rollingstone.com/music/music-features/indie-rock-live-music-tour-affordability-crisis-1235501703

“First and foremost, we’ve been dealt a tough hand with inflation and wage stagnation,” Morse says. “The availability of inventory for tour buses, the cost of those tour buses, the fuel for those tour buses, accommodation, taxes, general production expenses — all of that has slimmed the margin. The bottom line is, it’s more expensive to tour.”

“The cost of gas is crazy,” adds Andrew Morgan, an agent at Wasserman who works with MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, and Angel Olsen. “It’s gone down a little bit, but it’s still really high. Inflation is making groceries more expensive, so trying to eat reasonably on the road and not always eat fast food is tough. The cost of everything is going up.”

And since very few acts in any genre can count on significant income from streaming, finding a way to turn a profit or at least break even on the road is even more crucial. “It’s one of the last areas we could be potentially making money,” Maynard, Dry Cleaning’s bassist, adds. “So then if you’re losing money all across the board, you’re kind of f***ed.”

basically lot of international acts are deciding against touring him US due to the pricey visa process, we might see less bands touring for a solo artist in the future, and fans with less money for food are deciding to just see the A-List artists, leaving the indie artist in the dust.

tl;dr:

@hadjigaviota @AmoryBlain @Brave @Jim_Halpert_ @YoungNastyShawty

yea that makes sense especially if you're an international act trying tour in the age of aggressive ICE

born too late for the 80s when touring musicians was making bank

born too soon to be an alt right streamer superstar on kick/rumble

born just in time to witness the industry collapse

inflation is playing a big part in this too.

I'm shocked that venues are still taking merch cuts (which to me never made any sense).

Saw this. S*** crazy. Lemme report back after the Elmjack tour and I'll lyk if we make money

Artists with fanbases should never ever ever put their music on streaming

that thing's really gon go down in history as what killed this s*** huh

If I’m j cole dropping an album in two weeks im telling my fans today hey here’s the website to pay $9 for the album.

Idk how this can be rectified

If somehow streaming could not be 99.99% of music consumption

It can’t be. The means of production and consumption is just different now unfortunately

I love playing live with my band, but circumstances have forced me to rethink the idea that I could be happy trying to carve out a life as a touring musician. The stress is too much and the financial situation is precarious.

Most of my focus these days is on getting better as a producer and songwriter and working towards monetizing those skills with as little overhead as possible. I can do those things no matter how old I get, but touring has a real shelf life and it's not even sustainable for 95% of young people.

Traveled to Europe for a festival last year and realized the scale of artists that just exist and probably won't tour the U.S. anytime soon if ever. A few U.S. tours were canceled last year too because artists or key individuals faced issues obtaining a visa.

Even mainstay indie acts with notable audiences like Men I Trust usually drive themselves between cities. Not to mention openers and touring band members...

venues started insisting on merch cuts during the rise of straight edge punk shows, since the bar wouldn't make their usual amount

venues haven't relented since

Kill it.

Burn and rebuild.

What’s the most realistic way you think this can be achieved

Prolly total systematic collapse of everything tbh.

The way this system is built is not meant to help out the arts, humanities.

Ever since I left the industry I’ve noticed the pie gets smaller and smaller every year. Yikes

It’s meant to squeeze a couple more cents for shareholders.

What’s more likely to happen first just music industry practices or ww3

This would be so fire

need that money to build acres of cloud computing resources to replace more jobs

what did you move to