I am Amanda Palmer! ASK ME ANYTHING ABOUT PATREON, PATRONAGE and HOW IT WORKS NOWADAYS

Do you think that the immediacy of Patreon reduces the likelihood that you will revise your songwriting? That is, do things get released faster and, as a result, are they less fully-formed than if you had to sit on them, potentially revising, while waiting for a more traditional release?

Love your work and, to the degree a stranger may, you!

I'm interested in the answer to this question because I am a former patron. I lost interest in the Things because I thought they weren't as fully-formed as previous projects. Maybe it has nothing to do with Patreon; maybe my tastes have changed. The last Thing I was truly impressed with was Machete.

Current $1 patron.

I kinda see the sentiment behind this. I can also absolutely concede that I don't enjoy all of the Things that she puts out. I have my pledge capped at $2 a month. I try to see it less about the Things that I get (in how $1 patrons don't typically get downloads) and more in putting fuel into an art engine. She often collaborates or donates portions of the proceeds to worthwhile endeavors so I generally feel good about where my money goes.

The beauty of Patreon, I think anyways, is that it lets you feel less disappointed if you get something you don't enjoy quite as much...because you chose how much to pay for it. Most of the Things get released to the public anyways so you can always just toss her a few dollars when you do find a Thing you enjoy. :)

THIS! it really is funding for a life and a workshop more than a pre-order for a finished product. in a way, it's both, since the patrons do get access to the finished products as well, but for the people who don't want to watch me working in realtime, or who are annoying by several blogs a week (or more) i encourage them to just join my mailing list and PLEASE just support me buy buying my larger projects and merch when they're available. that's totally fair. patreon is more for the inner circle who wants to watch the art-sausage getting made.

Patreon appears to work fantastically for those with a well established fanbase but how would you suggest a smaller creator to pitch themselves to receive support from their (small, but perfectly formed) fanbase?

I tend to see the strange dichotomy of people more willing to give money to the well established and reluctant to give to the small and embryonic. Any ideas how to combat that?

i've talked to MANY patreon creators who have 5-50 supporters and they LOVE it. when patreon tried to re-regulate their payment system a few months ago and we all rioted and complained, a lot of those people were on the front lines, insisting that patreon was still life-changing for hte people making $100 a month from 10 people, or even $16 from two people. it's about ignoring scale and embracing the system as a whole, i think. it's a system for people to connect with one another, not just a system for celebrities and huge projects to connect with their giant fanbases. one of my best friends, geeta dayal, is a great writer and journalist. she publishes in art forum, frieze, wired. etc. she has about a hundred patrons giving her $800 (i give her $25), and i know that money makes a small but significant difference in her life - she has this little pile of dependable income she can rely on. i've seen a lot of painters or bloggers say "i only have 13 patrons and they're all my friends, but i love that they support me, look at and comment on my work, and stay close to me". for these people it may not be so much about the money as the support & art-and-discussion delivery system. and in a post-facebook world, this stuff is gonna be really important. upshot: there's a million ways you can use it. there ain't ro rules.

I think it might be more just about exposure. It's harder for new/smaller creators to get found. If they provide great content and are interactive with their fans...I don't care how small they are I'll support them.

yeah, this. ^

Do you have any plans to do more performance art like the living statue you did while Ash was in your belly? Of all the Things you have Thinged I can't possibly pick s favorite, but that one was wicked cool.

---

You don't have to read this next part because it's not a question.

Amanda. 💖

I started listening to theater is evil on the way to visit my grandmother during her chemo treatment. I had quit my job and spent a month with her just loving her and reading your blog. Anthony was sick, too.

He passed. I went home from Texas. One week later, my grandmother followed.

I was so gutted. I drove around my neighborhood listening to lost and crying.

Then you released machete. You put my grief into words. I started learning to play it immediately but only recently have been able to play the full song without just stopping to cry.

I saw you in Boulder. Right after Trump was inaugurated. Right after you had gotten into a car accident and decided the Show would Go On. And you passed a blanket around the crowd. And said the blanket would stretch and cover everyone and eventually there would be no one outside the blanket but one man and we would invite him in with loving arms because that is what. we. do.

On Saturday I marched for the first time. A man in a pickup truck laid on his horn with his finger out the window. I stared at him for a second before telling him I loved him.

