Amanda Palmer, singer, songwriter, and pianist, raised over 1.1 million dollars via Kickstarter for her arts campaign. The arts campaign will fund her new album, Theatre is Evil, as well as her tour and an art book that she will put together.

photo by Raymond Flotat

The campaign rapped up yesterday. She raised a total of $1,192, 793 from her Kickstarter campaign. She is the highest funded music project in the site’s history and the seventh Kickstarter to break one million dollars. She calls her Kickstarter campaign “the future of music”. She turned to Kickstarter when she broke away from her record label in 2010 in order to have more freedom and more control over her music. She claims that the biggest accomplishment of her project is to give proof to other musicians that Kickstart can be used as a platform to fund music projects instead of music labels.

Her new album, Theatre is Evil, is collaboration between her and The Grand Theft Orchestra. They worked on the album for 4 years, and now they finally have the money to produce it in a studio professionally and mass distribute it all over the world.

Palmer shares in an interview with writers from pastemagazine.com her thoughts about writing her new album:

I think I’ve gotten to the point in my career that I can do what I want without being afraid. As crazy and backwards as it sounds, I think I was afraid for a long time to allow myself to write the songs that came into my head—I edited a lot, especially if I thought things were too standard, too normal, too poppy. Then I got to a point where I’d get songs in my head and I’d say, “Well, it’s poppy, but it’s DAMN good …” and I’d allow myself that indulgence. When I was younger I was afraid to do that, I was always going in a sabotaging my simpler songs, and complicating everything on purpose. Now I don’t. And the band I’ve put together is an absolute miracle. We had a blast in the studio and we’re going to have a blast on tour. I have a band of art soul brothers.