One of the biggest issues facing working musicians over the past few years is the increasing costs, and decreasing profitability, of touring. After illegal downloads and streaming decimated the market for recorded music, artists relied heavily on live shows to make ends meet. It wasn’t necessarily a fair model, but it held up decently for about two decades, until live entertainment ground to a halt during Covid-19 and returned a few years later into a new era of heavy inflation, rising costs, and stagnant wages.
While this tenuous situation has been well-documented, it’s rare for stories include hard numbers. That leaves lingering, but crucial questions: How much does it really cost to go on tour? How much money do artists actually make? How much do they lose? Does turning a profit really all hinge on merch?
Yesterday, Los Campesinos!, the indie rock stalwarts from Cardiff, Wales, offered some answers to those questions with a comprehensive breakdown of the finances for their 2024 North American tour in support of their latest album All Hell. In a post shared on Substack, the band’s frontman Gareth David revealed exactly how much money the band spent to play 11 shows in June 2024, how much money they made from those gigs, and how they eventually walked away with a profit of £38,246.64 (almost $52,000, using 2026 exchange rates).
David’s post is a fascinating, informative deep-dive, though he was quick to note that this breakdown was not meant “to explain the situation for all touring bands.” Rather it was offered up in the “spirit of attempting to be transparent and honest about the music industry, and perhaps to outline to our own fans why we are unable to tour more frequently and widely.”
The frontman also highlighted several elements unique to Los Campesinos! when taking their tour finances into account. The band comprises seven people, and they often tour with a few band members’ kids. So, there are some additional costs off the bat, but on the flip side, Los Campesinos! are self-managed, meaning they don’t have to pay out an additional commission to a manager or management company. (They do, however, have a booking agent and hire a tour manager for their U.S. runs.) Furthermore, each member has a day job, and the band is no one’s primary source of income. Lastly, David noted, “We are aware that specific ideological decisions we make impact our ability to maximize the money we earn.”
Technically, Los Campesinos! did earn a lot of money from this tour. As David explained, artists typically get paid for shows one of two ways: There’s the “guaranteed” minimum, which the promoter shells out, and the artist always gets, regardless of how many tickets are sold. But if ticket income exceeds the guarantee, the artist gets 80 percent of the show’s total profits instead. For instance, Los Campesinos! scored a $17,000 guarantee for one show, but because it sold out, they made $21,743.80.
These fees are based largely on ticket prices, and David acknowledged Los Campesinos! was likely leaving money on the table because of a deliberate choice to keep prices “as low as possible to ensure our shows are accessible to all fans.” The standard ticket price was $27.50, with some options available for low-income fans. Even still, Los Campesinos! sold out every concert except one on their tour, with total fees coming out to $149,037.74.
What’s remarkable is how quickly that sum shrinks. To start, Los Campesinos! really wound up making $127,729.53 (about £99,738.05) from those 11 shows after the standard 10 percent commission for their booking agent, withholding taxes, and extra production costs that came out of their show fees. And then there were all the other outgoing expenses.
David’s post is worth reading in full for these granular details, covering everything from how much Los Campesinos! shelled out for the visas necessary to tour North America (£5,415.82), to how much they paid for their tour bus and driver (£45,850.07, plus additional hotel costs so their driver had a place to recover in between all-night drives). Ultimately, the costs for Los Campesinos!’s 2024 tour piled up to a whopping £101,857.95 — meaning they technically came out of the trek in the red with a loss of £2,089.90.
In the end, the profit Los Campesinos! turned came from, as expected, merch sales. This area also has its own knotty math, which David digs into in great detail. But at the end of the day, Los Campesinos! made £40,336.54 from merch, meaning, after the aforementioned loss on the tour itself, they wound up netting £38,246.64 from the trek in total.
In the world of Los Campesinos!, that profit isn’t split amongst the band members, but rather put towards their next tour or project. That’s because, David explained, bands need capital on-hand to cover a lot of the expenses that pop up before any income is made on a tour or recording project.
“So for LC!, touring is expensive and packed with financial risk, but marginally possible,” David wrote at the end of the post. “Though it’s not the small amount of money the band earns that makes it worthwhile, it’s our love and passion for playing shows and hitting the road together. The same motivation we had when we first started touring twenty years ago.”
Whipped Cream*
Pop Albums Are Getting More Ambitious. Can Audiences Keep Up?
This Music May Contain Hope, the second album from British songstress Raye, makes great demands of its audience. The record nearly runs the length of a feature film and most of the 17 songs sound like they could soundtrack one. When the credits roll at the end — she thanks each and every person who helped create the record for six and a half minutes on “Fin.,” — they conclude a gloriously disorienting listening experience. For most of the album, Raye is asking you to come along as she fights and prays through despair and self-criticism to keep hope alive.
Sometimes that battle is filtered through songs that sound like show tunes or gospel hymns. In the case of “Click Clack Symphony,” they crescendo into a dizzying Hans Zimmer composition. There’s a level of patience and reciprocity the album requires from its listeners: At once confrontational and confessional, This Music May Contain Hope is not designed for detached consumption — and it’s part of a surge of recent releases that find artists creating ambitious records that encourage intentional engagement.