You are such a beautiful soul and you have improved my life so much.

Thank you.

Ps I have a cactus named Amanda Fucking Palmer that has been with me all this time through death and divorce and other life changes. She's rad as hell and nothing can kill her.

this is a beautiful story, all of it. thank you. i don't feel like a cactus most days, i feel like a sad wilting dandelion. still strong as fuck but tired. anyway...more performance art is hopefully coming your way. i've been reconnecting with a lot of my NYC theater friends and my head is full of ideas :)

I'm overwhelmed by the amount you talk to us through patreon, Facebook, email. How do you cope??!

can you clarify? like...how do i cope with having to communicate so much? if that';s the question, the answer is actually pretty easy. i don't feel like i have to, i feel like i want to. i like it :)

In your opinion, how has patreon (and other crowdfunding services, actually) changed the relationship between artists and fans?

that's such a huge question...and probably one of the most important questions. i think it's made things more honest. we have had such a distanced, romantic and sort of dishonest with artists (especially musicians) for so long. i grew up in the 70s and 80s where all musicians seemed like these untouchable, otherworldly beings who weren't part of this dimension. it's like going to a super fancy restaurant and never meeting the chef who makes your meal and sharing a glass of wine with them: it's always been the case that as soon as a musician becomes a "professional" there's a giant army of middlemen (labels, publicists, distributors, promotors, etc etc) between the ARTIST and the person EATING THE ART. i think that that distance isn't something we should take as a given; i actually think both audiences and artists are happier when they are connected to one another in a more human way. even when that means that the uglier and more vulnerable sides of the artist (and the audience) come into play...including how the art-sausage gets made. so while i don't divulge every excel sheet and penny (that would be boring), my audience basically knows how my business runs, what it takes to keep the lights on, and i feel like that draws them closer to my art, it doesn't push them away. that's the counter-intuitive part: i think a lot of artists feel that the artist should remain in an unknown, faraway garret. i'm arguing for more connection, more knowledge, more community, more transparency, less "off in the tower" stardom. my audience (but they'd need to speak for themselves) seem to love this. it makes everything real. it IS real. but now it all feels more real. if that makes sense.

As a $5.00 patron with a $10.00 cap, I agree with the heightened sense of realness. And the realness is both delightful and uncomfortable, as any realness is bound to be! If anything, I would say that Patreon breeds more accountability with artists. Not accountability in the sense of "I own this artist" or "This artist must only put out art I adore/agree/underwrite with my approval" or anything like that . . . but more in the way that, because I am directly offering funding to a person and their judgement and their inherent humanity, I examine their actions more. When there were proposed fees for patrons, the entire Patreon community had very strong feelings about the proposed change. I am a patron to two artists on Patreon. I watched how both artists responded. Amanda engaged in even, open, understanding dialogue and gathered view points . . . she listened, I mean really listened, to her patrons. And she advocated for us beautifully, and we all made it out alive. There was radio silence from the other artist. Amanda now has my higher pledge.

finger on nose. it's also why so many artists don't necessarily want to tangle with this level of crowdfunding. IT IS A LOT OF WORK to have a real relationship with eleven fucking thousand people. you can't clock off and only take. you gotta give a lot. and you gotta love the giving, because people can smell inauthenticity a mile away.

Do you wanna dance?

Do you wanna fight?

Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

do you wanna get really terrified? ice caps are all melting and we're gonna die! do you wanna see donald trump impeached? get a jaron lanier book and read it on the beach?

I’m a $1 patron but a patron none the less, and I just wanted to tell you (and everyone reading this!) that even as a minimally participating patreon money wise, it’s such a fantastic community to be a part of. I love what you do and what you stand for and the art you create, and knowing that even my little bit helps put out these fantastic songs and music videos and art pieces is just really dang cool. Thank you for being you and inspiring me! There’s so much I want to sit and talk to you about for hours but, for this thread, what has been your most memorable patreon-based magic moment? I know you crowdsourced way before the internet - but what’s been the coolest single thing patreon has allowed you to do/find/create?

