Could the future of Music be in the “Art of Asking”

Having been a fan of the TED Talk series for a while, it was great to come across this fantastic talk featuring  Amanda Palmer, who gave a passionate and quite emboldened speech about her road experiences as a street performer and lead singer of a US punk band.

She detailed in great depth, that awkward moment when an artist is confronted with having  to openly ask fans for their immediate support in order to continue their work.

As she explained, the results of taking this controversial and often unconventional approach have been astonishing .  She went on to raise over $1.2 million in donations in one of Kickstarter’s most successful crowdfunding projects ever.

This makes a great case for why paywalls shouldn’t be the only means for monetising an artist’s work. Many are now exploring this route, thanks to the fact that the internet has changed how people consume and access music. Online piracy has forced many to question the sustainability of the existing music industry.  The debate still rages on with no definite answer as to how this subject should be settled, it’s left many artists like Amanda having to “experiment”  to see what works.

Radio Head and Prince are examples of a handful of other artists who have attempted this, or use what is called a “pay-What-You-Want Model”.  This could start a monumental shift in the music industry, allowing musicians and artists to no longer be reliant on complex & restrictive legal contracts or have total dependency on the mainstream music labels just to “make it big”.

This is very practical in the real world; having direct & physical contact in this manner with your fans and audience makes this process more genuine. But what about online? The Internet is now generally accepted to be the easiest method to spread your music, but as Amanda points out in the talk “…the online tools are just not there yet…”.

We here at tibdit believe we have taken a big leap in solving this problem. Anyone anywhere can get a Bitcoin address in 30 seconds, add it to a tibdit URL and immediately begin accepting micro donations (check out our SoundCloud concept demo to get a better idea). You don’t even have to sign up to begin receiving money. If you’re a musician or artist you could easily get a “tib link” up and running and add it to your SoundCloud, MySpace, Youtube or practically any other site where your content resides, then encourage your fans to support you. Who knows what might happen!

“Don’t make people pay for music …..let them” Amanda Palmer

Team tibdit