Amanda Palmer has taken to her blog to state that she will now, in fact, be paying the crowdsourced musicians playing on her tour, possibly bringing to a close what she describes as "a week-long fervid – and at times vitriolic — discourse about the nature and value of art, energy, time and money".
Palmer writes: "for better or for worse, this whole kerfuffle has meant i’ve spent the past week thinking hard about this, listening to what everyone was saying and discussing. i hear you. i see your points. me and my band have discussed it at length. and we have decided we should pay all of our guest musicians. we have the power to do it, and we’re going to do it. (in fact, we started doing it three shows ago.)
"my management team tweaked and reconfigured financials, pulling money from this and that other budget (mostly video) and moving it to the tour budget. all of the money we took out of those budgets is going to the crowd-sourced musicians fund. we are going to pay the volunteer musicians every night. even though they volunteered their time for beer, hugs, merch, free tickets, and love: we’ll now also hand them cash."
Additionally, she confirms that she will be paying the musicians who have already played: "we’re also retroactively sending a payment to the folks who’ve already played with us. SURPRISE!"
She adds: "i really appreciate those of you who came to the table and made your voices heard. despite a few of the haters who were just along for the fun, i really value your various points of view, and into conveying your thoughts – even if we don’t all agree. this is how we grow. we are the media, and we are a peaceful community who communicate with each other. this is how we do it, this is how we’ve always done it."
Earlier this week, we reviewed Palmer’s recent album Theatre Is Evil, which the tour is in support of, and found "definitive proof that there is substance behind the ‘stuff’" – have a read here.