oh my god. first of all, thank you for being a patron. it means everything to me. man....there's been so many magical moments. but i've gotta say hands down the most goose-bumpy was "the ride". i wrote that song in basically one sitting after holding the art-gun to my head, and i literally felt like i was floating on this magic cloud of deeply painful and personal comments from the blog, and they all lived inside me like this giant pain-word-pile that had to be expressed through a single song. i read these 1,000+ comments and then sat down and wrote what i think may be the song i'll be remembered for when i die. it felt that important, that amazing. like i was actually channeling my community and our collective pain and suffering into music. i'd never felt anything like that before. and i really do think it's my finest piece of songwriting, it even beats "the bed song", which had set the bar pretty high. i haven't released the ride to the public - i'm going to hoard that one for the album coming out in 2019 (though patrons can hear it if they join, i even live-recorded the day we demo'd the song, and there was a lot of tears on that piano: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-song-ride-15046075

A number of years ago, you talked about how fans would come up to you after shows and give you cash and apologize for having pirated your music.

Now that you have a patreon, does that happen less often?

hahaha. yeah. that doesn't happen very much anymore, except when people do it as a kind of a joke. some dude came up to me after a show a few weeks ago (i think it was in south africa) and handed me a 500 rand bill. and i was like THANKS and put it in my bra. once a busker, always a busker

If you could change one thing about Pateron, what would it be?

oof. there's quite a few things i would change, but that being said, patreon has grown in massive spurts and i'm pretty proud of what they've been able to accomplish just in a few years. i would KILL for them to have a comprehensive, forum-like discussion area. it really bothers me that my patrons have to go to facebook to discuss life and art outside of the patreon itself: it's just a terrible platform for community discussion, and that is a goddamn shame given how incredible the community is. they know this and they've been working on it, but that's a constant source of frustration for me. and the worse facebook gets (don't get me started) the more i yearn for people to be able to hang out and gather on non-facebook spaces.

I'm part of both facebook groups. They're a jumbled mess and I never feel like I get much out of them. I miss the Shadowbox. :(

WE ARE WORKING ON IT.

Thank you so much for sharing The Art of Asking with the world! I produced painting after painting while listening to your amazing audiobook, and it's probably the most productive and (for lack of a less cheesy word) inspired that I've been in recent memory.

My question is about building a community as a lead up to Patreon. From talking with other creators, my understanding is that you really need to have a connected community first, then build the Patreon. I'm an artist, and as much as I want to create all the time, sometimes I feel so defeated by how hard it is to build an audience and foster community. Do you have any advice for how to start to build a community that I could one day build into a Patreon?

i would probably tell you what i tell bands who ask me the same thing...it starts out in the real world. the internet isn't a place where real people look at real paintings. so i'd do the equivalent of setting up your guitar and amp in someone's bar or living room: find a local gallery or home or coffee shop and ask if you can hang your shit, and get it started on the practical physical level. if your paintings connect with people, and people want to stay connected / support you, you'll know. get their emails. ask them to help. world first, internet second.

Good morning Amanda, Hows your day so far?

aw. thanks for asking. pretty good. neil's out of town so i've got ash (my 2 year old) on my own. we woke up, played in bed for a while (there may or may not have been a lot of tickling) and then we ate some eggs and i made some coffee, handed him off to his nanny, went for a super quick jog in the brisk woodstock morning, and raced back here to do this ama. it hasn't been much of a day so far ...after this i'm going to do a shit ton of email catch up and go over to elizabeth lesser (the founder of the omega institute)'s house for coffee and baby-playing. she's got two grandkids and lives around the corner. have you noticed the coffee theme of my day?

Has becoming a mom affected your artistic process, inclinations, or passions any?

hell yeah. if anything, it's forced me to be a more focused songwriter...never before having this kid did i ever set aside songwriting time in a studio (as in: tomorrow through friday i literally have a recording studio booked from 12-6 pm) because i never had to. i could always just toddle over to my piano anytime i wanted and diddle around. now i'm buried under this pile of responsibilities but i still have a lot of art insude of me, and i've just had to force myself into a person who doesn't float spontaneously into the art-head but actually puts it on like a work uniform. since i have the patreon, i have this beautiful carrot dangling on the end of the stick: i fi get this song written, I CAN GET PAID!!! and since i'm an instant gratification junkie, i love that, and i love that i can share my work instantly with my listeners, even if it's in demo form. it feels very natural. and i didn't know if it was gonna work, doing this. i just dove in and tried. it worked. i've produced some of my best work with my songwriting uniform on. it just goes to show that divine inspiration is sort of bullshit. art is work, you gotta just sit your ass down and do it and do it and do it again.

