When Wednesday stepped onstage before a sold-out show opening for Beach Bunny last year, they took a moment to admire the romantic setting of the nearly century-old Fox Theater. By the time they ventured to the merch table, though, their dreamy mood turned into a dim memory; staff at the Oakland concert hall refused to negotiate, holding firm about taking a percentage of the band’s merchandise profits that evening. “Their merch cut was really inflexible,” says Wednesday singer Karly Hartzman. “Having someone be so intense to take $300 from an opening band is pretty despicable. They were getting plenty of money already from the main act, just to take more from a band that was barely making back their money.”
If you follow your favorite indie artists on social media, then there’s a good chance you’ve seen the conversation about merch cuts unfold over the past few years. When a handful of artists started openly discussing their experiences with venues taxing their merch in 2022, the general public got to peek behind closed doors. This Labor Day, Jeff Rosenstock uploaded a venue-by-venue breakdown of merch cuts on his headlining tour with a detailed explanation of what it all meant, which set the site formerly known as Twitter ablaze. Singer-songwriter Tomberlin followed suit with a consistent string of posts railing against merch cuts, and later, her detailed callout of the Virginia amphitheater Wolf Trap went viral. The fight to retain full merch profits has been a long one, with bands speaking up for years now. Countless artists have joined the recent public discourse—including Japanese Breakfast, Jack Antonoff, Ratboys, Dry Cleaning, Illuminati Hotties, and L’Rain—to say enough is enough.
The origin story of merch cuts has two unofficial tellings. When straightedge scenes started booking shows at bars in the 1980s, pub owners struck a deal to take a portion of a band’s merch profits to offset the lack of drink sales. That logic eventually coaxed its way into all-ages shows and, in turn, established music venues. Others have said that merch cuts began in the 1970s. With the rising popularity of tour shirts as souvenirs, promoters and venue owners in Los Angeles and New York City demanded a share of the profits for hosting concerts on their property, Dying Fetus’ Jason Netherton told Decibel.
The standard percentages of profits that venues take from merch range from 10 to as much as 40 percent, with those numbers varying between soft merch (clothing, hats, tote bags) and hard merch (vinyl, CDs, cassette tapes). That’s a sizable cut when you consider how much artists pay to create their goods in the first place. When a band spends $8 to print a T-shirt and sells it to fans for $20, they earn a profit margin of $12 per shirt. If that same band sells their album on vinyl for $20, but had to pay $15 wholesale for each individual copy, that results in a $5 profit margin. For CDs, cassette tapes, and books, the profit margins get even smaller. That meager pile of money shrinks more once venues carve out their take, which leads to artists raising the price of merch.
“When Tegan and Sara played the Chicago Theatre back in the day, they was pleading with the venue, basically in tears, to let them sell their own merch and they were acting like cops,” recalls Tomberlin. “When I opened the Chicago Theatre on this recent tour, I chose to not sell merch because it doesn’t make sense... I’m not charging $70 for a T-shirt [just to make a profit].” For Tomberlin, and plenty of others, all she wants is to simply have a choice in the matter—especially when denied a say in the negotiations of planning of a tour because she’s an opener.
Over the past three years, merch cut percentages have climbed and become largely unavoidable. It’s the latest in a particularly potent formula of touring difficulties that went sour post-pandemic: gas hikes, inescapable inflation on food and lodging, venues overbooking, no significant income from streaming revenue, and of course, the physical and financial pitfalls of COVID-19. “Most artists are fronting the money for everything [for their tours]—flights, renting vans, and yes, merch,” Julia Holter explains over email. “Then in the midst of all this, venues are taking increasingly significant merch cuts, sometimes 20 to 35 percent, despite not having contributed in any way to the costs of making merch. This practice takes away from one of the few remaining direct forms of compensation for artists, and will contribute to more artists having to cancel tours.”
Laura Jane Grace has been calling out how the music industry normalizes financial inequity for over 20 years, and she’s got the Against Me! songs to prove it. After the pandemic, however, things got noticeably worse. “There used to be a little more flexibility with merch cuts, but once all the promoters caught onto it, it became the industry standard,” she says over the phone. “There was more negotiation room 15 years ago. It was a choice between you getting a guarantee and giving the venue a merch rate, or you take a door deal and no merch rate, which is solely dependent on if people show up. Now there is no choice. You, the artist, are fronting all the money, you’re taking all of the risk, you’re doing all of the work, but the venue dictates the terms. How is that fair?”
Every artist interviewed for this piece agreed that the unspoken norm is to politely ask a representative from the venue not to take any cut of the merch sales. If they refuse, quickly pack your belongings at the end of the show and try to bolt without paying. “The compromise that was reached over the years—which wasn’t what we decided to do, it was us realizing that everyone does this—is to just fucking rip ‘em off,” says Grace. “It’s this stupid-ass song and dance where you try to steal from us and we try to steal from you.” Even managers are tipping the scales, she says, by demanding 15 percent of net merch sales before venues take their share (instead of afterwards, like usual). Added together, whether it comes out to $100 or $1000, the venue’s revenue share is a crucial amount for the average touring artist trying to break even, especially those playing smaller venues.
