.  Afterwards, she stays long into the night to talk and interact with each one of her fans.

When Amanda Palmer goes on tour she doesn’t half-ass it. Each show is unique and interesting. Whether it be writing a song about a country 45 minutes before the show, or jumping on top of a Starbucks counter while playing Radiohead’s “Creep” amongst a crowd of college kids. She recently wrapped up a tour with Nervous Cabaret  (check out her “Behind the Scenes” video below), and will soon be embarking on a European tour with dates in France, Austria, New Zealand and Great Britain. Her ability to make each show different, interactive and entertaining while on the road is why she is a prime example of a tour de force and excellence in live performance. If you think her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer has raw power, go see her on tour! You will be blown away.

The last year and last decade were a mixed bag musically-speaking, and all over the map. From Sri Lankan M.I.A. to Canadian Feist and Londoners Amy Winehouse and Adele, it has been impossible to predict where the next break-out scene will come from. As we begin a new year and a new decade, I have compiled a list of 10 fascinating female artists to keep your eye on. Some are new artists but most are on their way to becoming well-known and one even became a full-fledged superstar in 2009.

10. Visqueen: Rachel Flotard is the undisputed Visqueen of Seattle but has yet to make the national impact she deserves. With a stint as Neko Case’s backup singer on her resume, I’m thinking that 2010 will finally be her year. Visqueen’s latest album, Message To Garcia is filled with catchy hooks that are brainy too.

Continue reading ‘Fine Tunings: 10 To Watch in 2010′

Welcome to our sixteenth installment featuring CMJ’s OurStage Staff Picks from the CMJ Relay Blog. CMJ is well known for their industry leading New Music Report magazine, which contains music reviews, artist news and interviews with the best artists being played on college radio.

Eva Auad

“If You Love Me”
Pop
Commingling purring, soulful vocals with French cabaret and Spanish instrumental influences (notice the castanets), Auad gives more gusto and creativity than would be expected from an artist under the bland title of pop.
RIYL: Amanda Palmer, Nou Non Plus, Plastiscines

Happiest Lion

“Image of Chicago”
Electronic pop
This cutesy indie pop takes good direction from their electronic influences, making them sound like they traded their acoustic guitars in for synths. Simple lyrics and a tinge of emotionality brings more versatility yet stays within the indie spectrum.
RIYL: Postal Service, Moldy Peaches, Casual Women