Union Urges Music Venues and Festivals to Cease Chopping Into Artists' Merchandise Gross sales
Rather a lot is predicted from musicians, however no one desires to pay for it. That features music venues and festivals.
The Union of Musicians and Allied Employees (UMAW), recognized for his or her steadfast campaigns towards Spotify, are pushing venues and music festivals to cease taking percentages of musicians’ merchandise gross sales.
The marketing campaign, dubbed “#MyMerch,” has introduced within the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon to help. It comes after a successful campaign in the U.K. that FAC accomplished earlier this 12 months.
The pandemic examined each sector of the music trade, particularly the stay music house—however artists nonetheless appear to get the brief finish of the stick. They usually foot the invoice for the overwhelming majority of the prices related to their merch, together with design, manufacturing and delivery.
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When musicians deliver attire on tour, venues and festivals could take between 15% and 35% of the income though they’d no involvement in its growth.
“A merch lower is when a venue or competition takes anyplace from 15% to 35% of the artist’s merch gross sales,” based on UMAW’s campaign. “That is an exploitative observe that interferes with one of many few methods followers can straight assist artists on this difficult financial local weather, and it should cease. Artists carry the monetary burden of designing, producing, and delivery merch, and promoting merch is without doubt one of the few methods artists could make a revenue on tour.”
UMAW is now calling on musicians to share their tales of venues or music festivals taking a lower of their gross sales. You will discover an inventory of the marketing campaign’s venue listing here.