The business of being an independent musician

HollowAxis

https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37

Grunfeld

That's a good read.

Drew_TNBD

Depressing.

capo4th

Glad I have a day job sounds like those boys do ok though

Cirrus

Sounds like they're not doing too bad in the current climate to be honest. They could probably have cut corners and made a marginal profit (did they need to pay each touring musician on average over $1100 per week? And could they have slept in the van the odd night here and there?) but they went all in and as a result have probably secured more long term fans and better reviews/ buzz.

And they're paying themselves $2500/ month. If anything this shows that you can still operate an act as a going concern in 2014, which is much better news than most terrible stories of the death of the arts/entertainment industry.

My band's never turned a profit but we're making our second album (am about to start mixing it) using money donated through a pledge campaign we set up on our own website. You've just got to adapt to whatever terrible paradigm the industry is lurching through as best you can.

digitalscream

Definitely doesn't seem to be a drastic state of affairs. They went on their first tour with only an 8% loss, and still managed to cover everything and eat. For people who have no experience doing it, I'd say that was a pretty good result.

BigMonka

Interesting article. Would you expect a tour to make a profit as well as paying everyone salaries? For most people if they were paid to make music they would be happy without making a profit on top.

digitalscream

Look at it another way - if this was a band, and each member was taking a $2500 salary instead of paying hired guns to be the band, they'd have made a profit, somewhere along the lines of $20k.