[Closed] Music / Bands income - anyone know?

I don't know...but I imagine a lot of costs to come out:

Venue hire
Support
Crew
Hotels/food/fuel
Tour bus
Etc

A big income generator is the merchandise, I guess that more of that will go into the bands pockets.

They must get a fair bit from PRS, golden brown must be playing somewhere on the radio pretty much constantly plus adverts etc.

The band pays for tour costs, venue which is negotiated depending on expected bar take and may be money the other way. Splitting profit between band members and management will vary from band to band depending on the contracts.

Stranglers would be in pretty strong position to negotiate.

Thats how it worked in the 90s anyway, not sure if its the same now.

I always assumed that bands that were once big made all their money years ago and are now minted but still gig mainly for the love of it

An example of what I know.

My BiL is in a Pink Floyd tribute band, they don't gig often because of the logistics. But they looked into doing more theatre sized venues. For example Gloucester Guildhall at the time charged £1500 for the hire of the venue, including staff, bar, security, sound system, lights, and techs. They insisted a ticket price of minimum £15 plus £1.50 booking fee. The venue took the booking fee, the band took the rest. But they had to pay for the venue up front. The max capacity is 400 standing or 250 seated. So just to cover the venue @£15 they needed to sell 100 tickets. Sold out would be £6000 minus the £1500 for the venue.

Even split between the 5 members of the band at best would £900 each. Then take off expenses, hotel, transport, tax 😉

That's why they all work full time.

A local music festival that ran for a few years got undone by the PRS. Numerous stages with local bands, acoustic tent, dance tent, main stage. Hawkwind headlined. Nobody was to play covers. Nobody did. They got hammered for 15% of the gate fee because Hawkwind played Hawkwing songs. It left the promoter owing thousands due to low entrance fee and massive overheads for the planning permission, licenses, kit hire, performer fees, etc.

The performance royalties for radio air play are a joke. I've seen some returns for some outspoken artists and they have gone past the taking-the-piss stage. Internet radio and Spotify is the worst, something like $6 for 1500 plays, Spotify is even worse. I'll see if I can find the articles again.

Bet you a fiver Dave Brock got paid.
🙂

The bands who can command bigger pay days, are doing so to make up for the loss of revenue elsewhere, a great festival in Sunderland has just bit the dust.

http://www.sunderlandecho.com/what-s-on/gigs-music/sunderland-s-split-festival-axed-amid-spiralling-costs-1-7151915

mimmiethecat - Member
They must get a fair bit from PRS, golden brown must be playing somewhere on the radio pretty much constantly plus adverts etc.

This.

This was a good article about a band's tour income - https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37

Whilst some of the comments I have see on this argue they could/should have cut some costs, it does give a really detailed breakdown of the costs and income from a tour. I have no idea how big the band actually are, but I suspect if you are very famous already the figures should improve

Since the ars3 fell out of the record industry most bands make their money from touring and especially merchandising. For T shirts you are looking at about a 4 or 5 times mark up. A lot of people I know who are still active in the industry also make a fair bit with studio work like producing and remixing.

There's **** all money in gigging unless you are either doing corporate stuff or in a band that is regularly at the top of the charts.

Most venues take a huge percentage cut on bands mercy sales too!

I've spent a decade in various areas of the music industry....it's getting harder and harder to make any real money.

For whomever ownes the publishing rights to Golden Brown I imagine the royalty cheque probably eases the burden somewhat.

I listened to a programme on R6 about the time of Gerry Rafferty's death, and he estimated that Baker Street was worth £80,000 a year to him.

I guy I met (admittedly some years ago) owned the rights to the Amy Stewart song "I can't stand the rain" it pretty much paid for his life, and he was very well off. At the time I met him, he was in negotiation with a film studio to use the track as the opening music for a film, they had started at £250,000...

An article in Classic Rock a while back broke all the costs etc down for different side bands/ venues. A band like The Answer playing at theO2 made about 500 quid a night per band member.

Clearly, record sales will not keep them afloat, as they just dont sell
big numbers any more.

What income they get will depend on what rights they had when they first recorded their music and whether they've sold any of rights since.*

Theres numerous rights in relation to a piece of music that can subsequently be exploited in various ways.

If you play on a record then you only have income right to sales of that recording - you get money for your performance only - and only if you've and agreement with royalties attached - you might only get paid for the day. If you wrote the song then you have a cut not only when that record is sold or played, but also if any one else ever records it or performs it. So if the stranglers wrote their own material then they have an income whenever [i]anyone[/i] plays it - cover versions, tribute bands,karaoke, even buskers - the lot.

Having your music featured incidentally - sound tracks on TV and film, adverts etc can generate a fair old wedge too. I know a guy who's music you'll have probably never heard of - a bit was used in an advert and that paid off his mortgage.

A lot of musicians don't really grasp what they do and don't have rights to and they've easily signed away rights - pretty much from the outset of their career, without realising it.

How is this then divided up to finally get to the Band, and the support
Band etc?

