Speaking Of Touring, Jack Antonoff Calls On Venues To Stop Taking Merch Cuts

Jack Antonoff has entered the Touring Is Untenable chat. Posting to Twitter yesterday, the superproducer wrote, "While we are having the discussion, can venues simply stop taxing merchandise of artists? This is literally the only way you make money when you start out touring."

Antonoff added: "The more we make it tenable for young and small artists to make a living on the road, the more great music we will get" and "touring is one of the most honest ways to make a living. some of the hardest and most heartfelt work you can do. so why must fuck artist so hard?"

He concluded: "Simpel [sic] solutions, stop taxing merch, stop lying to artists about costs of putting on shows, include artists in more areas of revenue. the stories i could tell from my years touring are bananas. young artists on tour are the last to see any money."

This is the latest in a series of artist-led discussions around touring — as Lorde recently put it — a "demented struggle to break even or face debt." Last month, Spiral Stairs tweeted that Live Nation "took 30% [of our merch] last night for doing NOTHING."

Last August, hundreds of venues signed an agreement to not take a cut of artists' merch sales after Tim Burgess of the Charlatans announced how Nottingham venue Rock City waived their traditional cut of merch sales in May. "It’s something that’s been around for years," Burgess told NME of the practice. "But when we spoke up to our manager and label, they’d just say ‘That’s the way it is.'"

Burgess also spoke about raising fan awareness: "They definitely didn’t know about the scale of it at first. But lots more fans know now. So many said that they bought merch as a way of supporting the band and thinking it helped with costs of being on the road. It was a wake-up call. It’s a start, and I’m glad that lots of venues are listening."

https://twitter.com/spiralmusic/status/1583708921209901057