Rock Star Gets Blunt About Making a Living by Touring
It’s certainly not getting easier for musicians to make a living doing music, and touring isn’t a sure fire way to make an income anymore, either. – Author: Charles Ken, Avenged Sevenfold tour image via Steve Thrasher
It’s certainly not getting easier for musicians to make a living doing music, and while touring has been many professional musicians’ primary way of earning an income, that’s not very easy now, either. Ticket pricing has been very expensive, especially since the pandemic, and now, some new dynamic pricing models are trying to help keep prices down and make sure artists get paid.
Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows has been touring and performing in arenas and amphitheaters for years, since Avenged is one of modern rock and metal’s biggest acts. In a December 28 interview with YouTuber Bradley Hall, the vocalist talked about what bands have to deal with when it comes to the high price of touring.
Touring is ‘Almost Impossible’
“Touring is very hard right now for bands,” Shadows said, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “It’s almost impossible. And you’re also having a big downturn in ticket sales right now. People have been blown out by ticket prices, because of the touring, because of the inflation, so every single thing stacks on top.”
Shadows added, “And then you’ve got people that are very upset about what ticket prices are, which I get. It’s kind of crazy to go see a couple of bands and it’s gonna cost you five, six hundred bucks, or if it’s country artists, it’s a thousand dollars, (or) if it’s Taylor Swift, it’s $3,200, or whatever it is.”
Shadows added that even the new, dynamic pricing models don’t necessarily help musicians on the road, even if that’s their intention.
“If I was to get into numbers right now and show you what we make at a show and what it costs, I think you would just go, ‘Are you kidding me?” he said. “How can you bring in that much money and then no band members make anything?’ And you’d be, like, ‘There’s got to be somewhere in there that you have someone that’s just messing up.’ But it’s a true thing. Just know that there are crazy amounts to get 38 people on a crew that need to be there…”
Shadows also said that the musician could “charge 50 bucks” and be “really nice” and not make anything off the tour, but then, you could also have a reselling buy up a bunch of tickets and make fans pay thousands for them, anyway. So, it’s a difficult situation to address, and it’s not the musicians’ faults.
‘Don’t Make Yourself Miserable’ Touring
Shadows says that while he’s talking about the problem at hand, the sad thing is that he doesn’t have a solution. He says that with the current “runaway pricing, it’s just gonna bring ticket prices up for the fans, which is just gonna supplement what the costs are already for the artists.” He did have a suggestion that musicians should “think macro” about their touring, though.
“Don’t make yourself miserable,” he added. “Don’t go grind in Europe for six weeks, be away from your family, make no money, maybe lose money, and basically play the same places you played 25 years.”
He says musicians have to “change the mindset” and “free yourself from that and just go, ‘Well, we don’t need that. I don’t care. We’re not doing that.'”
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