Musicians Are Angry About Venues Taking T-shirt Money - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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  after all the ticket master fees who has funds let for this any ways?

• Something needs to be done about the monopolies in performance venues

  • That would require government intervention and the government doing anything equals communism. And we can’t have that.

    • Re:

      Communists say government not doing anything equals communism because there is no government. Instead they have a party, which is supposed to provide food, jobs, and do things like ban other parties from existing and execute counterrevolutionaries. But the party is totally not a government, nosiree, because that wouldn't be communism!

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      • • Re:

          You brought it up dude...

      • Re:

        Your comment is a little hard to parse. Yes, the goal of communism is no state (which does not mean no government, but it does mean very small scale government) and that does mostly preclude political parties. Certainly, it doesn't allow for political parties of any significant size.
        
        However communism also lays out a means of achieving that goal, which does involve maintaining the state for a period of time. I don't know if there's anything about parties in there... you know, I've never read the communist

        • Re:

          I never said communism makes sense. To be honest it's more like a religion. Take this for example: They speak of utopia and have this idea that once capitalism ends then there will be no more crime because nobody will have a need to steal or kill, or have the hots for his neighbor's wife, nor would said neighbor ever kill a man he caught in bed with said hot wife in a fit of rage. You see, all of this is just a consequence of class struggle. No more capitalism means no more classes, no more classes means no

          • Re:

            This is... such a large pile of nothing. You've just said a bunch of random things here, and not one of them makes any sense.
            
            Marx was explicitly not a utopian. He said that many times. Socialism was not supposed to be a utopia it was just supposed to be the next thing, the next economic system, the one which came after capitalism. He made no claims about what would come after socialism.
            
            Marx did not claim that socialism would end all crime... I can't even imagine where that comes from. He did claim tha

    • Re: Only a handful of players own most venues

      People could you know just refuse to play shitty venues. Consumers should refuse to go to shitty venues.

      Everyone acts like they have no agency in this world, but their willingness to support shitty things is exactly why more shitty things happen.

    • Re:

      CONSUMERS CAN REFUSE. The government can't regulate that.
      WE MUST RESOLVE TO END DOING BUSINESS WITH SCUM.
      PEARL JAM WAS CORRECT 25 YEARS AGO!!.

  • Re:

    Yeah, stop going and stop using them for anything. They provide little to no value.

  • Re: Only a handful of players own most venues

    Do venue owners 'owe' performers their performance space?

    I am peripherally involved with a group trying to put on an event (non-musical, and indoor swapmeet-type event), and one hall had a requirement that we (the organizers) subsidize their food sales - seek a hot dog for $4.50, they want the center (my group) to pay them a dollar ON TOP of the $4.50 they get from the attendee! It's amazing.

    Refuse to rent venues with terms you don't agree with, if enough acts follow this basic rule the venues will likely c

    • Re:

      Most venues aren't monopoly owned - they're owned and operated usually independently - sometimes by someone, sometimes by a business, often by a city or municipality owns it.

      Those places typically offer the place for a rental fee to which the promoter gets to do what they want - some venues are free to the public - the promoter pays the owner some fee for the venue and the owner operates the concessions and claims the profits from it.

      The promoter may decide to sell tickets in which case the venue typically

  • Re:

    Something needs to be done about monopolies everywhere. Besides the obvious one of Microsoft if you look around you're going to find the same three companies own nearly every hospital and medical facility in america. Florida is the worst with 80% of all facilities owned by one company.
    
    The only way you change that is by changing how you vote. Americans need to stop getting caught up in moral panics and stop supporting politicians who's only promise is to hurt someone instead of helping you. And vote in yo

  • Re:

    Exactly. Live Nation and TicketMaster MUST BE DESTROYED. They are the MOB. They are SCALPERS. They are completely UNNECESSARY for the public to enjoy music. We must ELIMINATE these money grubbing scumbags from the equation. SUBVERT THEIR USE in any way possible. The venues that use this conglomerate must be boycotted whenever possible. They are a scourge on the music business and steal from everyone. WE DON'T NEED THEM. STOP THE FASCIST GANGSTERS!.

• • The issue is not that venues get a cut of some of the revenue. The issue is the amount. 40% pretty much means the musician will get no profit or take a loss. Bear in mind the venue did 0% work and cost to manufacture the merchandise. At best the venue has labor cost. For some venues, they may not even provide that as the musician employs the staff that sells the merchandise.

    • Re:

      The venue did 100% of the work of maintaining and operating the building.

      Can you imagine the size of the power bill for some of those big places? Wowza...

      • The venue did 100% of the work of maintaining and operating the building.

        And the musician is reimbursing the venue for that. It's called a rental fee.

        Can you imagine the size of the power bill for some of those big places?

        By your logic, your landlord should be able to take a cut of any money you make. You got a raise recently? Hand it over to your landlord.

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        • • Re: Simple solution

            Cost of living adjustments not raises. They function to maintain your existing reimbursement value for your labor and so maintain the same relationship rather letting it fall to deficit. Money is only worth what it is relative to the cost of living. So if the cost of living goes up but there is no cost of living adjustment you just got knocked down in pay.

            Pay raises increase your spendable value relative to market cost

            That's the difference between a raise and an adjustment.

          • Re:

            Rent goes up regardless if someone gets a raise. But that was not my point. My point is that even though you pay rent, the landlord wants a cut of your raise ON TOP of rent that you paid.

            Wow. The point you missed it that the venue is being reimbursed for the use of the venue. They get rental fees. They get a portion of the ticket sales and concessions. They were already reimbursed for the use of the space. This is the venue adding fees ON TOP.