My dad was the 'Social Secretary' of when he was at the Royal College of Art and used to book the bands that played there - Bonzo Dog, folks like that. At the time musicians were universally getting truly pretty much stitched up by their management. At the end of a gig my dad would go up to the band with all of the night's takings in his hand - count it out - split the money into two piles - one the venues cut - one the acts. Hand the act their wedge and tell them to hand that wedge to their manager so that he could pay them from it and take his cut. It would be the first time many of those bands would realise just what size of cut their management were taking while they were lucky if they got their bus fair.

Clearly, record sales will not keep them afloat, as they just dont sell
big numbers any more.

Again my BiLs other band, original material hard rock, all recorded on own equipment, mastered, published, etc. self managed. So no third parties taking any percentages. They put their first album on iTunes, 1 sale at £4.99 gave them an income of 28p.

Apple took the rest.

Thanks for the replies.
We guessed that each band member would be getting £1-2000 a night, which doesnt seem too far off.

Recording rights - I'm not sure they get much for them any more. Roy Wood (interview on R4 before xmas) says he gets very little now for his Xmas songs, apparently Slade 'get £500k a year'. Roy dismissed this as absolute rubbish, in the 70's and 80's, there was an income each xmas, but it has stopped in the last 10 years, he said no-one pays for old music now, and radio air-play fees are minimal, so his pension has disappeared.

Record sales - the Stranglers have only released 1 CD in the last 5 years, which has only really sold to 'old' fans, so income from that must be minimal. There is still a download market for older stuff, but, as said earlier, the Band see very little of the sale price, but it would be nice to know what a Band like that get from their sales.
U2 gave away their last CD (OK, Apple would have paid them something - pennies per download?), but the thought behind that must have been to promote the band, and hopefully fill the live venues and sell old stuff.

A metal blog a while back did a series of articles on how much musicians actually take home.

Turns out Devin Townsend (front man of Strapping Young Lad, and many many others) one of the most prolific and hard working guys in Metal, earns about £24K post tax.

So, unless you're only into bands who play mega arenas , next time you're at a gig, buy a CD or a shirt, they probably need the cash more than you and doing this is one of the best ways of giving it to them.

Downloading the album via iTunes or whatever gives them diddly squat.

Recording rights - I'm not sure they get much for them any more. Roy Wood (interview on R4 before xmas) says he gets very little now for his Xmas songs

It depends though on what he signed up for - his situation won't necessarily be the same as other peoples.

The people who've signed away rights to their work always seem to be bewildered by that. A friend made a rockumentary with a band and one of the stumbling points that emerged was the band didn't own their music anymore - third parties had to be paid to feature their music in their film and it reached a point quite quickly where it was just too expensive to screen the film or sell it on DVD as the licensing was so expensive - so it just had to be shelved in the end. There was continual expression of astonishment at this bizarre situation that they had to pay to use their own music - nobody seemed to want to say to them - 'well at some point you signed the contract and cashed the cheque - you sold it, its gone'

Even Macca keeps bemoaning that he has to pay to perform his own songs - but their not his songs any more.

Even Macca keeps bemoaning that he has to pay to perform his own songs - but their not his songs any more.

He lost the rights to the Beatles publishing way back during all the legal wranglings around the Beatles break-up/ early contracts etc

He has tried to buy back the rights.

When he realised how much music publishing is worth he invested in it heavily - he bought the rights to the musical "Annie" for example. Much of his fortune is from theses investments. He then advised Michael Jackson to invest in music publishing rights. Jackson took his advice to heart and out bid Paul on the rights to the Beatles publishing (Paul was trying to buy the rights back). They had a bit of a falling out because of that!

Harrison on Only a Northern Song:- (from wiki)

[i]Harrison himself described the song as "a joke relating to Liverpool, Holy City in the North of England. In addition the song was copyrighted to Northern Songs Ltd. which I didn't own."[7]

Northern Songs was a music publishing company formed in 1963 primarily to exploit Lennon–McCartney compositions. The company had subsequently been floated in 1965, but while Lennon and McCartney each owned 15% of the public company's shares, Harrison owned only 0.8%.[8] Harrison was contracted by Northern Songs as a songwriter only, and because Northern Songs retained the copyright of its published songs, this meant "Lennon and McCartney, as major shareholders, would earn more from his [Harrison's] songs than him."[7][/i]

Again my BiLs other band, original material hard rock, all recorded on own equipment, mastered, published, etc. self managed. So no third parties taking any percentages. They put their first album on iTunes, 1 sale at £4.99 gave them an income of 28p.

Apple took the rest.

it can also depend on [i]how[/i] you sign up to iTunes. Some sites take a one-off fee for each release, then charge again to renew the release every year. It can also cost you to de-list a release.

Other sites simply take a cut - Reverbnation is a reasonable example, where for a 99cent single download, the artists's cut can be as much as 60cents. So the more downloads, the more you can make. I forget the actual figures but it's not always as bad as the airplay earnings.

There are also royalty claiming sites such as Sentric Music, where you get paid for every song you perform at every gig you perform it. Not always huge payouts, depends if the venue has signed up, how many people in the audience, how much the entry ticket was, etc. But if you're in a band that is gigging, you really should consider signing up to Sentric or their equivalents