Her latest crowdfunding project which aims to pay for a new studio album, an art book and a tour isn’t even over yet but it’s already surpassed the $100,000 target and is well over $700,000 at time of writing with a full 13 days to go. Over 9,000 people have put down money to help fund what Palmer has dubbed The Grand Theft Kickstarter Project. The incentives for funding include regular once-off vinyl mail packages, local art gallery shows in six international cities and an initiative known as The Loanspark Collective, where a fan can offer Palmer an interest-free loan that will be paid back after the album along private charity performances or art.

It’s easy to see why Palmer has had success. She has over 550,000 Twitter followers and has formed an affable relationship with them. She communicates with fans on a one to one level, no ego, just human connections being made every day. Much like Lady Gaga. As the most followed Twitter user on the planet (23 million plus), Gaga isn’t letting her major label do all the work. Along with her manager Troy Carter she has developed a social community platform called Backplane which powers her community site Littlemonsters.com which she will use to sell direct to fans and roll out to other artist communities in future.

Keepaway
This buzzing Brooklyn band with a keen sense for melody and atmospherics have been leaving a trail of MP3s on blogs recently, most commonly the early standout track Yellow Wings.
http://www.myspace.com/keepaway

Wild Nothing
’80s lo-fi guitar pop from Virginian Jack Tatum who released what is a perfect soundtrack to sunshine earlier this year with his album Gemini. Start with the glorious fuzzy pop of Chinatown.
http://www.myspace.com/wildnothing

Mark Ronson & the Business Intl.
The super-producer trades his trademark soul sound in for keyboards on the first proper single Bang Bang Bang from his upcoming album which features vocals from Q-Tip and MNDR.
http://bit.ly/ronson2

This hasn’t stopped Twitter becoming the first port of call for many looking to announce or denounce. Last week, NME Editor Conor McNicolas resigned from his position on the micro-blogging service telling his “followers” that he is moving to become editor at Top Gear magazine while in the aftermath to a alleged assault between celebrity blogger Perez Hilton and Will.I.Am of Black Eyed Peas, both took to Twitter and videoblogs to fight their corner. Perez tweeted that he was attacked by Will.I.Am and his security guards – “I am bleeding. I need to file a police report.” He had time to tweet but not ring the police?

Will.I.Am in response, was quick to point fingers at Perez as the source of the altercation for calling him “a faggot”. Yawn. The general consensus is that Perez over-reacted as he did later in the week when he posted a distasteful rumour that Michael Jackson was looking for publicity and not actually dying. As as result, hundreds of Twitter users have been calling for a boycott of the blogger.

On the positive side of Twitter take the example of Amanda Palmer. The Dresden Dolls frontwoman has been an active user of the service using it to directly engage with fans and managed to turn her addiction into revenue. After announcing a “LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS” party to her 30,000 followers recently, Palmer had managed to mobilise a virtual flash mob within minutes. After the virtual group came up with a list of things that the government should do for people who hang out on their computers on a Friday night (free government-issued sweatpants and pizza), Palmer designed a t-shirt with the slogan “Don’t Stand Up For What’s Right, Stay In For What’s Wrong”. By the end of the night, she had grossed $11,000 in t-shirt sales via a hastily-put together Paypal page. A few days later, she hosted a webcast auction and a twitter-only donation gig which made her a further $8,000 in total. As Palmer put it – her total made from her major label deal – $0, total made from Twitter – €19,000.