With Patreon enabling you to put out many different 'things', how do you feel it affects your focus on large cohesive projects, e.g. an album?

see: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87iomm/i_am_amanda_palmer_ask_me_anything_about_patreon/dwd7g4f/

Unfortunately that link doesn't seem to go anywhere for me.

To clarify, I wasn't asking with an inherent value judgement; it might just as well be the case that being able to put out all the things clarifies your mind/mission for the larger projects.

this was just a link to one of the other questions i answered, which addresses this (and the new record coming out). scroll up!!

Dear Amanda, Will we ever hear Battered Bride? Much love from Dublin, can't wait to see you in May

awww...i am actually hoping to use my patreon to clean up and remaster and release some of my old old demos and songs. here's hoping. i need to carve out the time to do it before the tapes rot.

What's the most effective/appropriate/best way to ask you for a hug?

(it's been a thing I've wanted to do since I listened to the book last winter)

EDIT: I went to a couple of the Boston events in November, but you seemed crazy busy

In case she doesn't get to this one -- just ask! I've been to a bunch of her events and every third person got a hug by asking (politely, and in a non-creepy manner!)

yeah. just ask. i'll hug. :)

Amanda! My partner and I are seeing you in Bath, will you be around meeting people after the show? Also if we have a guerrilla wedding would you be willing and able to officiate???

OHH! send me an email. [email protected]

Hi Amanda. Have you heard of/read "Feeding your Demons "by Tsultrim Alliione? Your video of mother has u breastfeeding/nurturing a Trump like man,and it made me think u might like the concept of nurturing your dem9ns instead of fighting them. It's a centuries old Tibetan Buddhist practice. I'm doing it every other day and it's heavy and illuminating.

i haven't, but i agree wholeheartedly with the concept. :)

Hi!!!!! I first saw you when you opened for Nine Inch Nails in Atlanta and you were playing with the Dresden Dolls. You were completely new to me, and your style really resonated with me. A long while later I reconnected with your music and you have been a huge inspiration and your music has gotten me through some tough times especially in this past year.

Anyways, now that I’m done fan girling here’s my question.

How do you navigate the criticism of using crowd funding services such as Kickstarter and Patreon? Your fans support you, and that is fucking amazing, but there will always be those that feel like you should foot the bill. How do you respond? How do you approach the people that come to you disagreeing with this method?

dude. i spent two years of my life doing a TED talk and writing a book about this, and that sort of felt like my score-settle and my last and final word on the matter. and it mostly worked. anyone who comes to me on the internet or elsewhere (but mostly on the internet) nowadays saying "you shameless ho, how dare you take all these poor peoples money??" i just look at them with compassion and walk away, or i link them to my TED talk and don't say much else. i think people get it at this point. we won our argument.

How does the intimacy of the way you interact with your fans - Patreon and so forth - affect your personal relationships?

("Personal relationships" is a complicated thing - yes, you have personal relationships with your fans and so forth. Something like "close friends and immediate (chosen or otherwise) family" is what I mean.)

