By now it’s widely accepted that the live industry is fucked for 99% of us. Be it artists struggling to cope with growing costs, or fans with diminishing disposable income being met with ever increasing ticket prices at arena and stadium gigs, from a gouging music industry.
Bands and Music Biz Insiders are often keen to express their plight, but so often what they say falls short of being interesting because it doesn’t include any detail or tell us anything we don’t already broadly know as music fans. In conversations like these, artists and others within the music industry are happy to express general frustration and worry at the state of the business, but are too shy to be specific. Part of the issue is that a lot of bands of a certain size don’t know the full reality of their finances because they are shielded from these details by management and labels (who are very often making more money from the project than those that are creating it). But another significant factor is that artists often feel they need to walk a performative tightrope. On one side they’re scared of damaging their perceived authenticity by revealing that they’re earning any money at all, and on the other they don’t want to impact their status and opportunities within the industry by revealing how little money that is.
The purpose of this piece is not to explain the situation for all touring bands, though doubtless a lot of the sums involved will be relevant to others. It’s certainly not intended to elicit any sympathy. It’s only to give an honest and accurate outline of the exact situation for Los Campesinos!. We publish this in our continued spirit of attempting to be transparent and honest about the music industry, and perhaps to outline to our own fans why we are unable to tour more frequently and widely. But I do hope that our continued forthrightness on these issues encourages other bands to speak more openly too.
Once again, Los Campesinos! (one of my favorite bands, seriously, go listen to their most recent album All Hell right now) does the work few are comfortable enough to do, and showcase what it looks like financially for a mid-level touring band.
This time, they peel back the curtain behind their recent US tour which was successful by basically every metric. Sold out shows, big merch sales…
…but did that pay off in the final numbers?
I’m not going to ruin the article by telling you (I bet you can guess right!), but I can say that as someone who for 18 years planned out live events at venues like these (including Black Cat, which Super Art Fight ALSO played)…I related far too hard to these numbers.
Now imagine this with the current / impending economic mess we’ve found ourselves in.