The follow of merch cuts, wherein venues take a proportion of a band’s merchandise gross sales, made repeated headlines in 2023. In March, French avant-garde steel artist Igorrr refused to promote merch on the O2 Discussion board Kentish City in London, claiming the venue was asking for a 25% reduce.
British prog-metallers Monuments took the identical stance at a venue in Athens, citing 18% concessions mixed with 24% VAT. Architects drummer Dan Searle tweeted: “Hey bands when are we gonna go on strike and eliminate these insane venue merch cuts?”
In September there seemed to be a optimistic improvement when it was extensively reported that live performance big Dwell Nation would scrap merch charges in club-sized venues throughout the US and Canada. It then emerged that the ‘On the Street Once more’ programme would solely final for a restricted time in a restricted variety of venues, nonetheless.
“I inform those who this present day we’re not musicians on tour, we’re touring T-shirt salesmen,” says Exodus guitarist Gary Holt, who’s been a vocal critic of the venues’ merch cuts. “That’s the place we make our cash. I’m OK with an affordable charge however then they began actually placing their fingers in your pockets and shaking you the wrong way up for doing nothing.”
Within the UK, the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) launched a ‘100% Venues’ marketing campaign that encourages venues to keep away from “punitive” merchandise concessions and maintains a database of venues that don’t take a reduce in any respect.
“Merchandise commissions have been a long-time bugbear for artists however popping out of the pandemic it felt just like the stability of threat had shifted,” explains FAC CEO David Martin. “It was changing into very troublesome for artists to make ends meet and sometimes it was that merchandise fee that made the distinction between breaking even and shedding cash on excursions.”
The Dwell Nation transfer within the US might assist some bands retain more cash for so long as it runs, however the Nationwide Unbiased Venue Affiliation (NIVA) mentioned: “Non permanent measures might seem to assist artists within the brief run however truly can squeeze out impartial venues, which give the lifeblood of many artists on skinny margins.”
We approached Dwell Nation for remark however they didn’t reply. “The impartial venues are complaining, saying Dwell Nation are doing it to take enterprise from us – nicely, you eliminate it too, motherfucker,” says Gary. “It’s [mid-level club bands] who have to say, ‘Fuck it, we’re not going to do it.’ And it’s, ‘Do we now have no exhibits and an empty venue or will we break and let these guys hold their T-shirt cash?’”
He provides that that is unlikely to occur in follow, nonetheless, as most bands have to tour to outlive. David does see trigger for optimism within the UK. “We’ve had a whole bunch of venues signal as much as be commission-free,” he says. “Followers have turn out to be extra conscious of the problem and artists are taking a look at new methods of doing issues, resembling utilizing QR codes, or reserving excursions primarily based on the 100% record that we now have. There’s at all times extra to do however I believe the dialog is totally completely different now.”
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