And when one is building this kind of a music server, please support your favourite artists!
Ideally, if they have a Bandcamp or something similar, where you can directly buy their tracks and albums from them, do that. Usually this means that you can get access to high-quality FLACs and whatnot, but it will also mean that more money will go directly to the artists (usually money going to the record label and whatnot is unavoidable even with this, but there will still be fewer people in the middle).
And well, if that's not a thing, then at least try to buy the tracks from somewhere, so that they at least see some return on their efforts. Maybe physical CDs and the like. The point is just to be able to support your favourite artists!
Your suggestions are fine, but if you really want to support your favorite musicians, you should attend their concerts and buy merchandise there. They personally get far more profit from ticket sales and merch sales than from selling music directly. And of course, the concert experience is something way beyond just listening to a track from Bandcamp or a CD.
Uhm, is that actually true? How is the $10 I spend on a digital album on Bandcamp not 90%+ profit for the band? Sure, maybe the overpriced T-shirt has a bit more profit as a raw number, but realistically, I'm going to buy a band's merch the one time I see them every 3-5 years (assuming they stay together and tour for that long). If they release music more frequently, I would suspect buying a digital album is more sustainable long term.
I think this is also why you see bands like Weezer releasing more niche EPs/LPs. Heck, look at jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews who release every single live show online as a separate album for fans to also buy to relive the experience they had at a particular show. The hardcore fans will buy the music, so it's in the band's best interest to "keep shipping" and record as much as possible.
This is a myth unfortunately. Unless you are a really big name artist - or a mod-level or above artist doing a show in your home town - the economics of live and touring for most musicians mean they are more likely to lose money than make money.
Imagine a band with four or five members doing a 20 date tour in 1000 cap venues where tickets are $40 each. Maths looks good, right? $40,000 a night! $800k for the tour, and then you can sell a bunch of merch an easily make $1 million. Great!
No.
A touring band might sell out every night of the tour but more likely it’s going to be 70-80% occupancy. So let’s call it 75%. Suddenly that $800k drops to $600k.
But then you need to pay the venue/promoter a big chunk of that. Depending on what the promoter is providing that could be as much as 40-50%
Let’s go with a conservative 40%.
You’re down to $360k now.
But you’ve still got to pay all the costs of the tour.
A 20 date tour probably means 25 days on the road, at least.
A tour bus that could fit 4 or 5 people plus tour manager (yes, you need one) and a tech/roadie/sound engineer to get the set up right in each venue (let’s say you’ve got one person who can do all of this) is going to cost $1500 a day for the vehicle. Add in mileage, which is often about $5+ per mile. So that 20 date tour with 25 days on the road, and 4000 miles (coast to coast) will cost you maybe $57.5k for the tour bus and driver and mileage. (Gas, insurance etc are covered by the per mile charges that tour bus operators charge). You’re going to need to park the tour bus during the day. That’s maybe $200 a day. More in some cities.
You’re down to $300k now.
But wait - no one has been paid yet!
The tour manager will easily cost $450 per day or more - and there will be days require for planning (“advancing”) the tour and wrap up days. So the 25 date tour might need 5 days advancing and two days post-tour admin. That’s $14400, so call it $15k.
Your technician will cost about the same. Maybe less, but you want someone who can do three things, so let’s call your manager plus tech/sound engineer $30k.
We are down to $240k now.
At this point it’s worth mentioning that the artist’s manager and billing agent commission on the “gross” - the entire amount the artist gets before costs - the $360k fee from tickets after the promoter’s share. Those commissions are typically 20% to manager and 15% to agent. So we need to deduct another $126k.
That gives $114k left.
None of the band members have been paid yet.
But, also, they need a support act for each show. If each support act gets $500 then that’s another $10k gone. $104k left.
Everyone needs a per diem! 7 people on the road, plus driver. They all need coffees, water, laundry, dry cleaning, gym passes, cough medicine, whatever, plus a “buy-out” for meals. So let’s make sure everyone has $60 a day for the buy-out and another $20 for incidentals. $16k. $88k left.
The tour - and all the gear - hasn’t been insured yet, and the band and crew don’t have insurance for medical emergencies while touring. Let’s say that’s going to cost another $3k total.
And then everyone needs flights and cabs at the end of the tour to get home. They’ll have excess luggage and instruments. So let’s call that $1500 each. Another $10k.
That’s means there’s $75k left.
The band needs to rehearse and build their live show. So that’s probably a couple of weeks rehearsal, planning, etc. So that’s a 40 day commitment.
Five people, 40 days, $75k. Each band member walks away with $15k - or $375 a day.
But how often are you going be doing a tour of that scale? Once a year probably. And touring is gruelling.
If you’re playing bigger venues with higher ticket prices there is more money - but costs can also scale.
To make $75k from bandcamp you need to sell maybe 10,000 $10 albums.
To make $75k from streaming you’d need maybe 18-20 million streams.
And you can do that without the crippling costs of touring.
Sure, if you’re on a label you’re going to get a lot less.
But touring isn’t a magic money tree, and it’s hard work.
Even the 75K is super optimistic. If you are touring you want to bring your own equipment, much easier to run a show that is roughly the same in multiple places then relying on the house rig in multiple venues. Once you factor in bringing your own gear (Almost definitely rented, sound is expensive, lighting even more so), you now need to factor in maintenance of the equipment and rigging.
Also the assumption you can get one guy to do lighting and sound is pretty unrealistic unless your show consists of a static wash throughout the entire show. Theatrical shows you can get away with it, but that's usually because the man hours are heavily front loaded into pre-production, but with live music you will need a dedicated LX Tech and a dedicated Sound Engineer.
I moonlight as a lighting technician during the evenings and weekends, mainly working in handful small local venues, there's me running lighting and the sound engineer doing his thing. The bands playing are easily spending £300 a night just on 2 people (And this is a small venue probably about 200 cap in the main hall), youd be spending much more for a touring crew
I was deliberately being quite broad brush otherwise you have to go down too many rabbit holes. But I agree absolutely with what you are saying. Some of these costs are examples form actual touring budgets and others are slightly hand-wavy.
Quite likely an artist of this scale would not even break even touring and would hope (ha!) to make up the difference on merch. But of course merchandise is not pure profit, you have to lug it around on the road, and it’s a sunk cost that requires upfront investment.
But my main point was to counter the fallacy that artists make loads of money from touring. People with no experience of the music industry don’t understand the promoter/artist split or the agent and magnet commissions. They realise that probably the artist isn’t getting 100% of the ticket sales but they don’t realise that their share - before their costs - might only be 35-40%.
2. The band sold a total of $4k in tickets. If tickets were $10 then that’s 400 tickets. So roughly 10 people per show.
3. They apparently own their own van.
4. They slept on people’s floors and couches.
5. They apparently didn’t eat or drink.
6. They didn’t insure the tour or their gear.
7. There was no contingency for emergencies.
8. They presumably booked the tour themselves and self manage (which might explain why they are playing to ten people at a time)
9. According to Wikipedia the band has five members.
10. Their 37 day tour grossed $8598 with costs of $3096.
And still, their take for the tour was $5502. For a 37 day tour. For a band with five members.
That’s a grand total of $30 a day.
So in reality this tour cost them whatever their daily living costs are, less $30.
I don’t know what living costs are like in Milwaukee - nor what they were like in 2014 - but let’s assume that the band members are all single and happy to live a relatively basic life and need $30,000 each per year to cover their costs.
That’s $82 a day each. So between them to survive 37 days they need a total of $15170
So they lost $10k on this tour.
They would have been better off giving 1000 people $10 to buy their album on bandcamp.