Grace will never forget the first time Against Me! encountered merch cuts in 2004. “It was the 9:30 Club and we were just aghast because we were selling our shirts for $8,” she recalls. “We refused that night, and we got into a yelling match with the promoter.” Years later, artists still name the D.C. institution as one of the most militaristic examples among clubs of its size. Those who play the 1,200-capacity room report feeling hung out to dry at the merch table, often airing their frustrations onstage and online.
“9:30 Club are hardcore with this,” says Tomberlin. “They don’t let you sell your own merch, you have to stand there while they count every item, and they won’t count you out until they’re done counting out the headliner. Just waiting at the end can take over an hour and a half.” (The 9:30 Club did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Pitchfork.) A spokesperson for I.M.P., the Maryland-based promotion company that bought 9:30 Club in 1986, told DCist that merch cuts help offset the “enormously expensive” cost of operating venues.
The main reason smaller venues claim it’s easier to sell merch on behalf of an artist is to deal with the taxes, explains a third-party merch seller who spoke to Pitchfork under the condition of anonymity. With sales tax, entertainment tax, and other taxes varying from state to state, the process gets confusing, especially late at night when artists are exhausted. If bands don’t pay up, the venue gets in trouble, he explained. That’s a risk venues don’t want to take, even if bands vocalize that they want to handle the burden of taxes themselves.
For medium-sized venues, there’s also the matter of staffing. At the Salt Shed, an independent Chicago venue with indoor/outdoor spaces accommodating 3,300 and 5,000 people, respectively, they take a 10 percent cut of all merch sales in exchange for providing multiple sellers, unloading semi-trucks full of merch, and coordinating shipping to the next tour date location. Artists can opt out if they meet certain requirements, like staffing enough sellers and scheduling all merch shipments offsite, among other guidelines. “We hold our sellers to a high standard because ultimately the fan experience is the responsibility of the venue,” say directors of music Brent Heyl and Jake Samuels at 16” on Center, which owns the Salt Shed as well as merch cut-free venues Empty Bottle and Thalia Hall. “In the case that a fan is stuck in a merch line that keeps them there well into the headliner’s set, that fan will not stop to ask whether the merch sellers were in-house or from the artist. They’ll just leave having a subpar experience.”
Yet the recent uproar from artists has already convinced venues around the world to reconsider their justifications and take the rallying cries to heart. The Biltmore Theatre in Oshawa, Ontario eliminated merch cuts days after Rosenstock’s viral post. Connecticut venues Space Ballroom and College Street Music Hall issued a joint statement that artists will maintain 100 percent of merch revenue moving forward that same week. Denver ballroom Cervantes followed suit, permanently abolishing their 20 percent rate in response to the national conversation. “We feel they deserve this money and are proud to be a part of this movement,” says marketing director Diana Azab. “Touring has gotten more and more expensive and artists don’t make much money streaming their music, so every bit counts to help them pay expenses on the road.”
They’re joining a list of venues that are proud to not take merch cuts on principle, like Washington, D.C.’s famed Black Cat, which has refused to do so since opening its doors 30 years ago. “The club was started by a touring musician, so there’s an understanding of why merch sales are important to bands,” explains promotion manager Maegan Wood. A new generation of owners founded their venues on a similar artist-first policy, like Chicago’s Subterranean and Toronto’s Lee’s Palace, to pay it forward. Treefort Music Hall, a 1,041-capacity venue in Boise, Idaho, proudly does the same and says that a whopping 80 percent of their profits are drink sales anyway. “I come from the DIY touring world and it was always frustrating to encounter [merch cuts] as an artist,” says Eric Gilbert, co-founder of Duck Club Entertainment, which owns the venue. “The solution is venues and artists better recognizing that their relationship is symbiotic in nature: risk should be shared and upsides should be shared.”
Live Nation and AEG Presents—the first and second largest presenters of live music in the world, respectively—are viewed by music fans as the big bad wolves in all things concert-related. Their ownership of amphitheaters, arenas, and large venue chains like House of Blues has since gone on to swallow up small clubs, too. One of AEG’s most well-known regional partnerships is Bowery Presents, which owns beloved venues like the State Theatre in Portland, Maine; the Sinclair and Royale in Boston; Union Transfer and Franklin Music Hall in Philadelphia; and Brooklyn Steel and Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York City, among countless others. They toe the line of appearing independent while corporate backing keeps them afloat. (Bowery Presents and its venues never responded to a request for comment.)
