- Pomplamoose just finished a 28-day tour. We played 24 shows in 23 cities around the United States. It was awesome: Nataly crowd surfed for the first time ever, we sold just under $100,000 in tickets, and we got to rock out with people we love for a full month. We sold 1129 tickets in San Francisco at the Fillmore. I’ll remember that night for the rest of my life.
One question that our fans repeatedly asked us was “what does it feel like to have ‘made it’ as a band?” Though it’s a fair question to ask of a band with a hundred million views on YouTube, the thought of Pomplamoose having “made it” is, to me, ridiculous.
Before I write another sentence, it’s important to note that Nataly and I feel so fortunate to be making music for a living. Having the opportunity to play music as a career is a dream come true. But the phrase “made it” does not properly describe Pomplamoose. Pomplamoose is “making it.” And every day, we bust our asses to continue “making it,” but we most certainly have not “made it.”
Not saying that touring isn't expensive? But these guys were stupid with some of their expenditures. -Renting a lighting rig is absolutely unnecessary, especially if you're playing places like the Fillmore, which is guaranteed have their own setup and it's probably the tits and dear god do you really need that bank of strobes to make your music awesome. -I'm not sure why they listed equipment and backline as two separate items. If they really were two separate items, one of them was redundant. -On top of that, if you're serious about touring, you need to buy a van rather than renting, which blows up your overhead. And don't make it a Sprinter. Buy a bare-bones fifteen passenger Ford workhorse for two thousand dollars. It'll go forever, and it'll be cheap and easy to fix if it breaks. -And then by the way, sleep in that instead of renting one hotel room per two members, princess. Or if you really want to spring for the hotel (mister "nothing fancy"), you rent one room. For eight fucking people. Just do it, it's only four weeks. Nobody'll call you out on it. Who tours and rents two to a room? Jesus. Seventeen thousand dollars for four weeks. Jesus. -Per diem? Fuck you, hospitality at the level of venues these guys are playing includes nice dinner and a liver's worth of drinks. They can pay for their other meals on their own. Salaries for bandmates? Really? Really? Howsabout a percentage of nightly sales. You're welcome. -Insurance is not rock and roll. -Commissions shouldn't cost this much. Booking agencies charge no more than 10% of ticket sales (which means no more than 9k). You don't need a business manager, you need Quickbooks. Or a better business manager because look at what you're spending money on. Obviously, there's still not much money to be had in indie musicianship. But reading their breakdown makes me think that they bought into a lot of fripperies, and if they'd bothered to pare down just a little bit, they could have at least come out in the black.
Didja see where they bitched about parking a "42 foot" van? It was also interesting how they said they were on the hook for per diem when every hospitality rider I've ever seen has it coming out of the venue. But then ...we never booked bands based on ticket sales. We paid an up-front fee, which was a bid that was competitive with the other venues in town. So you can say shit like "you sold $100k in tickets" but that number literally has nothing to do with what you made. Our occupancy was 750. We'd push that to 800 sometimes. If we sold tickets for $20 we grossed $16k. The band prolly got $8k, $10k for the show, no hinky shit about only so many people showed up so you didn't get paid, it's our city, it's our venue, we can promote just fine thankyouverymuch. Right now, I could go see Aimee Mann at the FIllmore for $35. 1129 tickets is basically selling it out - it's a showcase, not an arena. A sold out show at the Fillmore is $40k gross and you toured for a month and you sold $100k in tickets? At 24 shows? At $10 a head that's 400 people per show at which point you're not a 42-foot-van band. You're not a "we bring backline" band. You're not a "$48k in salaries for a 24-date tour" band. You're the band that opens for the band that opens for that band. About a month ago I paid $35 for Front 242/Severed Heads tickets at the Regent. About 20 years ago I ran lights for Front 242 at my 750-person showcase. They showed up in a 15-passenger van.
The few guys I know who work as hired gun musicians aren't going hit the road for anything other than a guaranteed income, I'm sure they would take a cut on top of their salary if it was offered but it isn't offered. They can stay in the comfort of their own home doing studio and commercial work without the pain of the road and pay their bills. The guy I know best will take less pay if it involves going somewhere interesting like Europe. None of these guys is going to sleep in the van unless it because they need to drive to the next show overnight. None of them is going to share a bedroom with eight people. I've heard of Pomplamoose but I have any idea how big they are. The people I know who go on the road as hired guns generally work with well established artist who might be making better money than an indi band. They don't always care for the music they have to play. They don't work with top notch artist and they aren't top notch studio players (it's Portland, there are very few top notch anything here). Most of them get picked up because they are competent multi instrumentalist who learn fast.
