Are venues entitled to take % of profit made from artists’ merch?
After the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, musicians and music venues have been struggling alike – but in a time where both parties should rely on each other for support, one side is taking from the other.
Live music is the primary way for artists make profit, but when certain venues take a cut of up to 20% of merch sales the artist is left struggling by the end of the night. This was recently criticised by Tim Burgess of ‘The Charlatans’, who tweeted “bands need merch income to survive”, and pointed out that “often it’s a completely separate ‘concession’ company that the venue deals with as part of a contract” – meaning despite not wanting this service from the venue, the artists’ own hired merchandise seller is being stopped from doing their job and a concession of 25% is taken from artists’ merch sales.
To try and tackle this issue, musicians are taking it into their own hands to sell their merchandise after shows elsewhere – for example, in March 2022, British band Dry Cleaning hosted their own merch pop-up store in a pub nearby the venue when they played the O2 Forum in London. While She Sleeps, a metal band from Sheffield, planned their own merchandise pop-up event before a hometown show in April 2022, and invited other bands to join them in order to make 100% profit from their sales and meet fans. Musicians organising small events like these in order to help each other after enduring financial setbacks due to COVID not only shows the community within the music scene but also stops artists’ forcefully increasing merch prices in order to gain a larger profit due to cuts taken from venues.
However, it could be argued that over the pandemic musicians had more opportunities to make up money lost than venues did – COVID hit them just as hard, and with restrictions stopping events full stop, venues had no other ways of generating profit. In larger venues like arenas and stadiums, the artist’s own merchandise workers would not be able to run stands alone, therefore giving concession companies a fair role in the live music industry. In comparison to this, multiple venues have signed the FAC 100% Venues directory – a campaign for venues to promise to never take a cut of musicians’ merchandise sales. Despite larger UK venues owned by O2 and The Academy Group not having signed onto the directory, this action helps both artists and venues who can’t afford to have musicians boycott their sites.
Both parties have suffered a large loss of income as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns, but it is clear that the current system in place needs to change – more control and choice given to the artists on whether or not they wish to utilise these concession companies, and a reduction on the percentage of merch sales that the venue takes home in order to keep fair prices for fans and a fair profit for the artists.
Mia Lambdin