Last year, Hayley Williams released Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party as 17 individual singles. Fans created their own sequencing and narratives guided solely by the themes and sounds they chose. A few months later, Rosalía released Lux, a captivating 18-track record performed in 13 languages. It shares a musical complexity with This Music May Contain Hope and an interrogative spirit with The Apple Tree Under the Sea, the debut album from Hemlocke Springs released earlier this year. Each record is as all-consuming as the ideas they’re engaging with — mental anguish, faith and religion, internal and interpersonal implosion.
Raye often describes music as medicinal. Backed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Flames Collective choir on “I Know You’re Hurting,” her melodies and harmonies are bandages and sutures. When she instructs the listener to “close your eyes and let this music get to working,” she exudes the wisdom of an elder passing home remedies through generations. At a time when easier access to music often means increasingly passive listening, these albums replace momentary distraction with connection and compassion. They give the audience something to return to.
Raye included the voices of her grandparents at the start of “Life Boat.” The portion her grandfather contributes, where he says, “I’m living, not giving up,” was recorded just days before his death. More voices flood in across the next four minutes. They all repeat some variation of “I’m not giving up, yet,” some with more desperation than others. “Say it,” Raye says, stern and direct. “Say, ‘I’m not giving up, yet.’” The mantra is set against the kind of thudding club beat that defined the earliest phases of her career. Drums and synthesizers are interspersed with delicately arranged strings, but there’s something transcendent about the contours and echoes of Raye’s voice.
That kind of vocal power is something Rosalía speaks about often: Duende. The flamenco term refers to a type of enchantment delivered through an especially evocative vocal performance. It’s not necessarily about technical prowess, or precision. “There’s something so ethereal and divine about el duende,” Rosalía told The New York Times last year. “El duende is something that visits you. It’s something that comes to you.” It makes the listening experience feel targeted and personal. This funneled into Rosalía on Lux. The record unravels in a way that transcends the barrier of language.
Rosalía begins “Mundo Nuevo” in Spanish. Its translation reveals she’s searching for a hint of truth. She finishes “De Madrugá” in Ukrainian with something searching for her this time. “I’m not looking for revenge,” she sings. “Revenge is looking for me.” The London Symphony Orchestra and the Escolania de Montserrat i Cor Cambra Palau de la Música Catalana choir bolster the album, their arrangements ranging from anxious and erratic to soothing and hypnotic.
Rosalía introduced Lux with the first single “Bergain,” which splinters across German, Spanish, and English. When Yves Tumor’s voice cuts through on the song’s outro, the persistent repetition of “I’ll fuck you till you love me” is harsh and abrasive against the preceding moments. Rosalía chases that friction across Lux. Like her mix of languages, she challenges the listener with existentialism and ruminations on the afterlife. It might turn some listeners away, but the ones who stay are rewarded.
Most of the record was inspired by saints, like Teresa of Ávila or Joan of Arc. Their history adds a third layer to the depth of Lux; Hemlocke Springs similarly fixates on religious motifs on The Apple Tree Under the Sea. She weaves in medieval tales and impulsive adventures made for a storybook. Positioning herself as a character in her fantastical stories gives her audience someone to root for while creating some distance between fiction and reality.
In that sense, The Apple Tree Under the Sea shares a theatrical ease of access with This Music May Contain Hope. Raye’s cautionary tales about traitorous South London men who should be banned from WhatsApp play into the same spectacle as Springs’ “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles” and “Moses.” There’s a prelude towards the end of The Apple Tree Under the Sea that features the voice of a man who sounds far away as he preaches about sin and final judgements. It gets even harder to hear him when the sounds of running horses and marching feet cut through. The suspense builds into an orchestral outro that leads into “Sense (Is),” a booming, optimistic song about making the most of a clean slate and a glass half full.
Springs’ journey is the shortest within this set of albums. It spans 10 songs in just over half an hour, but retains its complexities with winding plot twists. Where she leans into communicating through stories and allegories, Raye through a version of theater, and Rosalía essentially through multinational cathedrals, Williams’ Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party brings listeners into an excruciatingly vivid reality. The achingly haunted “True Believer” walks the streets of Nashville. It moves down Broadway and past repurposed clubs. It attends the churches and questions the rhetoric presented in them. It runs parallel to the moments across the album that brings listeners into a home with fragile glass walls.
The album’s most shattering moment arrives towards the end: “Good ‘Ol Days.” It’s not as distressing as “Negative Self Talk,” or as sobering as “Whim.” It glides along a warm groove and drops burning one-liners with pointed specificity. What fortifies it the most is an appearance from Williams’ grandfather midway through the song. “You are so tacky/I think that’s why I love you so much,” he says in a voicemail message. “I just had to call you first on my new phone/I love you, y’all have a blast, bye.” The interlude emphasizes just how interior the content of the record is, made up of real moments, people, and feelings.
There’s a false perception in pop music that the best way to connect with the masses is to keep things broad — that vague generalizations are easier for people to latch onto. But the hyper-specificity and confrontation on these albums form real connection, creating the feeling that the listener is being trusted with someone else’s secrets and struggles — and safe to embrace their own, too.
There’s bravery in how these artists are driven by conviction. They understand the reach their platforms provide, but have little interest in idolatry. They each use different formats to craft a sense of togetherness even in their most intimate moments, like it means more to show someone they aren’t alone than to tell them. They ask for patience as they remind listeners it’s commendable to try. Some people don’t come to music looking for this; it can be challenging to have an artist in your ear telling you to bring your most shattering emotions and memories to the surface. But those are the kind of records that endure over time.