HELLo everybody...

I started searching over the net trying to figure out how much does a metal band made per gig?
I was especially thinking about the festivals, how much does a metal band make per festival. I read somewhere that Cannibal Corpse makes enough to buy plane tickets and stuff...
so, if such a big band as Cannibal Corpse makes this little money, I was wondering... how much do they make per gig?

And more important, from where do these guys get their money... It's not that I care about musicians personal life that much...
But I read over the web that when you buy a CD these bands are getting around 1 buck per cd or less... so I'd like to know
where they get the money from? so instead of buying a cd, maybe you could be helping the band more with buying a T-Shirt, or going to a gig...

I'm just trying to know what would be the best way to support a band that you like...

guys share your knowledge here or ideas... it would be interesting to read them all...

thanks for checking this out...

Damn, thats a good question, I guess they MADE quite some money with cd's but nowadays you see a lot more advertisements for merchandise and stuf so I guess they make most of their money with that. Since cd sales dropped bands can't afford to relax anymore and have to tour all the time to promote their album and sell merchandise.

How much they get obviously depends on how big the band, venue and audience is...
Thats all I can tell you sorry...

I imagine it could be alot, if your a big band obviously you'll make more.

A band such as System Of A Down apparently asks around a million US dollars for a festival performance.

It also depends on how many people are involved and who all get a part of the share.

There are too many variables to actually answer the question definitively.

I know bands who get a crate of beer and fuel expenses paid and that's it. But of course that's the other end of the spectrum.

Bands have always made very little from album sales. Almost all of it comes from shows (tours) and merch.

Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2011 at 03:38

There are too many variables to actually answer the question definitively.

Capt. Obvious

Written by NLthrasher on 28.11.2011 at 03:42
Capt. Obvious

Well the OP evidently didn't think such an obvious answer existed.

Written by JÄY on 28.11.2011 at 03:40

Bands have always made very little from album sales. Almost all of it comes from shows (tours) and merch.

Not true. It is the case nowadays but in the Seventies, Eightie and even early Nineties most money was made off album sales not tours. Tours usually cost the bands money back then.

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.11.2011 at 03:45

Written by JÄY on 28.11.2011 at 03:40

Bands have always made very little from album sales. Almost all of it comes from shows (tours) and merch.

Not true. It is the case nowadays but in the Seventies, Eightie and even early Nineties most money was made off album sales not tours. Tours usually cost the bands money back then.

There I go again saying shit I have no idea about.

Written by JÄY on 28.11.2011 at 03:47

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.11.2011 at 03:45

Written by JÄY on 28.11.2011 at 03:40

Bands have always made very little from album sales. Almost all of it comes from shows (tours) and merch.

Not true. It is the case nowadays but in the Seventies, Eightie and even early Nineties most money was made off album sales not tours. Tours usually cost the bands money back then.

There I go again saying shit I have no idea about.

don't be too hard on yourself. They did make money on the merch they sold on tours and outside of tours, so in that respect you are right.

Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2011 at 03:43

Written by NLthrasher on 28.11.2011 at 03:42
Capt. Obvious

Well the OP evidently didn't think such an obvious answer existed.

Well I assume the OP's intention was to be send in the right direction and to have an idea about what they approximately would make per gig...

You would think this is some sort of secret or something? Some many freaking band that exit in the world, that are in metalstorm and some of them might even come here + all the users that have bands that come here too and nobody wants to answer that question? Either it's too little and they are embarrased or it's too much and they don't want anybody taking a piece of their pie? Maybe it's an illuminati thing.

Written by lightndw on 28.11.2011 at 05:00

You would think this is some sort of secret or something? Some many freaking band that exit in the world, that are in metalstorm and some of them might even come here + all the users that have bands that come here too and nobody wants to answer that question? Either it's too little and they are embarrased or it's too much and they don't want anybody taking a piece of their pie? Maybe it's an illuminati thing.

maybe bands don't even exist and they are just a creation of our imagination that takes off to a different dimension...:o
just saying...

There are a ton of variables from gig size to band popularity to headline vs. support.

for a band playing gigs at your local club, crowds of 100-200, the headliners don't get much and the support get even less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Magnetic_Tour#Box_office_score_data Since we all know that Wikipedia is the ultimate source of knowledge, here is 100% accurate details about how much revenue Metallica made per show on the World Magnetic tour. Some shows resulted in a gross revenue of over 6 million dollars; which the band memebrs surely kept a nice chunk of. Of course, for a pornogrind band named Vaginal Fluid Milkshake, the profis would be considerably less.

