Don't Keep the Price Secret

Talking frankly about money, gifts, and art with Amanda McLoughlin

My guest this month is Amanda McLoughlin, who has a gift for lifting up other entrepreneurs. She is the creator and CEO of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio based in New York City. Multitude produces original shows, publishes free resources for podcasters, and helps clients of all sizes create, market, and grow great shows. We’re discussing Ted Gioia’s essay from Image, “Gratuity: Who Gets Paid When Art is Free?”

Leah: Amanda, thank you so much for joining me this month. I’ve admired (and benefited from!) your advice to freelancers and podcasters. Podcasts (and substacks!) both fit what Gioia describes in his essay as an “anti-commodity.”

“a thing that isn’t exhausted when used or given away but gets larger and more valuable, like the fish and loaves in the gospel.”

I like writing this substack (and my second substack, Other Feminisms) because of the conversations they spark with commenters. It’s as close as I get to older, blogging culture—which was mostly free. But I do offer people the chance to give me money for spending my time curating this community (cue the button).

Gioia is pretty suspicious of “businesses that pretend to be gift exchanges,” singling out Facebook and Twitter as examples. How do you think your own podcasting fits into these gift-economy / market-economy divisions? It is possible to have a foot in both worlds in an honest way? 

Amanda: Firstly, thank you for having me! As a full-time podcaster who started her career in finance, this piece was a real pleasure to spend time with. 

The framing of art as an anti-commodity really resonated with me. We record podcasts with one or two other people, edit them alone, and upload them to a hosting platform that more likely than not has no apparatus for collecting audience feedback or fostering connection. That mp3 file of a conversation I already had, sitting on my hard drive, isn’t worth anything on its own—in fact, it costs me something in data storage!

But when that file shows up in people’s podcast apps, the value snowballs. Now our conversation has an audience: keeping people company during their day, providing encouragement and solidarity to someone who needs it, maybe even changing minds and hearts. And from a purely economic standpoint, the people I gifted this podcast episode to turn into members of my community who can send value back to me: interaction, recommending the show to others, joining our Patreon, buying our merch and tickets to our live shows. 

Put another way: creating a podcast is gift-economy. Building an audience is market-economy. They’re interdependent—decreasing quality or frequency of the podcast, for example, can shrink your audience—but distinct. I love that our podcasts are available to anyone with an internet connection, regardless of their economic resources. We don’t owe anything to or demand anything from one another; what we can do instead is give each other gifts according to our means. I publish podcast episodes according to a schedule I can accommodate comfortably, and the audience members that can contribute to our Patreon usually do. And best of all, those that have other things to offer, like encouragement or recommendations, give them when they can.

This relationship predicated on gifting is itself valuable in the market-economy. It’s what lets creators make money from their work, by renting out space on their beloved show to advertisers or creating extra content for audiences to opt into buying (bonus audio, live shows, behind-the-scenes documentation) or material goods (merch, recurring gift subscriptions). Without the gift, there’s no audience, and no value.

Leah: I’ve definitely tried to build my substacks around the gift economy. There’s no bonus to subscribing, no extra content. There’s just the option to help me afford the time to do this work, rather than the freelance writing I get paid for. When I join Patreons it’s usually for that same reason—I don’t want extra content, I want to play a role in sustaining what I value. (I’ll plug my favorite Patreon—artist Daniel Mitsui’s).

What do you think of Gioia’s claim about the anxiety of inauthenticity being particular to artists?

Most professions lack this kind of obsessive anxiety. Do dentists worry about inauthentic ways of filling cavities? Does a car mechanic who takes a better-paying job in a new shop fret about selling out?  

As a Christian, I’ve seen friends try to bring this authenticity to all work. My mother-in-law talks about trying to set the table for God—that is, to make all of our work a response to God that rejoices in the givenness of Creation. It’s not meant to trigger anxiety (though I know the sense of being watched can bring on scrupulosity for folks). It’s intended to be an invitation into joy—what we think of as unique to “creative” work is available to anyone when we work with attention and love.

How do you think about this tension of authenticity/selling out in your own work? Does it feel more acute in your explicitly artistic work than, say, when you’re taking out your trash?

Amanda: Unlike the blogging era you brought up in your introduction, which was also when I came up as an internet user, audiences in 2021 hold no illusions about who’s paying for the content they enjoy. YouTubers who sold merch or asked for PayPal donations in the late 00s were often branded sellouts by some audience members, but these days, it’s commonplace and even expected for creators of all kinds to ask for financial support from their audiences. 

I think that disillusionment is for the better! We know, in a post-ad economy internet, that someone has to foot the bill. How many times have you watched a favorite writer, podcaster, or creator lose their job during a market downturn or corporate pivot? Now we celebrate when those same people go independent, launch Patreons, or join subscription-based businesses like Defector or MinMax or post-bankruptcy College Humor. Creators are getting more comfortable discussing money and giving their audiences options to support them, led largely by freelance writers that have been sharing income data for years in an effort to educate others about the realities of making a living as a writer. 

This frankness about money helps me not feel this tension so acutely. I have to make shows I’m proud of, but also shows that will pay the bills. And when money isn’t a taboo topic or shameful secret, I can make decisions with both needs in mind. What that means for me is making episodes, week after week, that will make my audience and me happy. Luckily, that’s also a precondition for keeping my finances stable and my business growing. 

I also get great personal satisfaction from running my business well! I have described myself as a creative midwife, helping others make their artistic dreams a reality. Publishing a really great interview or launching a show I’m proud of feel just as satisfying and authentic as booking a new sponsor or launching a new membership program. 

I want to spend the time, resources, and skills I have helping other creators and small businesses make a living. That includes buying from local businesses, supporting creators whose work I love on Patreon, recommending other podcasts on my own, publishing resources for creators, tweeting about books I love... whatever the mode, that’s authenticity for me. 

Amanda and I will have one more installment of our conversation, and I’d love to incorporate some of your questions and comments. If you have independent artists to recommend, please do so! I’d be happy to include your recommendations in the month’s-end wrap up post.