There's a place for hired gun musicians, I'm just not sure it's in a mid-level indie band. The scale just isn't there. One of the fringe benefits of having dedicated band members rather than a rolling cast of hired help is that they have an emotional stake in the whole process. They're more willing to suffer a little bit in order to achieve the whole experience, ie sleep two to a bed and a few on the floor in some fleabag motel on the way to the next gig. When I think "bands that can afford to hire professional musicians" I think like Prince (RIP) or something. Not Pomplamoose.
If they are loosing money over their light show than they are fucking idiots. I can only remember two times that the pretty lights made a significant difference in my enjoyment of a show. No one gives a shit about the lights if you are putting on a good show. I've seen bands that were just two members at the beginning of their career and full bands when they hit it big. The two man show with programmable drum machine was as good if not better in some cases. If two of them can't put on a good show alone than the full band isn't going to push that shit over the edge. I saw Ween a few times in my life, best performance was when it was just the two of them, worst was with a full band and a packed theater which I walked out of four or so songs in. Prince gets what ever he wants but lots of singer songwriter people need bands to tour. Think Feist or Amy Mann (good examples where this kind of work comes from). Dandy Warhols was a band that a friend of mine toured with. He got to go to Europe and play a few big festivals and meet lots of famous musicians. The Dandies had more than a few keyboard and trumpet parts on their albums and they decently wanted to give the fans a full experience. They hired two piano players who could play horns and hit the road.
I swear to God if this is the that Pomplamoose article... Oh look. It's that Pomplamoose article.
I don't know the band, and don't generally dig on Indie music. But I know this article. Because everyone who ever talks about the economies of modern music in the digital age, will reference this article as if it proves that touring bands lose money and that downloads and Spotify basically bend the artist over a barrel. But they don't talk about how the modern record 'label' and packaged music may have just been a flash in the pan necessity of the last 75 years anyway like David Byrne does. That's probably my favorite article on music ever actually. Nor do they talk about how, without doing much additonal work a band can publish a song to Spotify once it's recorded, and make minimum wage with only 180,000 plays a month. And you say, well hell, how are they supposed to get 180,000 plays a month as a new band? And I say, how the hell were they supposed to make minimum wage with no additional effort before? They can literally do no more work after the song is recorded (for example if they were recording anway to try and get signed or sell music at shows), and just make money while they continue to do they other money making things (like concerts and merch and everything else). There was a lot of people who said before and after us, if you're getting into music to make money, you're going to be disappointed.
The people bitching about Spotify have a legitimate beef... but they also don't understand that the record industry was rapacious, too. I had a buddy who made $1500 a month off of MP3.com (remember that?) and a label wanted to sign him. They offered $15k against recoupable expenses for a three album deal... which basically meant $15k is all you'll ever see for three albums plus when you tour we're going to bill you so you'll probably end up owing us money. He decided to write text to speech software instead. The band gets minimum wage, by the way. That's minimum wage divided by however many members. 180,000 streams is a little less than $900. Which is like a factor of five more than Youtube pays.
Looking at the nasty deals that you hear about from group to group, it's obvious that the record industries were for sure getting more than their fair share. 15k for 3 albums is one of the worst I've ever heard. But now your friend could legitimately record those three albums for the cost of a computer and maybe a couple thousand dollars in mics and whatever other setup pieces you would have to buy but could probably borrow if you had a friend. And the labels are probably still making the same deals while they bitch about their declining revenues. If you only put your music up on Spotify, or only on YouTube, or only one place whatever, then you can count just the income of Spotify or that one place, but really you can post to iTunes and to Spotify and to YouTube, and there's no real duplication of efforts after you have a quality digital recording. So you have multiple income streams which duplicate eachother. Here's a good breakdown of all the streamers and how much they pay per stream If you were to get on all ten of the top 10 from that sheet (which covers 99 percent of streaming, and get 180,000 streams from each of them (not easy I'm sure), then you'd have a monthly income of $20,444. But only $980 a month if you weight by marketshare to see how many of those 180,000 original ones really get split across the services.