Tuesday 25 August 2015

Cost Of Touring Surprisingly High For Musicians

By Cornelius Nunev


Next time one thinks seats to a concert tour show are too much, think about what the costs of touring are. Groups practically go broke taking their show on the highway, which is something that should give one pause next time they think about illegally installing songs.

Cost of touring makes rock and roll hard living

Most groups or artists do not have enough cash to pay for a tour. You would imagine a tour for a musician to have a lot of cash with a ton of partying and tour busses. Unfortunately, that is not the case for all.

It is quite interesting when you think about what The Dresden Dolls, a Boston group, made on their tour, according to a 2007 NPR interview. The two in the group, Brian Viglione and Amanda Palmer, only made $1,500 a month from the tour each. That is not a ton of cash for spending time in a record deal and touring. They even opened from some pretty large gigs.

That's $18,000 per year, supposing they tour every month of the year.

Granted, they also had earnings from CD sales -- royalties of $1 per CD sold -- and merchandise.

Gets better for a lot of people

Shane Blay, a member of the band Oh, Sleeper, a metalcore band that's existed for several years, posted costs of touring during a typical day on the road, on MetalInjection. Bands, he states, essentially make cash on tour from guaranties, a fee for playing which varies by venue, and selling merchandise like T-shirts and so forth. What he'd observed was that an average for a "mid-level" group like his was $300 per each category, an income of $600 per night.

The price of traveling is $10 per day for food and $150 in gas between gigs. The band also has to pay 15 percent to the manager and 10 percent to the booking agent out of the $300 venue cash. Of the merchandise cash, the manger gets $15 percent and the venue takes a 25 percent commission. On top of that, the band has to pay about $7.50 per t-shirt that they sell at $15, which already cuts that price in half. Total per night, the band ends up with $78.75 after all the expenditures come out.

Then there are additional emergency costs not calculated out. Without the emergency situations, each band member will get $13.12 a night to play, which is not a lot of cash.

Stars get extra cash

Large time individuals are the only ones who can make a large buck off of touring. This contains Pink Floyd's Roger Waters who did a tour in 2010, according to the Daily Mail. According to Music Television, he grossed about $90 million on the tour and paid out $60 million to pay for the lavish tour and production.

However, the struggling artist does struggle and likely pretty hard. NBC News, the news site formerly known as MSNBC, ran an article in 2008 about numerous bands that were an inch away from having to cancel tours and possibly quit their profession due to high gasoline prices.

It also hurts a band when music is downloaded for free, so make sure you always avoid doing that.




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