Touring-Economics - vo.rs

The Merch Table: Where Bands Actually Make Their Money

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The most important square metre in any venue is a folding table at the back, under the worst lighting in the building, stacked with T-shirts in size runs from small to a hopeful XXXL, with a card reader gaffer-taped to a shoebox and a person behind it who has been on their feet since load-in and will be there long after the last chord. That table is where the tour actually makes its money. Everything on the stage — the lights, the pyro, the ninety minutes of transcendence — is, in cold commercial terms, an advert for the table. I mean that literally. For most touring bands below the arena tier, the gig is the loss-leader and the shirt is the product.

The Support Slot: Playing to a Room That Didn't Come for You

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Doors open at seven and I am already inside, because I am always already inside. This is the thing people don’t understand about me: I do not turn up for the headliner. I turn up for the band nobody has come to see — four people carrying their own amps up the load-in ramp two hours earlier, tuning in a dressing room the size of a broom cupboard, walking out at half past seven to a floor that is one-fifth full and mostly staring at the bar. Twenty-five minutes later they walk off, and maybe eleven people clapped like they meant it. That is the support slot. It is the hardest gig in live music and it is also, when it works, the most electric thing you will see all night.