Artists Make $8 in Profit From a $100 Concert Ticket
A helpful breakdown of the costs of live music from the National Independent Talent Organization.
A few years ago, after my band opened for a musician who was significantly bigger than we were, the venue manager showed us the total revenue for that night’s show while paying us out. I’m not going to say the figure—I don’t remember it precisely, to be honest—but it was enough to briefly take me aback. The headliner had a loyal audience and years of acclaimed albums under their belt, but they were decidedly not a pop star; just a musician who’d managed to eke out a career. But when I saw the number I thought: Damn, they’re raking it in.
Then I thought about their tour bus and the driver who’d been hired to drive it, the trailer full of gear, the three musicians in the backing band, the guitar tech, the sound engineer that traveled with them—not to mention the venue itself, staffed with bartenders, ticket-takers, stagehands. All those people, I hoped, were earning a living wage. Then there was the venue owner, who would expect to turn their own profit on the night, and whatever other entities were involved in the ticketing and promotion, which would take their cuts as well. Plus the booking agent who put together the tour on the artist’s side, whose payment would come directly out of their take, to the tune of about 10 percent. The list goes on. It did not take long to realize that, though this artist might be making the decent living they deserve for their work, they probably aren’t rich. (Still, I couldn’t help but feel like they could have afforded to throw us a couple more bucks.)
This scene came to mind again after the National Independent Talent Organization, a trade group representing indie talent representatives like managers and agents, published an infographic detailing the breakdown of payouts for an average $100 concert ticket, based on expense sheets shared with them by a host of working musicians. Of that $100, the artist is likely to take home a potential $8.
That total ticket price includes roughly $22 in fees, which are split between the venue, the promoter that put the show together (Live Nation, if it’s hosted at one of the many venues they own), and the company that handled the ticketing (Ticketmaster, if it’s at one of those Live Nation rooms, and at plenty of other venues too). Roughly $30 goes to cover the venue’s costs, which includes the staff. Another $8 goes to whoever produced the show, which could be the venue or an outside promoter or both. And then there are the costs incurred by the artist themselves: the bus (or van), the touring staff, the hotel rooms, the gas. You can take a look at the full breakdown below.
NITO also graciously shared with me the dataset they used to produce the infographic, under the condition that we only publish individual expense lines and not an artist’s entire budget. Even those can give a sense of the scale of payouts we’re talking about. For an artist who made a $3,000 guarantee on a particular show, $1,100 went to paying various managers and agents, with additional expenses for tour necessities like gas and hotels. (Depending on the scale of the artist, “managers and agents” could encompass three or four different people, all with distinct jobs to do: the overall manager in charge of looking after their career as a whole, the business manager in charge of finances, the booking agent who put together the tour, and the tour manager who actually travels with the band and takes care of various logistics on the road.) For another artist who made $115,000 from a month of touring, more than $20,000 went to managers and agents, plus $15,000 for crew salaries and $13,000 for a van rental.
In both cases, these are just a glimpse of the expenses, and they only reflect those on the artist’s side, not counting the takes of promoters, ticketing companies, and venues that come out before the artist even gets paid. With so much to pay for, it’s no wonder that so many independent artists now see a touring career as economically unviable.
There’s no simple solution to the escalating cost of concert tickets. Lots of the people getting paid out from the artist’s bottom line are simply being compensated fairly for the work they put into making the show happen. But in cases where Live Nation-Ticketmaster is involved in the show’s promotion, ticketing, and/or venue ownership, the eye-popping difference between the cost to a fan and the compensation for an artist is driven significantly by fees and cut percentages that serve chiefly to enrich Live Nation-Ticketmaster—and that musicians have virtually no choice in forking over. (This is part of the reason why the conglomerate is being sued by the U.S. government.) In any case, it’s worth keeping in mind that the artists themselves, save for actual pop stars, probably aren’t rolling in dough, even when their shows cost a lot to get into. I’ll add from personal experience: The openers are making even less.
Though I can’t speak for all musicians, I think a lot of us are very conscious of the fact that buying a ticket may be a substantial expense for a fan. But if you can afford it, and you want to make sure that touring remains financially viable for your favorite band, there is one good way to kick them something extra and get something cool in return (though it’s increasingly likely that the venue will be taking a slice of this too): buy merch.
