I have never really given it a thought. Every band needs to travel, duh, but the coast of hoping in a tour van, tour bus, or several vehicles to drag around all of your gear is going to cost you a lot. Hell, I used to struggle keeping enough gas in my tank to do my everyday tasks... Until this glorious thing happened. A gift from the vehicle Gods graced all of us with the decline in gas prices. It started in June, and has only gotten more glorious over time. We are sitting at here in Iowa, $1.87 on average for a gallon of gas. That makes me beyond happy, and makes our favorite bands even happier.
Like I said before, I never thought about bands fueling their huge tour buses until I ran across and article that stated bands are saving as much as $22,000 over 30 tour dates. That is awesome! But you know what's even better... that means that bands have the ability to lower their ticket prices. Now, I'm not saying they have, because I keep an eye on concert ticket prices, and depending on what group you want to see, tickets are still pretty ridiculously expensive. But, maybe with time, these prices will lower, or the band members will put a little more money in their pocket. I don't know...
Fun fact for you though, bands who are just starting out will most likely still have day jobs. Here's why... Think about it, you have to pay to get all of your equipment to the venue, you have to pay to have people help you unload and be sound techs, you have to pay someone to administer your work, you have to pay someone to record your songs, and then you have to pay for your merchandise to set out at your concert. A venue is only probably going to hire your for a few thousand dollars. So, after you pay everyone who has made this possible for you, you have to divvy up all of your remaining money between you and your band mates, which you could have anywhere from 3 to 6 guys. Let's be honest, there's not going to be much for you to take home. Venues are going to keep the profit of ticket sales, unless you know you're going to pack the house, and you can work out a deal where you take a percentage of the ticket sales. But, even then you have to be a decent size band to make that come true. So, moral of this story, my dream of wanting to be a rockstar is probably never going to become true because I don't want to have to scrape by my entire life playing gigs hoping to get signed one day.
But, gas prices are awesome and they're helping everyone. So, hooray for now! Ask me this summer what I think of gas prices. I may have a different opinion of the world then...
Source: http://www.music-news.com/shownews.asp?H=Falling-gas-prices-helping-live-music&nItemID=86492
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