            What part of the venue was already being reimbursed is not clear?

          • Re:

            An example in business world: 1) You rent a space and operate a tea saloon / coffee shop. Your landlord does not get a percentage on your sales. 2) You now want to expand your activities into selling mugs and tea leaves and ask your landlord to use an additional room. You pay a bit more rent, but your landlord still does not get a percentage on your new sales.

            I agree that if you request the landlord to place staff to help with the general business, you might end up negotiating other payments. Maybe you'd ha

          • Re:

            Go see a doc, you have brain damage.

      • and that is coved with the venue fee added to the

        and that is coves with the venue fee added to the ticket cost

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          Um, no. The ticket fees was already charged to the public BEFORE they entered the venue. This is money that the venue wants from the musician on top of what the public already paid.

      • Re:

        Traditionally for small venues with low profile bands, the venue gets most of the money from the ticket sales and the bar. The band usually only made money from selling merchandise. The band might get some ticket/bar money if the show did really well, but they go into it assuming they won't.

        Now the venues are trying to take a large cut from the one place the band was making money. If the venue wants bands to play there, there has to be some way for the band to make money.

        If you're talking big venues, the ec

        • Re: Simple solution

          Unless you the band are handling the door, even with agreement to share door proceeds you're likely to be ripped off from lack of oversight and accounting. If the bar administrates the accounting then generally they fudge the numbers cheating the band.

          As the only way to make law apply is to bring it to court, the venues feel safe to cheat because they figure the time and monetary costs to successfully bring them reckoning is probably expensive to struggling musicians.

    • Re: Simple solution

      We just performed at a sold out 1300 seat theater. They "only" took 20% of our merch. Had we not spent 150hrs making it ourselves we'd have had to sell shirts for $40 vs $20 just to break even. As is, it still wasn't entirely worth it to make ~1k profit.

  • Re:

    It's difficult to get adequate publicity, if the concert at the public venue is basically a one-off exercise by one band at that venue. That situation would improve if the public venue got a reputation for having concerts on a regular basis. To pull that off, you need multiple bands ready to rotate in, at different weeks. Now you need someone to organize the schedules. Now you are back to depending on someone who essentially runs the venue.
    
    Were you proposing something like an outdoor park? I was not

    • Re:

      Are you stupid or just random?

      Some of the most-sold out concerts (i.e DMB's The Gorge) take place at public venues.

• Ticket sellers and large venue owners use greedy underhanded tactics! Who knew? Stop giving companies like Live Nation and Ticketmaster your money. Stop putting shit in their venues.

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• As someone who plays in bands at small venues (for very little money), I wouldn't have a problem sharing T-Shirt sales as long as the band also gets a cut of drink sales. What say you, club-owners?
  *crickets*

  • Re:

    you boys drink $300 in beer and your pay is $200 so we need you give us the $100 that you own

• Venue contract ALWAYS have a cut for merch, Always have. But I have never had a venue complain when it got crossed out, either. Just that most small musicians won't dare, so they leave it in there. Contracts are not take-it-or-leave-it. Every hall tries to get away with something. Get used to crossing stupid shit out or they will know you can be taken for a ride other ways as well.

  • Re:

    I’m guessing after you do that once the company owning all the venues declines any further business.

  • Re:

    This by the way applies for almost all contracts.

    I always cross out shit i dont agree with when doing contract work. And usually they conceed and the contract proceeds.

    And those that don't, can go find some other fool.

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    If you're on tour I assume you're big enough to have an agent or manager.

    Wouldn't they know to fight the merch clause in the contract?

• One of the worst-kept secrets in the music industry is that most artists are the last to see any of the money. If you want to make money in the music industry, playing and performing are usually the worst things you can do to achieve that goal, with a small percentage of very successful artists. Other than them, the people making virtually guaranteed money are working directly for the record companies, producers and engineers, Ticketmaster and LiveNation, etc. Most artists are in the business of making music and sharing a message while the music industry is in the business of making money. As others have stated, it's been that way for a very long time, but hopefully artists can band together to at least get some better treatment.

• What the heck is this story doing on Slashdot?

  • Re:

    Because every time people on here brag abou stealing music the inevitable response is musicians don't make money selling records, they make money doing gigs. Well here's a story showing that isn't the case. In addition to everything else they have to pay for, musicians also have to hand over a cut of money they make selling their own merchandise, merchandise they initially had to come up with the money to have made.

    So not ony are they being gouged by the venues because there are virtual monopolies on who

  • Re:

    Most tech companies are oligopolies and do the exact same shit.

    First example, see Apple App Store

• Buy from the artist directly or make your own. Not a lot of sympathy for folks charging $30-$40 for a tshirt to Beyonce asking $600 for a hoodie.

  • Re:

    Tell us you didn't read the article without telling us you didn't read the article.

    The artists are selling their merchandise at the concerts and being told they need to give up 40% of whatever they make to the venue. Short of buying from the web site, this is as directly purchasing as you can get. Also, something else included in the article you didn't read, was that artists have to raise their prices so they can still earn a profit from selling their merch because of the near extortion they're under. They

• Because I thought I was supporting the artists... Not ticketmaster/livenation.

  Time to simply stop feeding the beast.

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• "Starving artists" is a cliche for a reason. It's not enough to have a manager. The monopoly and oligopoly situation of distribution, venues, and tickets is a policy failure exacerbated by lobbyists and regulatory capture and a result of the artists not organizing co-ops in those industries to remedy it.