wow. that's a good question. well....i'll tell you one interesting thing. part of what's happened with patreon is that my blog has become somewhat different. it used to be that my blog (to which i posted constantly) just lived on the internet. anyone could and would go look at it. in the days before twitter and facebook and links and general social media, people who liked me and my writing and were my friends and fans would just have it bookmarked and check it every once in a while. then came the facebook takeover and people expected that i would tweet or facebook when i had something to say or share (including a blog). and now that i've moved my blog over to patreon, which gets automatically emailed to all of my patrons, it's changed who is tuned in. i still tweet and FB links to my patreon blogs when i've got something that i really want to say, or that i've worked really hard on...for instance, in the last week, i've posted two large blogs: one about weird al and his influence on me, and one about feeling weird that i'm a parent and my priorities have shifted and i didn't make it to the march for our lives. both of those posts lived on patreon and i dutinfully went to facebook and twitter and posted the links. but you know the internet nowadays....it's a shitshow. everything gets lost in two seconds, and to make things WAY worse, facebook and twitter are now using algorithms - which means i have no guarantee of reaching my community with an important blog unless it goes "viral", which is so fucking unhealthy. i don't want to be thinking like buzzfeed when i write my blog. i don't want to be tempted to include cute pictures of my kid, or pics of neil gaiman's dick (wait did i say that) to ensure that people can find what i'm talking about. that system - the clickbait system - is a thought-killer and an art0killer as far as i'm concerned. patreon has fixed all that. my blogs simply get emailed to the people who want to hear from me, full stop. and so i've found, in the last few years, that more of my friends and family (ie my "personal relationship") have been reading my blog, and they now understand and connect with more of what is going on in my life. which is pretty fucking wonderful. it's also WEIRD. because i have friends who don't even know about or follow my patreon, and they're so out of the loop. it's like: i know in two seconds when i'm at a small dinner party with my pals who knows what. one person comes up to me and is like "hey amanda, oh my god i loved your judy blume song, it made me and my daughter both cry, and i can't believe it was snowig in new orleans, holy fuck, and by the way i'm so so sorry about your miscarraige, i've had 3 myself" and another friend is like "so what have you been up to for the past few months?" and that can be weird - but no weired than any of us who are dealing with the weirdness of social media and Who Knows What and How. perhaps the thing that makes it weirded for me is that my friends and family have to actually pay money to follow my blog. but i'm like: it's $12 a year. just do it. it's one of the things that i am hoping patreon can change in the future: i'd really like to be able to gift patronage to my inner circle so they don't need to pay to be part of the flow.

Hi Amanda! Been a fan since the Kickstarter (awesome album! so glad I kicked in) and been a Patron since you joined Patreon, also very glad. It has seemed like a big part of why your Patreon has worked so very well for you is that you already had an exceptionally close-knit relationship with your fans (for cryin' out loud, you've slept on their couches! LOL) Would an artist who is more remote from their fans (as you describe in another answer here) have as much success with Patreon, if they went to their fans and asked? (ex. a Taylor Swift or someone of that level of celebrity)

you picked a funny example, because taytay is one of the artists who actually chats and connects with her fans more than your average star. i always look at it this way, theoretically: if PJ harvey started a patreon, how would it do? if she just posted once to the internet, and sent out a press release to all the indie blogs, saying "HI AM PJ HARVEY AND I DONT EVER WANT TO TALK TO YOU BUT I AM GOING TO DELIVER ONE ALBUM EVERY FEW YEARS ON THIS SYSTEM SO I DO NOT HAVE TO USE A LABEL, PLEASE DONATE $50 AN ALBUM SO THAT I CAN DO THIS, THANKS LOVE PEEJ".... i think she would CRUSH IT. people don't support just because they want a chatty artist. they support because they love her work and want her to be able to do it. you know?

Has Patreon increased the amount of art that you put out?

absolutely. sometimes i actually worry that i'm putting out too much. one of my hallmarks is that i LOVE to work and i get constant ideas. i'm one of those constant-flow-weirdos who is more like beck, bjork, trent reznor, they might be giants, frank zappa...i could happily put out a record a month. it used to be that i would do a shit ton of weird projects and just release them on the internet for my weird fans and shrug my shoulders about the fact that i wouldn't get paid for my weird art, since digital content doesnt "pay". not only did i not get paid (since youtube videos and "hey i made a thing go download it on bandcamp and pay me if you wanna" don't really bring in much money)...it was also considered a liability in terms of my career and the music business itself. my publicists and managers and other middleman-type folks would constantly ask me: "amanda, can you just stop doing all this werid shit and focus on putting out an album next year??" and i'd be like "but i want to make all these weird things! i just wrote a funny satirical song yesterday andi want to put it out today!!!" and they'd be like "you can't do that. or, i mean, you can do that, but you will literally never make any money and you will confuse and annoy the press and your fans" and i'd be like "aghhhhh" and wind up feeling frustrated, like a round hole in the square peg of the music industry. now i can ACTUALLY get paid for being overproductive and weird. let me repeat that. i can actually get paid for being the artist i've always wanted to be. i think that's fucking revolutionary.

Is it possible for you to work as hard as you did on 'Theater is Evil' now that your Patreon is so successful? Does your bar get a little lower now that you know everything you create will find an audience and you will get paid, regardless? If not, how do you know how high your bar is if you get paid the same for everything you create?

THIS is exactly why i've decided to lock myself in the studio for a month this coming september and just hunker on a new record. making theatre is evil was a fuck-ton of work, it was recorded over a month-long period with almost no days off, working 10-12 hour days sometimes. i think there really is a value to shutting everything else out for a while and just Doing The Music without the noise and the internet.