Written by Guest on 28.11.2011 at 05:53

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Magnetic_Tour#Box_office_score_data Since we all know that Wikipedia is the ultimate source of knowledge, here is 100% accurate details about how much revenue Metallica made per show on the World Magnetic tour. Some shows resulted in a gross revenue of over 6 million dollars; which the band memebrs surely kept a nice chunk of. Of course, for a pornogrind band named Vaginal Fluid Milkshake, the profis would be considerably less.

Well, Wiki is not a 100% accurate domain of knowledge cause you should know that "it can be updated at anytime by anyone". All you need is a sign up and edit the text and add useless crap if you want to. I personally dont reply on Wiki too much but yeah...Wikipedia is a hell one pool of enormous stuffs[ from def. of letter A to the evolution of Mohenjo-daro civilization]...but dont considered to be ABSOLUTE TRUE!

Written by Cynic Metalhead on 28.11.2011 at 07:30
Well, Wiki is not a 100% accurate domain of knowledge cause you should know that "it can be updated at anytime by anyone". All you need is a sign up and edit the text and add useless crap if you want to. I personally dont reply on Wiki too much but yeah...Wikipedia is a hell one pool of enormous stuffs[ from def. of letter A to the evolution of Mohenjo-daro civilization]...but dont considered to be ABSOLUTE TRUE!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm

Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2011 at 07:34


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm

Really??! Don't you think what I said was true??

Written by Cynic Metalhead on 28.11.2011 at 07:41
:lol: Really??! Don't you think what I said was true??

Well if you were trying to be sarcastic you were doing it wrong.

/offtopic

The point is that I was being sarcastic; Wikipedia is obviously not 100% accurate, but I wouldn't be suprised if a massive arena with $100+ tickets being sold, loads of people buying merch, and hey maybe the venues food was added to the gross revenue; would all add up to millions of dollars.

Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2011 at 07:45

Written by Cynic Metalhead on 28.11.2011 at 07:41
:lol: Really??! Don't you think what I said was true??

Well if you were trying to be sarcastic you were doing it wrong.

/offtopic

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic[ AND NO INTENTIONS TO BE!]..its just that what Wiki provides it is not always true. May be Void is right but he can be wrong too. So i just commented there...may be that information[ IF NOT CROSS CHECKED] is absolute fallacious.

This is a rather difficult question to give a definite answer to. However, I'm guessing tours are the main source of income for bands and, since the support bands chosen for the tour are carefully chosen to make fans want to go (you wouldn't put a death metal band on the same tour as, say, DragonForce), I'm guessing that support bands get paid less than headline acts. Obviously, particularly well known bands like Metallica will get lots of money per tour and almost unknown bands (like The Darkness) won't get a lot, but determining how much they get really requires you to make a lot of assumptions. For example, if you pardon some quick maths, let's assume a random band gets 20% of all merch sales and 5% of all ticket sales per venue. If 200 people go to one venue and tickets are £10, that's 5% of £2000, which is £100. Now, if we assume that 50 of the people who go to the venue purchase a £10 shirt and 25 purchase one of their posters, which are £8. 20% of £500 is £100 (which covers the t-shirts) and 20% of £200 is £40 (which covers the posters). The band would thus get £240, which, if we assume a completely fair split of the profits per night and four members of the band, is £60 per member. For comparison, if we assume that a completely new CD (ie not resold or second hand) sold in a shop gives 1% of it's value to the band and the CD is £10, that's 10p to the band per CD and, if you wanted to get the same amount as you did for the single tour date, you'd need to sell 2400 CDs. I don't know whether I'm right in my assumptions at all, but, if they are correct, the best way to support your favorite band is to see them live and buy their merch.

@Phantomlords21 funny you should mention The Darkness, just last weekend I heard what they ask festivals to pay them to play there.
They have the bloody nerve to ask anywhere between 500,000 and 700,000 euros per festival gig.

Can never really put a number on the fees for a band(metal or non metal)
Bands professional fees generally will vary with the gig. So it doesn't matter if its a big band or a smaller lesser know band. The band will probably get paid a lot more than their usual pub gig with a big festival. I've heard that not all big fests pay the bands, plus the band would also need to spend for travelling to the festival, which is usually taken care off by the label, if they have one. Some bands just have a gate split with the venue. So I don't think you can put a figure on a bands income, I'm sure in varies for every show.

