Today, there have never been more opportunities for the independent artist–writer, musician, video creator–to perform their craft and get paid for their efforts by their fans.
But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.
When Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, the duo forming the indie band Pomplamoose, went on a 28-day tour, playing 24 shows in 23 cities across the US, they were, and were not, successful. They sold 1129 tickets in San Francisco at the Fillmore, among other achievements, but ended up losing $11,819 in the tour.
Here is Jack’s accounting of how their tour and financial loss went down: “Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits”.
As with most things posted on the Internet though, I caution you against reading the comments–Jack’s willingness to provide a useful case study of the effort involved and risk artists take in trying to make their art work unleashed a torrent of idiocy, especially against the idea of actually thinking of making art as a business.
Amanda Palmer, indie musician and author of The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help, weighed in with this Guardian article in support: “Art is a business – and, yes, artists have to make difficult, honest business decisions”.