Does the Patreon support really allow you freedom to do what YOU want or does it just change the pressure from a record label exec. to a mass of fans shouting at you? (I feel your fans might be more supportive than typical, so this might apply to other artists more)

i'm really lucky. my fans never shout at me. and i never yell at them. it's really nice when there's no yelling :)

Do you have any Patreon recommendations for readers to check out? (Besides your own, of course.)

yes! scroll up. i posted a list.

Theatre is Evil is one of my favorite records of all time. Always a bop, never fails. How does Kickstarter compare to Patreon?

kickstarter was great but it was exhausting because i promised so much, didn't budget well, and spent a lot of time dealing with the headaches of delivering things....i may well use kickstarter again, but i'd go in much more educated about the budgets. and the main thing that's better about patreon is that it's ongoing, sustainable, forever. with kickstarter, you do all this work and gathering and collecting of people, then you lose them and all that work. even kickstarter has become hip to this and has launched "drip" which is basically their version of patreon.

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Do you think that it’s a good idea to develop your Patreon page in conjunction with a new creative endeavor or should you wait until you have built up a larger following before launching? IN other words- is it detrimental to start your Patreon presence too soon?

it really depends on who and what you are and what you're trying to achieve. if you were an indie garage band starting out, i'd tell you: yeah. maybe work on your songs and your stage show and booking gigs before you start a patreon. once you have a little following, go for it, but don't start with absolutely nothing. it's like, should you open a bank account for your 8 year old and put $5 of your own money in it just so they have a bank account? i mean, probably not. wait until they're 12 (or whatever, i don't know how it works with these kids nowadays) and have more than $100 of their own birthday and allowance money, then walk them downtown and get them started. you gotta have something to put in there.

I want to start using Patreon regularly, but for visual artists there seems to be a formula that people stick by. Print mailers, livestreams, etc. I'm not sure I want to fit into the weekly livestream and tutorial formula most artists use, but I do want to use patreon. I also can't create regularly (put out a painting once a week for example.) How did you go about organizing your patreon knowing that your creation was sporadic? Do patrons ever get upset with you if you're silent for a period of time?

NO. they really don't. time is so different for so many artists. so is process. i'd just charge your patrons Per Thing instead of Per Month and don't commit to anything regular. just tell your patrons that you'll maybe do some things and you'll let them know when. that way you're never in the feeling-guilty hellhole.

Hi Amanda,

Big fan and Patreon backer, I’ve attended every TED show you’ve put on and have loved every single one. Can we get any hints on who you’re going to try and bring this year?

Also, have you considered doing a ninja show in Vancouver again? I know the TED show was originally a ninja show but it’s now become a legit concert/event. I would love to see a AFP ninja show around the city this year.

I MAY NINJA!!! and the line up is looking INCREDIBLE!!!! so far we've got the all-female band LADAMA, jaron lanier talking and playing his weird instruments, the legend william gibson, adam savage from mythbusters doing something weird, emily nagoski is gonna talk to us about SEX!!! it's gonna be a good one.

How many artists have you considered supporting on Patreon? Have you ever thought about capping the support you receive? What “things” do you look for to support others on Patreon? What is enough for Amanda?

WHOA! I'VE ACTUALLY NEVER COUNTED! let me go count......................i'm supporting 28 people/creators. mostly for $1, some for $5, a few for $10 or $25 if they're really good friends and i love their work. here are some of my faves: nafeez ahmed (global investigative journalism) https://www.patreon.com/nafeez, startalk radio (neil degrasse tyson's podcast!!!) https://www.patreon.com/startalkradio, nate maingard (south african troubadour and blogger and sweetie and songwriter) https://www.patreon.com/natemaingard, melissa madera (a super-honest blog project about abortion) https://www.patreon.com/THEABORTIONDIARY, graphtreon (a cool tool that runs programs to help patreon users to track their data, yes! someone took the time to do that, and it costs them money, so we all pitch in, fancy that!!) https://www.patreon.com/graphtreon, jherek bischoff (music, and one of my dearest freinds and collaborators, he's KILLING IT!!!) https://www.patreon.com/jherekbischoff, laurie penny (balls out activism feminism jouralist) https://www.patreon.com/lauriepenny, bryony kimmings (amazing british world-changing theater creator & fellow new mum) https://www.patreon.com/bryonykimmings, open source media (podcast about world events, culture) https://www.patreon.com/radioopensource....and a ton more but it would take too long.

