A few folks now have linked to the fascinating piece by Jack Conte of the band Pomplamoose (the high-school French student in me smiles) on an accounting of the costs and revenues, to the dollar, of mounting a month-long tour. Spoiler alert: even with good crowds, they lost money (just under $12k). Their three revenue sources of ticket income (just shy of $100k), net revenues from merchandise (small) and a small sponsorship couldn’t meet the costs of mounting the tour, with all the production and labor and contracting costs. The piece is not a dirge in the least:
But this isn’t a sob story. We knew it would be an expensive endeavor, and we still chose to make the investment. We could have played a duo show instead of hiring six people to tour with us. That would have saved us over $50,000, but it was important at this stage in Pomplamoose’s career to put on a wild and crazy rock show. We wanted to be invited back to every venue, and we wanted our fans to bring their friends next time. The loss was an investment in future tours.
This seems sensible to me – the tour was not really expected to make money, but (1) it might pay off in the future, with more audience (and willing to pay more for tickets), although no guarantees there, and (2) it’s fun to be in a band.
Neither of these are new to the music economy – I knew a lot of people in bands in Vancouver in the 1970s and the previous paragraph held true for all their ventures then as much as it does now: it costs money to roll this particular pair of dice, but it’s worth a shot.
And so I think blog neighbor Scott Timberg gets it wrong here when he writes, in response to the Pomplamoose article:
If you’ve followed the debate about the post-label, post-album music world, you’ve heard the cries of the optimists: Just get in the tourbus! Even digital utopians will concede that revenues from recordings are way down, but they assure us that bands can make up the different by playing shows. It is part of a larger neoliberal gospel that says all that creative types need to do about the rigged new economy is to “adjust.”
I’m not sure where to find that chapter in the gospels, but no cultural economist I know has ever said that bands can make it if only they tour. It’s true that revenue sources have shifted towards a greater share from performance relative to recordings, but that doesn’t mean success awaits all those who put a deposit down on a tourbus. A tiny percentage of bands will ever make – have ever made – money, and that’s not a fact that resulted from Spotify or a rigged new economy. Trying to make it is a gamble, just like trying to make it as a professional athlete, or a novelist or playwright or actor, but it’s fun and the rewards are big if you do end up at the summit, if only briefly. That’s the economy, old and new. And people who never quite get to the position where they can earn money at this eventually move into day jobs, some interesting, some boring. But nobody serious ever said if you just take the band on the road it will pay off.
You missed the point of Scott’s comment. Now that so much music is available for free on the Internet, profits from recordings have been greatly decreased. The rationale thus goes that greater exposure from the Net allows for more income for live performance. The experience of Pomplamoose shows this is untrue. And in fact, its unlikely that the exposure gained from their tour will help with future tours.
More to the point is that for the mass media to exist, all power, exposure, and income must be aggregated at the top in a winner take all system that is culturally destructive.
What if each state passed an excise tax on mass media (TV, national radio, major label recordings, movies, etc.,) and used the money to fund local arts? This might require new legislation about interstate trade, and of course, the muic industry with its massive lobbying apparatus would would fight it to the death, but it would probably be much better for American culture.
BTW, the funds gained from such a tax would not need to go exclusively to “elite” arts, to use that specious ballyhoo of the neo-con crowd. It could, for example, fund small, low budget, independent recording studios to help garage bands make their demos, or a mariachi group, or a local song writer make a demo with her guitar.
It could fund that local documentary film about those folks who use snakes in their church services, or about the group teaching kids jazz traditions in New Orleans, or the practices of Mormon square dancing, or the choral traditions of the Amish and Mennonites, or that Southern Baptist group’s new jazz cantata.
In a pinch, it might help a local symphony buy a set of timpani, or help support the local All-State band program. It might help fund a music school for poor children, or help support a local jazz club.
Of course, Sony, Warner Brothers, & Co. would stop this tax with an iron fist. Not only would their products be taxed, creating stronger local cultures might further fragment their market. The loss of these possibilities is an illustration of how big business can in some cases harm us all. And an example of why totalizing concepts of the free market are sometimes ill-advised.
Oh God help us! This idea sounds a bit Rooseveltian – and worse, European! Quick, someone call Milton Friedman….
Thank you for your comments. My point is that one cannot take the experience of a band losing (a small amount of) money on a tour and from that make inferences about the changing economy of music and mass media. The story of Pomplamoose is an anecdote, a well-written and thoughtful one, but a single observation nonetheless, and we can no more use this to talk about ‘winner take all’ economies, or the effects of changes in the recording industry, than we could make sweeping statements based upon the story of a band that *did* make money on tour. Not every sparrow that falls can be laid at the feet of Spotify, or Sony, or Amazon, or ‘neoliberalism.’ And there were many, many Pomplamoose’s before the invention of digital recording.
Interesting. It is a fairly obvious and well-known fact that that the numbers of artists performing was reduced as the film, radio, recording, and televisions industries evolved. This was unavoidable for the simple reason that less performers were needed. Small numbers could reach massively larger audiences. In the same way, with Amazon around, we don’t need so many bookstores or publishers.
I think we can also make relatively accurate general observations about how the Net has reduced CD sales. The numbers are there and even the big companies are complaining bitterly. Will streaming revenues fill the gap for at least the big companies?
To a lesser extent, and even though hard numbers are missing, musicians seem to be finding that the Net’s additional exposure for marginalized groups has not translated into significant differences in their income from live shows. It would be interesting to have some hard numbers. In general, groups seem to be able to set up more tours, and more easily, but the profits are still not there.
On the other hand, as you note, and as I noted on Scott’s blog, alternative rock groups weren’t making much money, if any at all, from recordings even before the Net. When the top is so dominate, little is left below them. In spite of the hopes, this was not changed by the Internet.
If we want more diversity and locality in our cultural lives, the mass media would need to be regulated, but given the dominance of the corporate ethos in America, this is unlikely to happen. In Europe, by contrast, there are constant efforts to constrain the dominance of the mass media and organizations like Amazon. It will be interesting to see how this dichotomy evolves.