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Business News Digital Management & Funding
Amanda Palmer fans spend $15,000 in three minutes
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 23 July 2010
On Wednesday, Amanda Palmer self-released an EP of Radiohead covers played on a ukulele, something sort of given away by the title, ‘Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele’. The release is her first solo record since splitting from Roadrunner Records earlier this year and has, I think it’s safe to say, been a success, with fans snapping up $15,000 worth of music and related merchandise within the first three minutes it was on sale.
According to Bandcamp, through which Palmer is selling the record, 4000 digital EPs and all 1000 of the limited edition vinyl copies were sold in this period. All remaining packages, which include t-shirts and iPhones loaded with content, are expected to sell out within days.
Sean Francis, who handled marketing and promotion for the project, told the Bandcamp blog: “We couldn’t be happier. We hoped for far less than what’s happened, braced for the worst, and were floored by how wonderful it’s turned out. We’ve said that this is an experiment from day one, but to see such positive response from the fans, and to have so many people tell us that we’re doing things right [is great]. It’s hard for gross earnings to trump knowing we made the fans happy, but being able to see both of those elements walking happily hand-in-hand is great”.
On the subject of why they had chosen to release the record solely through Bandcamp, he explained: “We have nothing against iTunes, it’ll end up there eventually I’m sure, but it was important for us to do this in as close to a DIY manner as possible. If we were just using iTunes, we couldn’t be doing tie-ins with physical product, monitoring our stats (live), and helping people in real-time when they have a question regarding the service. Being able to do all of those things and having such a transparent format in which to do it has been a dream come true. We all buy stuff on the iTunes store – or AmazonMP3 or whatever – but it’s not THE way artists should be connecting to fans, and it’s certainly not the way someone is going to capture the most revenue on a new release”.
You can stream and download ‘Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele’ here.
And you can read the full interview with Sean Francis here.