I feel kind of ridiculous at this point because it's been explained multiples times but I still don't understand how I get everything even if I cap my pledge. If I am a $5 patron, and I cap my pledge at $5 month and you put out more than one thing in a month....how is it possible that I get the things? Or am I mistaken in the explanations I've gotten and I wouldn't get all the things? It just doesn't make sense to me

I am also a $5 patron who has capped my pledge at $5 each month. Because Amanda Palmer has chosen the option for patrons to donate per Thing rather than per month (which is the other option), that means patrons can donate per thing. But sometimes that is a problem for patrons who can't financially afford to have a bunch of money sucked out of their accounts if the artist has a super productive month and releases lots of things. So Patreon gives patrons who are paying by release rather than monthly the option to cap the amount per month that can be sucked out of your account.

You could be a $5 patron who caps the pledge at $10 per month. If the artist releases two things that month, then $10 comes out of your account. But if the artist releases 3 things, still only $10 comes out of your account. But if the artist releases one thing, only $5 comes out of your account that month.

The reason why you still get all the things is that you are a patron at the $5 tier. You don't get "only" the things that cover the amount of your patronage. You get all the things that a patron at that tier gets. Your are not being charged per thing. You are being charged according to your tier, which you have set a limit for.

I hope this makes a little more sense for you, and that you enjoy all the benefits that come with your tier. :-)

Thank you, I do think this helps! So when I hear "don't worry, you get all the things" what that really means is "don't worry you still get all the benefits of your tier" even if I cap my monthly pledge. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time getting to the point here! Maybe it's because I am jaded or something and don't understand how, if I'm paying per thing, it would be fair to get all the things even if I'm not paying for each of them. Sigh why is this so difficult for me? Lol

YES, and knowing that that confused you is good, i'll reword it in the future. :)

How long did it take before you knew Patreon was really going to change the game for you?

things actually turned a corner this past august....that was when i knew things were REALLY different. i had a few projects that weren't quite ready to put out, and i was despairing about how i was going to make ends meet if i didn't get a piece of content out in august. so i fucking held an art-gun to my head and wrote a song ("drowning in the sound") and put it out, just so i could make rent and pay my staff. and it was an incredible song. and i was like: holy shit. this is a thing.

I was enjoying following bits and pieces of your and Michael Pope's journey working with students at Wesleyan, as well as reading about your time there in The Art of Asking. Often times, it seems to be a popular phenomenon that artists dismiss their college years as some sort of chore, as almost a hindrance to their journey . . . As a first generation college student who busted my ass putting myself through school to get a B.A. and an M.A., I see things a little differently. I really appreciate your continued relationship with your alma mater. So, my question is: how does your higher education seep into the creative process - what has your degree contributed to your artistic voice? Thank you for this AMA, for being my first Patreon artist, and for everything you do!

that's a super-loaded question. i've written about it over on my blog...but i had a REALLY REALLY hard time at college. i was clinically depressed, on meds, felt creatively and personally stifled and dead inside, had a very hard time making friends and basically spent a lot of time studying alone, and zombie-walked and drank and smoked and paddled my way through college without much joy. when i got out, my heart and brain burst open and my life really started. i've had to fight a lot of temptation to regret those years; not just because it's a painful white-privilege move to sit there moaning "i should have gone to art school!!!" but because i really do look at those painful years as a painful incubation period, in which i was abosorbing a lot of pain and knowledge that fueled a fire under me so huge and so powerful that once i was out, i exploded with productivity. that may not have happened if i had been happy at school, and i'm happy now, so i try to be grateful for the experience. also...the further away i get from wesleyan, the more deeply i appreciate the little seeds and threads of influence that were planted in my art brain. if i hadn't gone to wesleyan, i may not have found out about laurie anderson. it was actually my experimental music 101 teacher who turned me on to her. and so forth...it's all good in the hood. i keep trying to go back to the actual physical place to find closure, but i find it very difficult. something about the grounds and buildings and architecture still creeps me the fuck out. i may keep trying, or i may just throw my hands up and say: i really tried.