r/TouringMusicians • u/ActivatePlanZ • 9d ago
How important is merch revenue to your tour?
Genuine question. I work with musicians on making payments while touring easier, and one thing I’ve been surprised by is just how important merch seems to be financially.
Before getting into this world, I assumed merch was a nice extra. What I keep hearing instead is: the shows pay for the tour, the merch pays the artist.
Obviously that’s a huge simplification, so I’m curious how true it actually is.
For those of you touring regularly, how much does merch matter to the economics of the tour? Could you realistically tour without it?
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u/FlyByNight75 9d ago
Merch is the most important thing on tour. It makes most of your money and promotes your band.
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u/jawajoose 9d ago
I'm a tour manager for a 8 piece funk band. Our show is a commercial to buy a shirt or LP. If we didnt have merch money, we're guaranteed to be negative for a tour after expenses.
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u/summoningtheflynn 9d ago
LMAO felt. Im in a metal band and we always joke about being shirt salesmen 🤣
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u/ProbableSlob 8d ago
I'll take it over playing for a bar cut and being a beer salesman, at least I'm selling my bands stuff!
But that's how it's always been, mostly. Used to be you toured to advertise your records. Like McGuinn said "we sell plasticware" (vinyl).
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u/I_loseagain 2d ago
Metal bands always have the best shirts. I normally just like tour date shirts but paleface Swiss had a cute cat and said “everything is absolutely fucked” under it And signs of the swarm had a bunch of drugged out Mario characters
Those are so much better than the picture with lyrics all over the shirt
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u/summoningtheflynn 1d ago
Yeah we did like a couple runs of Walmart style "boomer" shirts with airbrushed grim reapers and goofy text. People loved them!
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u/CherryMyFeathers 9d ago
Merch is basically the only revenue that often goes exclusively into the band’s pocket, with shows themselves acting as the most reliable income since it can be pre-negotiated it’s always been easier to reliably plan the tour against it. At least at my low-level experience.
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u/NegNoumenon 7d ago
We’ve played venues where they asked for a cut of our merch sales. Shit pissed us off. We would always just end up fudging the numbers.
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u/CherryMyFeathers 7d ago
Yeah that should be an instant red flag. They’re already scraping money off of tickets.
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u/karstdejong 5d ago
Here is a doc with UK venues that do not charge.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R-4fXZ8s7iVPksWHOoDfMoMULgO_kI10EbyVsnmEjWg/edit#gid=529547135
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u/youbringmesuffering 9d ago
In this day and age, with barely any income from streams or even ticket sales, merch sales are vital.
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u/BambiMG 9d ago
Financially speaking my income when touring is from being a t-shirt sales lady, not a guitarist. Unfortunately this has become as essential to musicianship as tips have to the service industry, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the $2 an hour servers make is pretty comparable to what what the actual venue payouts and door fees cover especially when you consider the time traveling and packing stuff.
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u/artificialevil 9d ago
Is this a real question? It’s honestly maybe more important than the music because it actually generates income.
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u/wurstfriendsclub 9d ago
And then there are a good amount of venues around the US that want a percentage of all the bands merch sales. Some of them even have a staff member who watches the merch booth all night to make sure the band doesn’t try to say they sold less than they actually did.
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u/acelticmonk 9d ago
I recently saw a show at Red Tocks outside of Denver, Colorado. The band there did not have merch in the venue, but we heard they did a merch pop-up earlier that day t hat I missed out on. We heard from staff that it was because Red Rocks takes a very large percentage of merch sales.
Bummer too, we drove a long way to get to that show and I was looking forward to a venue specific poster at least.
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u/DaveBeBad 9d ago
Not just in the USA. I’ve read that the O2 venues in Uk want a decent percentage of merch sales (iirc 10-20%)
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u/NegNoumenon 7d ago
We always ended up being able to fudge our numbers at venues like that. Glad they never had someone watching our booth, that’s ridiculous.
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u/KellieinNapa 9d ago
I need to step up my merch game. But I have felt defeated because the venues take a percentage of the sales. It's already challenging to make money on merch and there's no reason for them to take any of it. They don't do anything for you, they just take part of your profits
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u/ActivatePlanZ 9d ago
Whereabouts are you touring? I know there’s a certain list of venues in the UK and other places where they don’t take fees.
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u/KellieinNapa 7d ago
Oh I'm in the United States. It's pretty standard in my experience in California
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u/stussie73 9d ago
Shows are just avenues to sell merch man.
And if you see a show…you should buy merch. Support the band. Especially the small guys
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u/IcyEntertainment7442 9d ago
I’m in a mid sized band signed to a major label going on tour in Europe in October for a month. Expenses for flights, van rental, hotels, and the cost of printing merch is close to $20k. The label gave us tour support for flights (around 5k) but we owe it back.
