Buying merch

I’m in Charlotte tonight for The Mountain Goats / Craig Finn / Bully show (which I’ll post about over the weekend), but I was thinking about all of the ways that the venue and the artist make money, and where the real money probably is.

I was at The Neighborhood theater, and the ticket was a very reasonable $45 plus a small convenience charge. Presumably some cut of that ticket price goes to the venue, some to management, some to the band, and some to the support crew.
Beers inside the venue ranged from $8 up to about $12. That presumably belongs to the venue.
Then there’s merch, and for a small show there was an absolute ton of it. There were vinyl albums ($30), cassettes, t-shirts ($30), posters, a lyric and photo book ($25), an $85 sweatshirt, CDs, and an assortment of stickers and other small trinkets.

There was probably more that I didn’t list, but that’s what I was able to take in as I walked by. I bought a Bully record and Craig Finn’s lyric book which, together, cost more than my ticket, and more of the money almost definitely went to the artists. I’d love to know the breakdown, but it seems like these artists are potentially making a lot more on the merch than on the tickets themselves. Not sure if that’s always been the case, but they’re definitely not making much these days on recorded music itself.

After the show, I find myself wanting a nylon-string acoustic guitar like Craig Finn was playing, so the most expensive merch buy of all may be yet to come.