As for income for the band, the main source is tours and merch now days. Most of the money from the cd sales goes to the label so the bands barely get a cut. If you release it independently, then its still barely any income, you've gotta invest money to record, mix, master, press cds, get artwork done etc and when you sell the cd its barely at any profit, so it would take a lot of cd sales to just break even with the initial investment before you can even say you made money off the cds. In case a band is signed, most of the time the label takes care of these costs, so whatever the band makes from cd sales is profit.
Merch is where the money is for a band, so if you really like a band and want to support them, the best thing to do is buy their merch and go to their gigs. Most of the tours for the less mainstream bands will be gate splits with the venue, so with more people at the gig they get paid a lot more at the end of the night.

Btw, am I the only guy who feels a lot smarter when CM is around?? But I love reading his posts, they're always a laugh.

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.11.2011 at 14:07

@Phantomlords21 funny you should mention The Darkness, just last weekend I heard what they ask festivals to pay them to play there.
They have the bloody nerve to ask anywhere between 500,000 and 700,000 euros per festival gig.

that's a lot of money to ask from a band with only one international hit.

anyway knowing a few people around here in local bands, I know that most underground local bands play pretty much for free. the upside to that is of course that if they're even half-decent they can play anywhere they want in clubs fitting up to 50-100 people, with either free entrance or a modest one of 5-10 lei (equivalent of 2-3 beers) max.

if you start demanding money though, you need to have some shit already going for you. you need to have a fanbase, at least a demo, maybe even some albums already released.

In the end it only really pays off if you're already in a well-established band. If you don't have a solid fanbase and some connections, you can have all the talent in the world, all you're going to get is probably gas money for the tour van (which you and your colleagues bought/rented, your cash up front), maybe a pizza every other night and free beer from the bar. You need to have a day job and you tour during your paid/unpaid holiday from work.

Anvil is a great before/after example. Before they released "The Story of Anvil" they were in the latter category, but now that they've opened for Ac/Dc or played Wacken and Hellfest, they've probably made some good cash on the side too. Being only 3 band members definitely also helped lol.

Written by Valentin B on 28.11.2011 at 14:51

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 28.11.2011 at 14:07

@Phantomlords21 funny you should mention The Darkness, just last weekend I heard what they ask festivals to pay them to play there.
They have the bloody nerve to ask anywhere between 500,000 and 700,000 euros per festival gig.

that's a lot of money to ask from a band with only one international hit.

anyway knowing a few people around here in local bands, I know that most underground local bands play pretty much for free. the upside to that is of course that if they're even half-decent they can play anywhere they want in clubs fitting up to 50-100 people, with either free entrance or a modest one of 5-10 lei (equivalent of 2-3 beers) max.

if you start demanding money though, you need to have some shit already going for you. you need to have a fanbase, at least a demo, maybe even some albums already released.

In the end it only really pays off if you're already in a well-established band. If you don't have a solid fanbase and some connections, you can have all the talent in the world, all you're going to get is probably gas money for the tour van (which you and your colleagues bought/rented, your cash up front), maybe a pizza every other night and free beer from the bar. You need to have a day job and you tour during your paid/unpaid holiday from work.

Anvil is a great before/after example. Before they released "The Story of Anvil" they were in the latter category, but now that they've opened for Ac/Dc or played Wacken and Hellfest, they've probably made some good cash on the side too. Being only 3 band members definitely also helped lol.

Yep the scene is the same for any underground band, you've gotta establish a name before you can start getting paid gigs. When my band first started playing, we would play these small pubs for free, they would just give us free beer. From those days, 4 years back, to getting paid 400-700 euros per gig now, but we still can't do it as a proper job, we still all work day jobs.

Hey guys... thanks for all the answers...

I know we don't have an exact amount of what X band makes in Y gig or so... as someone already said in the post, to many Variants are included into this problem...
of course we can have at least a rough idea on how these bands that we love, make a living out of this (or at least, roll all over the world)
I know that bands like Metallica, might get a lot of money out of a gig... but I wonder about those other big band (yet no economically sucessful) get paid...

So, if you have some more examples on big bands rolling around the world just for a few beers or something like that, keep posting...
in that way I (or everyone) would know if the best thing to do if you happen to see Tom Araya in the streets it's buy him a couple of beers...