Look, you fucking wooks! I mean this with all the love of your favorite aunt, the cool one you’d call to bail you out of jail when you got busted for public intoxication at eighteen. Stop asking for free stuff at the merch table. Seriously, stop. I get it! To you, it’s just a koozie or a sticker, but merch is expensive to produce, and for the bands you claim to love and support, what little money they make, they need to keep the ship afloat. The artist is ultimately a business that PAID to produce the items. And despite what you think, they aren’t making much money on the items.
The profits of the merch table are typically skim margins because plenty of other people have their hands in the merch money. And while you may think the asking price is unreasonable, pricing at the merch table is done with plenty of forethought. Here’s a breakdown of what that looks like for that “overpriced” $5 koozie.
If each koozie costs the band $1.50 to produce, including the artwork, the initial profit appears to be $3.50. But wait! That $3.50 doesn’t go directly to the band. Nope. The band is responsible for paying sales tax. If the state sales tax averages 8% or $0.40, the profit is reduced to $3.10. As part of standard practice and contracts, most venues take a house cut, typically around 20% of the gross sales. So on this $5 koozie, the venue will take 20% of $4.60 or $0.92, reducing the profit to $2.18. And guess what? We’re still not done.
In most cases, especially for nationally touring artists, the band’s management team has their hand in the pot, also taking anywhere from 10% to 20%. Assuming the high end, another $0.92 comes out, reducing the total profit to $1.26. And in case you forgot, someone at the merch table is selling that $5 koozie, so depending on the tour, the merch seller is either paid a day rate or a commission rate. Sometimes, that may be mere pennies on the dollar, but that rate could be as much as 5% on a commission tour. So again, considering the worst-case scenario, yank away $0.41, and that artist is left with a cool $0.85 per koozie.
Now, on an average tour of mid-sized clubs (500 to 1000 ticket caps), an artist sells, if they are lucky, 500 koozies. The artist nets a whopping $450. And what does that buy them?
At current gas prices, perhaps 113 gallons of gas or enough gas to fill the average van just under five times?
Or maybe a dozen guitar strings?
Or two nights at a hotel for the entire band and crew?
Or they reinvest the money into more merch to try and keep the damn thing going.
Artists pay for a lot of things on the road: gas, vehicle insurance, merch, personnel (including but not limited to management, tour manager, merch seller/merch manager, sound and/or monitor engineers, lighting director, and Bandwagon/bus driver), marketing and show promotion, hotel rooms, food, equipment, lights, assorted gear and a laundry list of assorted items that come up unexpectedly. And if by the grace of god, they are extremely lucky, they may even pay themselves.
So no, you absolutely, may not, under any circumstance, have something for free from the merch table. The ask is insulting and short sited. So please, stop asking.
And for any of you that steal from the merch table; stickers, lighters, or other small items on the merch table… I can only hope there’s a special place in hell for you where you’ll be forced to listen to Nickelback’s “Photograph” on repeat while the sounds of a screaming, hungry baby blare in the background.