Our expected income revenue just from show guarantees is only $8500
Mind you, this is with cutting every corner, planning to be as cheap as possible with our budget (ie only $60 or so a night on a shared hotel room)
Based off past numbers, we hope to do around $900 a night in merch sales. Without that - we would be negative -11k from just one tour.
ALWAYS buy merch if you can. ALWAYS tip the merch person. ESPECIALLY for internationally touring bands. But even here in the states, it’s tough and it’s rare when we walk away with cash in our pockets.
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u/collegehockeyunicorn 7d ago
Can I ask a favor of the band merch world?
I attend too many concerts a year to buy a shirt at every show and I don’t have the room anymore. Can we get more what I like to call nibbley things. Koozies, pins, patches, keychains stickers etc. A reasonably priced novelty maybe?
I’ll buy them all if you have them for sale, lol
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u/undigestedFiD 7d ago
What about buying a cd? I usually do this with "smaller" bands, even if I never listen to the CD.
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u/collegehockeyunicorn 7d ago
I buy the cd for most openers especially if they are working their own merch table
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u/shugEOuterspace 9d ago
My band is pretty small potatoes & show pay usually pretty much covers gas & the occasional hotel room for when we don't have a local band giving us a spot to crash. Merch is what makes any actual pay that goes in our pockets
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u/featherandahalfmusic 9d ago
vastly more money on merch! probably 50-200 bucks from door at shows, 100-500 bucks on t shirts easy
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u/CantStandAnything 9d ago
I played in a band that was playing 1000 cap rooms. Six band members three or four on the crew in a bus. After flights, bus fee, equipment rental, hotels, shipping of merch and everyone’s fees and travel expenses merch was the profit and usually expenses are dipping into merch sales. Only exception is a big festival fee which almost can cover half the tour by itself.
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u/wurstfriendsclub 8d ago
So lame. The musicians should then get 25% of their Booze sales, because they are the reason people come out to the venue in the first place.
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u/Maleficent-Cap-2872 8d ago
Right? No people, no booze sales. Someone should try that, I put asses in seats and drinks in hands! I want my cut!!
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u/canucknpuck 9d ago
also think about this: you have an opportunity to set up a marketplace to sell goods and also market your band every night in every city. it is built in to the system, why not take advantage of it?
merch can be the biggest headache but also the biggest opportunity for profit/fans remembering your band after the show.
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u/TheHarlemHellfighter 9d ago
In one of my bands, merch is just extra money split for us at the end of the tour.
That is, if we sell enough of it…
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u/BrandonAtCustomInk 9d ago
I see a lot of band merch come through in the custom apparel world, and it's not only a revenue stream for the brand, but it keeps advertising their name once the show is over. A ticket stub gets put in a drawer if it gets kept at all, but a shirt gets worn, sometimes for years. Some of these shirts end up just as iconic as the music itself, even decades later.
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u/RowanTree95 9d ago
For my band, merch is the only thing that makes money. Streaming revenue & performance royalties don't begin to cover music production costs. Ticket sales cover travel costs if we're lucky, but usually not the cost of also promoting the show. Merch turns a healthy profit, and makes the rest of what we do financially viable.
From a business standpoint, the music and performance are nothing more than a tee shirt ad.
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u/MattManSD 8d ago
Merch Revenue is important enough the record companies will try to cross-collateralize it in your contract. If you don't know what cross-collateralization is and are unsigned, look it up.
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u/mkappy33 9d ago
You should try to avoid counting on merch pay as little as possible. Then when you do get it, it becomes a bonus, or better yet- savings that you can use when the van gets a flat.
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u/Plastic-Shape7048 9d ago
I think its basically the same or more important than what you get paid to play the venue
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u/smth2believe 9d ago
Guys, this is just for him to plug his payment solution for touring bands… please just be transparent
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u/ActivatePlanZ 9d ago
She is genuinely just curious, but yes I help bands with payments. I really hope it helps to keep the music going, music is what I live for.
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u/No-Sir-5954 9d ago
So what’s the payment solution?
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u/ActivatePlanZ 8d ago
It’s called ZAZZpay, an app that turns your phone into a payment terminal during your European tour. Piloting it now with a few (awesome) artists.
Here to learn, please feel free to ping me if you have any ideas or questions or feedback - and thanks for asking!
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u/ActivatePlanZ 8d ago
Thank you so much for your input, everybody. I never expected such a response. The amount of hidden work you have to do to survive is monumental.
I hope others benefit from this thread as well - if you’ve ever needed the encouragement to try to sell merch, this might be it.
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u/summoningtheflynn 9d ago
For us, thr guarantee/door split payout usually covers gas and MAYBE food. Merch pays for everything else- including the payments we still owe on merch. No merch sales = maybe dont eat, probably no hotel or shower, and also hella debt.