How a lot do venues take from artist merch gross sales? Jeff Rosenstock breaks it down per venue on his upcoming tour, offering some eye-opening information on the cuts taken by AEG and Stay Nation.
Artists have been more and more vocal concerning the cuts of their merch gross sales that many venues take, whereas these venues insist that’s the price of utilizing their area. However when main entities like AEG and Stay Nation purchase extra of these venues, it turns into more and more troublesome for “small-time” artists to afford to tour. Now we lastly have some information on simply how a lot of a reduce a few of these venues are taking as a rule of thumb.
Apropos of Labor Day, musician Jeff Rosenstock posted a breakdown of the merch cuts being taken by some venues on his upcoming North American tour, explaining why he’ll need to cost extra on some dates and difficult the companies on the helm to do higher.
“Listed below are the merch cuts being taken by the venues on this upcoming tour. That is going to trigger us to promote our merch for greater costs than we’d prefer to at sure venues. We predict that sucks,” Rosenstock writes.
Rosenstock’s information exhibits among the worst offenders on his tour embrace DC’s 9:30 Membership, New York Metropolis’s Terminal 5, Boston’s Roadrunner, Atlanta’s The Masquerade, and Toronto’s Danforth Music Corridor — all with a minimal 20% reduce on merch like clothes, whereas some take a further quantity or tax on non-clothing objects like bodily albums.
Particularly, Rosenstock calls out the “large firms” like AEG and Stay Nation, who get the lion’s share of these cuts.
“In the event you work in a artistic discipline, you’re purported to really feel fortunate and blissful sufficient to be there to get raked over the coals by millionaires and billionaires who offers you as small a slice of the pie as they’ll to perpetually present development in earnings,” writes Rosenstock. “It’s by no means these individuals left holding the bag. It’s both a musician (…) or followers who tackle the burden.”
He concludes his publish by expressing that whereas he would love to have the ability to say that the band received’t be taking part in venues that take merch cuts, that isn’t possible, as through the pandemic, AEG and Stay Nation purchased “so lots of the varieties of venues” Rosenstock and his band play.
“We’ll by no means cease attempting to maintain the costs low for everybody on the market,” he assures followers, “and we’re gonna do no matter we will do to keep away from it sooner or later.”
In response, musician and producer Steve Albini chimed in on Twitter, claiming that it’s a little-known incontrovertible fact that merch cuts are “100% negotiable.”
“My bands over 40+ years have by no means, not as soon as, ever paid (merch cuts),” says Albini. “When brokers make offers, they don’t care about ticket surcharges, merch reduce, or different leaks; they don’t have an effect on their reduce. The band has to insist.”
Different musicians expressed frustration with the touring trade and that “extra individuals must know that venues/promoters do that.”
“A majority of the cash we earn from touring is from merch, which we then need to pay again to a variety of venues,” writes emo band Candy Capsule. “The music trade is damaged.”
Jeff Rosenstock’s tour follows the discharge of his new album, “HELLMODE,” and kicked off on September 6 in Washington, DC, persevering with by way of December.