Music Marketing DIY - Amanda Palmer tells All

Recently Hypebot readers, myself included were able to put questions to indie artist Amanda Palmer about her approach to DIY promotions.  The interview took place on November 19th at The State Theatre in Falls Church VA.  Jim McDermott (a former major label digital and artist development guy)  hosted this special event. 

Jim commented “We needed an artist that is enthusiastic about engaging with fans. When we booked Amanda we felt she’d be more willing to think outside the box than most, as she’s been highly vocal about artist/ fan engagement offsetting the diminishing role of record labels…….The idea was simple: on the night of her performance, Amanda would give a free chat about her experiences in the music business for ticketholders, and answer their questions…… We got a positive reply from the Amanda camp almost immediately.  Hypebot was our primary online marketing partner, soliciting questions from their global readership and generating online press. We also asked our Twitter followers to submit questions, and Amanda Palmer tweeted about the event as well”

Amanda spent about 40 minutes taking questions and her answers were incredibly patient and giving, with a healthy dose of good humor thrown in.  Here are some of the questions individuals were looking to get answered: 

“Is it always you posting on the social networks or do others sometime do it for you?  What do you think of the practice?  Bruce Houghton 

“What early DIY tools did she use to reach fans before Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other Social Networks were available?”  “Does she use Basecamp or some other CRM?”

I had some very specific questions I thought many would be interested to hear answered including:

“What advice would you give to an artist who is brand-new to using social media as a marketing tool for building their fan base and want to monitize their efforts effectively?”

“In your experience what is the absolute easiest way to accomplish this and how would you manage the issue of TIME? ie how much time should one realistically spend or assign to such a task?”

To hear Amanda’s comments and see the full 40+minute interview check out the videos. 

If you cannot access the video please go to the page here

Kevin J Ryan is a music biz veteran and entrepreneur.  For more info and background on Kevin go here