10 Musicians Who Encouraged You To Steal Music

6. Amanda Palmer's Email

In this March 27, 2014 photo, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails performs at the Vive Latino music festival in Mexico City, Mexico. Reznor says he feels a fresh new start for Nine Inch Nails after the bands latest album and world tour. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blac
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Amanda Palmer - who achieved much of her fame performing with the Dresden Dolls - has long been an advocate for file sharing and free music downloads. She has spoken multiple times about the issue, once stating:

"The fact that a couple of hundred thousand of people in America are listening to my record but only, like, whatever, about 25,000 have actually gone into a store and bought it, that's awesome."

That may seem strange at first glance, given that this would mean 175,000 people who haven't paid for the record. However, there is a method behind the apparent madness.

In an open email that ended up being reblogged, Palmer highlighted just how little she made from the record company that supposedly wants to end piracy to protect artists. With a little ingenuity she managed to make more in one night from Twitter and her own merchandise than she had made from her record label for sales of her 2008 album 'Who Killed Amanda Palmer', despite the album hitting 77 in the US Billboard 200.

Contributor

Lee Price is a writer for 411mania.com and Starburst Magazine, which is published in the UK. He is currently working as a freelance writer. He hopes to one day fund his addiction to video games by writing about video games, and he maintains a sporadically updated blog at leesrandombulls*it.wordpress.com