This is strange, I remember some (ok, many) years ago a truism was predatory contracts stripped musicans of income from their albums but tours made the money. Maybe even then it was merc? I dunno.

Ticket sales are substantially profitable for solo artists and DJs, marginal for small acoustic combos and revenue-neutral for most rock bands.

One man and a guitar have much lower overheads than a four-piece band with a trailerload of equipment - you can't take a drum kit as cabin baggage. The band have to sell four times as many tickets to make the same revenue per person.

Even if a band can draw a bigger crowd and sell more tickets, the economics are still stacked against them. Small venues generally provide a house PA system and lighting rig, but larger venues don't. Equipment hire or a touring road crew take a huge bite out of ticket sales. Bigger venues also offer less favourable terms to artists, because they're far more likely to have a local monopoly.

I think this is a hugely overlooked factor in the decline of rock music. Young musicians are smart enough to realise that drummers and bass players need to be paid, but drum machines and looper pedals don't.

Yup especially with big concerts in Australia like soundwave/big day out. I once booked a show and none of the 4 bands I booked wanted to bring a drum kit. Okay, I'll hire one I thought (mind you I don't have a car...)

I sold $330 worth of tickets (small sunday night show), paid the soundperson $160 ($40 an hour), $50 for poster design and printing and then $100 to hire a set of drums... works out that each band ends up with $5???

Depends on the size of the band. That might be true for the big bands playing to thousands. Also — touring around Australia is expensive.

And it's prohibitively expensive if they decide to try playing outside of Australia. Just ask Ne Obliviscaris, who can only do it because they started a Patreon and their fans pitch in extra.

Tours makes money by selling merch.

Which is why my closet is absolutely packed full of (metal) band t-shirts.

I want to support the artists, so i usually get one if I liked the show, but sometimes I wish they would get more creative with merch options. I know there's an upfront cost and focusing on t-shirts is a pretty safe option. But I just love it when they get creative with patches, stickers, hip flasks, rings, belt buckles, skulls, necklaces, booty shorts, all kinds of stuff.

It may be a little bit odd, since I usually don't like obvious branding and advertising, but doing something different will absolutely make me consider buying more merch.

Why don't you just give the band the money directly instead of buying something?

I sometimes do, if they have a Patreon or GoFundMe or something.

But it feels sort of condescending to just hand them money at a show.

Yup a lot of them don't like it but anyone worth your time is happy for you to buy em a beer!

That's a better idea!

Though I think a lot of places around here have a beer allowance for performers. I'll give it a go, though :-)

Yeah they do here too but its never enough!

I use Apple Music, mainly because I'm tied into the Apple ecosystem. But I assumed at least some money got to the bands. Is it really insignificant?

With apple mucic 100% of the money goes to the label. The label then has a contract with the artist for how much online sales get sent their way. This contract may be very complicated so it isn’t necessarily “I pay $1, artist gets $.20”. Artists and labels will have different agreements with each streaming service for how many plays equal one “download”, from ~10 to ~1000.

It's the same problem on all the streaming services. The deals are done with the labels, so even if the payment for each playback is reasonable, the label takes a huge cut.