AMANDA PALMER learned everything she needed to know to raise nearly $1.2m for her latest album as a street performer. Ms Palmer says that six years of busking, often as a living statue called "The Eight-Foot Bride", led her to realise that people willing to toss money in a hat do so according to their means and interest rather than in response to a specific reward. With that in mind, she structured a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter to recoup the production costs of the album, recorded in Melbourne earlier this year, and an associated tour, "Theatre Is Evil" by "Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra". She blazed past her $100,000 goal, and achieved her final total on May 31st with nearly 25,000 individuals backing the project. Ms Palmer hosted a street bacchanal countdown in Brooklyn that evening as the project hit its close. (Readers of a delicate nature should be warned that Ms Palmer's Kickstarter page features some images of exuberant nudity.) Ms Palmer's project is not the first among musicians. Nor is it unique. But it is the largest by far to date. Most contributors gave $125 or less. Ms Palmer offered a download of the album for anything above $1, a CD for those who sent $25 or more and a vinyl for anyone who splurged $50. More generous donors could attend intimate art-gallery acoustic events connected with artwork created by Ms Palmer and many others for an associated art book. Then there were 34 pledges of $5,000 each, enough to secure a private house party with her in the next 18 months. Some of those she will fulfill while on tour; others will require special trips. That carries costs, but lets her expand her fan base. Many of the house parties were self-organised by groups of as many as 50 people who each kicked in to a kitty.

Her effort—another in a series of million-dollar projects facilitated by Kickstarter since the start of the year—took years to plan. She experimented with self-releasing three boutique efforts first, and then she and her husband, the genre-bending novelist and comics writer Neil Gaiman with 1.7m Twitter followers, floated a more modest Kickstarter outing last October. Ms Palmer then met with Kickstarter to dissect that project and learn from the most successful efforts (like an electronic-paper watch, the Pebble, which passed $10m).

Ms Palmer is the latest musician to turn to devotees directly, disintermediating media gatekeepers. Ms Palmer and Brian Viglione started their group, The Dresden Dolls, a Weimar-styled "punk cabaret" act, in 2000 and signed with a subsidiary of Warner Music Group in 2004. Yet despite releasing a successful album and several singles, Ms Palmer felt constrained. When she approached her label with new ideas, drawing from a background in performance and art, they were slapped down. "I used to be punished for my enthusiasm," she recalls.

No longer. For the Brooklyn countdown she had her permanent staff of twelve find 60 telephone books and hire another dozen people to write the names of backers on the pages. These were torn out and the names held against the glass of a large, aquarium-like contraption during the event, which was streamed live over the internet, culminating with Ms Palmer nude beneath a dress of balloons that were popped by revellers as the deadline struck.

She has always pursued a close connection with her audience, staying after every show to sign autographs and chat. She blogs, tweets to over 500,000 followers, reads forum posts and responds to e-mail. Some wondered whether Ms Palmer really needed so much money to finance her endeavour. She responded with a salty but detailed explanation of where the dollars go in music production, and in Kickstarter projects. Success does not come cheap.