This is a myth unfortunately. Unless you are a really big name artist - or a mod-level or above artist doing a show in your home town - the economics of live and touring for most musicians mean they are more likely to lose money than make money.

Imagine a band with four or five members doing a 20 date tour in 1000 cap venues where tickets are $40 each. Maths looks good, right? $40,000 a night! $800k for the tour, and then you can sell a bunch of merch an easily make $1 million. Great!

No.

A touring band might sell out every night of the tour but more likely it’s going to be 70-80% occupancy. So let’s call it 75%. Suddenly that $800k drops to $600k.

But then you need to pay the venue/promoter a big chunk of that. Depending on what the promoter is providing that could be as much as 40-50%

Let’s go with a conservative 40%.

You’re down to $360k now.

But you’ve still got to pay all the costs of the tour.

A 20 date tour probably means 25 days on the road, at least.

A tour bus that could fit 4 or 5 people plus tour manager (yes, you need one) and a tech/roadie/sound engineer to get the set up right in each venue (let’s say you’ve got one person who can do all of this) is going to cost $1500 a day for the vehicle. Add in mileage, which is often about $5+ per mile. So that 20 date tour with 25 days on the road, and 4000 miles (coast to coast) will cost you maybe $57.5k for the tour bus and driver and mileage. (Gas, insurance etc are covered by the per mile charges that tour bus operators charge). You’re going to need to park the tour bus during the day. That’s maybe $200 a day. More in some cities.

You’re down to $300k now.

But wait - no one has been paid yet!

The tour manager will easily cost $450 per day or more - and there will be days require for planning (“advancing”) the tour and wrap up days. So the 25 date tour might need 5 days advancing and two days post-tour admin. That’s $14400, so call it $15k.

Your technician will cost about the same. Maybe less, but you want someone who can do three things, so let’s call your manager plus tech/sound engineer $30k.

We are down to $240k now.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that the artist’s manager and billing agent commission on the “gross” - the entire amount the artist gets before costs - the $360k fee from tickets after the promoter’s share. Those commissions are typically 20% to manager and 15% to agent. So we need to deduct another $126k.

That gives $114k left.

None of the band members have been paid yet.

But, also, they need a support act for each show. If each support act gets $500 then that’s another $10k gone. $104k left.

Everyone needs a per diem! 7 people on the road, plus driver. They all need coffees, water, laundry, dry cleaning, gym passes, cough medicine, whatever, plus a “buy-out” for meals. So let’s make sure everyone has $60 a day for the buy-out and another $20 for incidentals. $16k. $88k left.

The tour - and all the gear - hasn’t been insured yet, and the band and crew don’t have insurance for medical emergencies while touring. Let’s say that’s going to cost another $3k total.

And then everyone needs flights and cabs at the end of the tour to get home. They’ll have excess luggage and instruments. So let’s call that $1500 each. Another $10k.

That’s means there’s $75k left.

The band needs to rehearse and build their live show. So that’s probably a couple of weeks rehearsal, planning, etc. So that’s a 40 day commitment.

Five people, 40 days, $75k. Each band member walks away with $15k - or $375 a day.

But how often are you going be doing a tour of that scale? Once a year probably. And touring is gruelling.

If you’re playing bigger venues with higher ticket prices there is more money - but costs can also scale.

To make $75k from bandcamp you need to sell maybe 10,000 $10 albums.

To make $75k from streaming you’d need maybe 18-20 million streams.

And you can do that without the crippling costs of touring.

Sure, if you’re on a label you’re going to get a lot less.

But touring isn’t a magic money tree, and it’s hard work.

Uhm, is that actually true? How is the $10 I spend on a digital album on Bandcamp not 90%+ profit for the band? Sure, maybe the overpriced T-shirt has a bit more profit as a raw number, but realistically, I'm going to buy a band's merch the one time I see them every 3-5 years (assuming they stay together and tour for that long). If they release music more frequently, I would suspect buying a digital album is more sustainable long term.

I think this is also why you see bands like Weezer releasing more niche EPs/LPs. Heck, look at jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews who release every single live show online as a separate album for fans to also buy to relive the experience they had at a particular show. The hardcore fans will buy the music, so it's in the band's best interest to "keep shipping" and record as much as possible.

Of course that depends somewhat on the venue and the cut they take of ticket and merch sales too.