If you haven’t read it you can HERE
Synopsis, cause I know most of you won’t read the article: indie band goes on the road, ticket sales are pretty legit, lots of expenses, band still loses money, but it’s all good because of the love of music.
Off the top I give Pomplamoose (Jack) credit for a high degree of transparency in a business that hides and skims the numbers in favor of making themselves look more successful than they are.
But Jack says that the point of the article is not about licking their wounds, yet it seems like the whole point of writing the post was to talk about how they lost $11,819 on their tour. It’s difficult to work up sympathy for that. And there’s a thousand things they could have done differently to make more profit.
Although they did get mine and a lot of other people’s attention, so maybe that was the point in the first place.
Music doesn’t owe anyone a living. Just because you’re passionate doesn’t mean you deserve success. It’s life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. No one’s entitled to the actual happiness.
Being in a band vs solo artist (or duo in the case of Pomplamoose) is a big deal when it comes to the dollars and cents.
If the solo artist wants to have a full band for their tour, they have to hire people on a per show basis to come and play with them. Good players won’t play for cracker jacks. And this is where a bulk of Pomplamoose’s expenses came from.
But also as a solo artist when a cd is sold, a song gets on a tv show, there’s a publishing offer, one (or two) person gets ALL the money. They don’t have to split, which is huge.
Think about it, getting a song on a TV show can initially bring $10,000 (sometimes more, sometimes less). For an indie artist, after commissions by everyone involved, there’s probably $5000-$6000 remaining.
If you’re an indie band you might have 4 or 5 or 6 people in the band and hopefully everyone’s entitled to an equal share, cause it’s already gonna be a squeeze to make this glorious windfall of cash even last everyone a single month.
But a solo artist pockets that 5 or 6k and gets at least a couple months of living out of it.
I know a lot of solo/duo artists here in Nashville that have been able to fund their whole career off this fact.
Risk/reward. Sacrifice and payoff. If you’re a solo/duo you benefit from this but some of that extra money you made is going to have to go back into touring if you want that explosive rock show as oppose to an acoustic coffee shop situation.
What would be impressive would be if Jack keeps this transparency going. Tweaking the tour strategy and letting us know how it effected the numbers.
His post will either be the start of a new standard of artist leadership and transparency, or just another complaint column by an artist crying in his porridge. We need the former.
