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Check the story of Pomplamoose's recent tour for a counterpoint on just how sustainable a tour and live show is for a group of a certain level of popularity. h

Check the story of Pomplamoose's recent tour for a counterpoint on just how sustainable a tour and live show is for a group of a certain level of popularity. https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37 https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-...

Nissl 12y ago
It's important to keep in mind that Pomplamoose made a conscious decision to hire 6 people to tour with with them and spend to put on a significant production. If they had instead chosen to tour as a duo with minimal production (not unreasonable considering they were playing to crowds of a few hundred outside their home base of SF), they would instead have made ~$20k each in a month. Not so bad.
- tunesmith 12y ago
  They addressed that in the article: "We could have played a duo show instead of hiring six people to tour with us. That would have saved us over $50,000, but it was important at this stage in Pomplamoose’s career to put on a wild and crazy rock show. We wanted to be invited back to every venue, and we wanted our fans to bring their friends next time. The loss was an investment in future tours." So it seems they suspected that investing less in production would have meant lower ticket sales for that tour and in the future, which is a rational suspicion regardless of how accurate it would have ended up being. Plus, if they had stripped it down, they still couldn't tour twelve months out of the year so it still wouldn't have amounted to a decent yearly income. At any rate, the point is that Pomplamoose is very well-known and even if they overshot by a few tens of thousands of dollars, it still shows that touring isn't exactly big bucks for even well-known indie bands. More commentary: http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-artists-cant-survive-as-saints-and-martyrs http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-ar...
  - Jgrubb 12y ago
    I dunno, I still say this is exactly the kind of stupid business decision that a half decent manager could've talked them out of. They chose to go into debt to put on a crazy wild rock show thinking that future crowds will be big enough to make that investment worthwhile? Seems really far fetched, and very poorly thought out. Not to mention that they're going to have to now sustain that level of production next time around... Success in the live music business comes by staying it long enough, there's no "moonshot".
Jgrubb 12y ago
I read that article when it came out. I've played all those same rooms that they played on that tour, so let me speak from experience on exactly what they did wrong. Note the part where they don't have any management, which supposedly saves them money. Then note the part where they hire bunch of extra crew to "go all out for this tour" and 3 extra band members and then end up putting something like $20k on a credit card to make ends meet on the tour because of all the extra payroll. This is where the cliche of musicians being terrible at business comes from and where not having a manager - ostensibly to save the 15% of gross - is the ultimate false economy. Anybody here who's in business could tell you that they's lose money on that tour with all that extra payroll. Now look where they are. They have $20k sitting at credit card APRs to pay off before they can even think of breaking even with anything in the future. The bands I know that are more successful in smaller rooms are so because they run the numbers beforehand. It's that simple.

Nissl 12y ago

It's important to keep in mind that Pomplamoose made a conscious decision to hire 6 people to tour with with them and spend to put on a significant production. If they had instead chosen to tour as a duo with minimal production (not unreasonable considering they were playing to crowds of a few hundred outside their home base of SF), they would instead have made ~$20k each in a month. Not so bad.

tunesmith 12y ago
They addressed that in the article: "We could have played a duo show instead of hiring six people to tour with us. That would have saved us over $50,000, but it was important at this stage in Pomplamoose’s career to put on a wild and crazy rock show. We wanted to be invited back to every venue, and we wanted our fans to bring their friends next time. The loss was an investment in future tours." So it seems they suspected that investing less in production would have meant lower ticket sales for that tour and in the future, which is a rational suspicion regardless of how accurate it would have ended up being. Plus, if they had stripped it down, they still couldn't tour twelve months out of the year so it still wouldn't have amounted to a decent yearly income. At any rate, the point is that Pomplamoose is very well-known and even if they overshot by a few tens of thousands of dollars, it still shows that touring isn't exactly big bucks for even well-known indie bands. More commentary: http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-artists-cant-survive-as-saints-and-martyrs http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-ar...
- Jgrubb 12y ago
  I dunno, I still say this is exactly the kind of stupid business decision that a half decent manager could've talked them out of. They chose to go into debt to put on a crazy wild rock show thinking that future crowds will be big enough to make that investment worthwhile? Seems really far fetched, and very poorly thought out. Not to mention that they're going to have to now sustain that level of production next time around... Success in the live music business comes by staying it long enough, there's no "moonshot".

Jgrubb 12y ago

I read that article when it came out. I've played all those same rooms that they played on that tour, so let me speak from experience on exactly what they did wrong. Note the part where they don't have any management, which supposedly saves them money. Then note the part where they hire bunch of extra crew to "go all out for this tour" and 3 extra band members and then end up putting something like $20k on a credit card to make ends meet on the tour because of all the extra payroll. This is where the cliche of musicians being terrible at business comes from and where not having a manager - ostensibly to save the 15% of gross - is the ultimate false economy. Anybody here who's in business could tell you that they's lose money on that tour with all that extra payroll. Now look where they are. They have $20k sitting at credit card APRs to pay off before they can even think of breaking even with anything in the future. The bands I know that are more successful in smaller rooms are so because they run the numbers beforehand. It's that simple.