With the pressure mounting, Live Nation appeared to respond to the merch cuts discourse with On the Road Again, a new program that sounded too good to be true. Touring artists who play any of the 77 participating Live Nation clubs in North America will not be charged merch fees and, additionally, will receive $1,500 in “gas and travel cash.” Less than half of American states even include a venue that qualifies for the program. It began on September 26 and will continue for at least “the next few months.” (Live Nation has not responded to emails for clarification.) Naysayers called it a PR scam to garner goodwill or bolster the market for Live Nation’s own venues. Musicians who are cautiously optimistic still recognize that it barely dents the company’s astronomical wealth.
Now that the On the Road Again program is in effect, are artists actually getting those substantial payments? Yes, but Tomberlin says it highlights how infrequently tour routes include those specific venues. Only one date on the Ray LaMontagne tour she opened for qualified, and it happened to be the day before Live Nation unveiled On the Road Again publicly. “The Live Nation promoter said they were supposed to announce it today and would give it to me anyway, so I got $750 in cash and $750 in Shell gas station gift cards, which was sick,” she recalls. “It was the one night in the contract where we got 100 percent of merch, too. But that was the only time I’ve gotten it.”
For artists who speak out against merch cuts, the most common rebuttal is to simply play different venues. There’s nuance to that decision, however, as downsizing to a smaller room limits the amount of fans who can attend. Tomberlin shared an example from another artist who works with her booking agent: When Live Nation theaters refused to budge on their merch cut policies for Mitski’s upcoming tour, her booking agent at High Road Touring reached out to other theaters instead, oftentimes ones with smaller capacities, just to fulfill that she’d get 100 percent of her merch sales. The tradeoff? Mitski fans were pressed to score tickets, prompting her to issue an apology online and promise more tour legs would be announced.
Artists have suggested all manner of solutions: requesting W-9 forms, signing a printed agreement confirming the practice is hypocritical, selling merch from their vans afterwards or opening a pop-up shop down the street. While those fixes might work on a smaller scale, they turn unfeasible for artists ascending into the world of auditorium-sized venues where merch demand rockets. That’s what Rosenstock, who spray-painted blank shirts for Bomb the Music Industry! fans in parking lots after their shows, realized during his transition into medium-sized venues to tour HELLMODE.
“You think someone like Mitski is gonna have a thousand people waiting to buy merch, lined down the street of some town, and it’ll be fine? You don’t think police would show up and say, ‘Hey, where’s your vendor license?’” says Rosenstock. “The attitude I see a lot of the time is like, ‘Oh whatever, Mitski is playing these big shows. She’s making enough.’ But what the fuck is that? Mitski deserves the money she’s earning the same way anyone does, a musician big or small, or anyone who works any job.”
Some hoped the National Independent Venues Association (NIVA) would help establish a middle ground in this battle. Instead, it has “no position” on contractual negotiations between artists, agents, venues, and promoters, rather choosing to focus on government aid and reforming concert ticketing practices. “We respect the independence of [every party] to negotiate terms that work best for them,” NIVA said in a statement to Pitchfork. “The more complex, layered issue challenging all of us is this: the economics of live entertainment must drastically improve for artists and independent venues. We welcome an open discussion with artists and the entire industry about those economics, and how we can work together to make a more sustainable, healthy ecosystem for everyone.” Artists applying pressure to NIVA are disappointed with the lack of support from an organization whose goal is to “fight for the survival of independent venues”—which, they argue, should include determining a way to survive that’s not dependent on merch revenue from musicians.
Every artist Pitchfork spoke with echoes a similar sentiment: it’s draining to keep up this fight, nevermind to bring it into the spotlight, but the weight of that attention lightens when it’s distributed among other bands sharing their experiences. “It’s really exhausting,” admits Hartzman. “Talking about it sucks, but even people that don’t want to get involved in the discourse are being driven to speak out because it’s affecting our livelihoods so much.”
For greater change to happen, collective pressure must happen—which is where the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) comes in. In 2022, UMAW partnered with the Featured Artists Coalition and rapper Cadence Weapon to launch the #MyMerch campaign calling for an end to merch fees. “We want to see merch cuts totally eliminated in our lifetime,” says Weapon. “One day, future generations will look back at this moment and see our current situation as unthinkable, similar to how smoking was more common in bars only a couple decades ago.”
Over 170 venues and festivals have signed the #MyMerch pledge to be part of the 100% Venues campaign, allowing fans and musicians alike to see which North American venues let artists retain their full revenue from merch. The goal is to start with venues that find themselves in a similar place as the Stone Church in Brattleboro, Vermont—where merch cuts are technically still on the offer sheets for bands, but the venue isn’t charging them—to expunge rules that are rarely enforced.
At the end of the day, more than a dozen artists confirmed that a venue’s decision to take merch cuts informs where they choose to play—or avoid. That currency just might be the most valuable one in the long run for venues. “I remember the shows that take care of us forever,” says Hartzman. “There’s a venue that Wednesday never sells out in Alabama called Saturn, but they have the best amenities, an awesome staff, and we’ll always hold them in very high regard. That will make more money in the long run because artists are playing your venue repeatedly over the years and sending other bands your way. That’s a good incentive for not being an asshole.”
