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Cost Of Touring Surprisingly High For Musicians

By Cornelius Nunev


Being a musician expertly sounds like a pretty sweet idea for many people. Concerts, the road and some think, a boatload of cash. However, it isn't much of a living, even for bands that get a lot of interest, as the cost of touring is over the top.

Touring really expensive

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 ton of cash with a lot of partying and tour busses. Unfortunately, that is not the case for all.

For instance, a 2007 NPR interview with The Dresden Dolls, a Boston duo that has been playing their trade for several years, has some data that's quite revealing. The band had a record deal, toured all over the world, even opening for Nine Inch Nails on one tour. Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione, the two people in the group, were both making $1,500 a month from touring.

Assuming they tour regularly, they will make $18,000 a year.

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

Slowly gets better

Shane Blay, a member of the band Oh, Sleeper, a metalcore band that's been around for a number of years, posted prices of touring during a typical day on the road, on MetalInjection. Groups, he claims, basically make money on tour from guaranties, a fee for playing which varies by location, and selling merchandise like T-shirts and so forth. What he'd noticed was that an average for a "mid-level" group like his was $300 per each category, an income of $600 per night.

Of the $300, the band had to pay to print the shirts, which costs $7.50 per shirt that they sell at $15. The band's manager gets a 15 percent cut while the location charges about 25 percent. That means of the $300 in merchandise sales, the band really gets $63.75. Of the $300 for playing at the venue, the band gets $225 before travel expenditures since the band manager gets 15 percent and the booking agent gets 10 percent. After all the travel expense, it is really only $78.75 total per night since it costs about $10 a day for food and $150 for gas between gigs.

The band ends up getting $13.12 a night when divided six ways, which does not consist of extra emergency costs.

Stars get additional cash

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

NBC News explained that most groups were close to having to get rid of tours and quit due to gas costs in 2008. Most young groups struggle more than you would know.

And just in the event one might be wondering, yes, it DOES hurt the band when a person downloads music for free.



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