I'm not an expert or industry insider so take the following lightly.
The reason why they make more money on tour is because of how the current music industry contracts are set up. The music industry take a massive cut of record sales leaving the artist with very little. Also, when recording an album, an artist gets an advance from their label to pay for the studio, the sound engineers, etc. This advance is paid back through their royalties before they ever see a cheque from the label. As you can imagine the cost of a professional cd recording is quite high. The combination of a small cut + reimbursement makes it so that most bands never see a cent from cd sales and make it up with touring and merchandise sales.
This however is changing and not in a good way. Increasingly, labels are forcing artists into what's commonly reffered to as a "360 deal" which gives a cut of everything to the label. CD sales, touring, merchandise, etc, the label gets a cut of it all.
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I'm not an expert or industry insider so take the following lightly.
The reason why they make more money on tour is because of how the current music industry contracts are set up. The music industry take a massive cut of record sales leaving the artist with very little. Also, when recording an album, an artist gets an advance from their label to pay for the studio, the sound engineers, etc. This advance is paid back through their royalties before they ever see a cheque from the label. As you can imagine the cost of a professional cd recording is quite high. The combination of a small cut + reimbursement makes it so that most bands never see a cent from cd sales and make it up with touring and merchandise sales.
This however is changing and not in a good way. Increasingly, labels are forcing artists into what's commonly reffered to as a "360 deal" which gives a cut of everything to the label. CD sales, touring, merchandise, etc, the label gets a cut of it all.