A few days ago a tweet surfaced from the platform formerly known as Twitter that suggested Live Nation would soon be eliminating merch cuts at its venues, starting immediately at a few locations in Texas as well as across the country. Turns out that was mostly true, as today (September 26), via a report in Billboard, Live Nation has unveiled On The Road Again, a program inspired by Willie Nelson that is designed to “support developing artists and crew at the club level.”
As part of the program, which lists Boston’s House of Blues as a “participating venue,” each performing band or artist at club shows will be given an “extra $1,500 per show in gas & travel cash for all headliners and openers – on top of nightly performance compensation.” It also states that “clubs will charge no merchandise selling fees, so artists keep 100 percent of merch profits for each show.”
Merch cuts — where a venue takes a select percentage of whatever merchandise a band or artist sells at the venue that night — has become a contentious topic in live music circles. The discourse fired back up after a Jeff Rosenstock tweet earlier this month, sent on Labor Day, called attention to the venues that were taking a share of his sales at the merch table.
“Touring is a crucial part of an artist’s livelihood, and we understand travel costs take one of the biggest bites out of artists’ nightly profits,” states Live Nation in a press release, via Billboard. “By helping with these core expenses, we aim to make it easier for artists on the road so they can keep performing to their fans in more cities across the country.”
The program is expected to save performing artists “tens of millions per year” as it offsets rising travel costs and allows performers to keep their entire merch cut.
“Touring is important to artists so whatever we can do to help other artists, I think we should do it. This program will impact thousands of artists this year and help make touring a little bit easier,” declares Nelson on the program homepage. Nelson lent the classic title of his 1980 tour life song to the endeavor, apparently.
Other aspects of On The Road Again are a $5 million donation to Crew Nation, which supports road and show crew across the industry; and special bonuses for tour, promoter, and venue staff, dubbed “the behind-the-scenes heroes helping shows happen.”
“Delivering for live artists is always our core mission,” Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s president and CEO, tells Billboard. “The live music industry is continuing to grow and as it does, we want to do everything we can to support artists at all levels on their touring journey especially the developing artists in clubs. Like Willie says, this is all about making it a little easier for thousands of artists to continue doing what they love: going out and playing for their fans.”
