Musician Jackie Venson calls out predatory behavior by venues, promoters

By many measures, independent musician Jackie Venson is having a great year. But shifts in booking, venue, and merch policies are threatening the one source of income she and most musicians could once count on – live performances.

by Jackie Venson of Music Tech Policy

[This important guest post was written by Jackie Venson, one of the great artists and guitarists playing today. Find her on Bandcamp, subscribe to her email list, and see her live in a city near you. This post first appeared as a Twitter thread and Reddit post. Used by permission with thanks.]

“artists should be prioritized and valued by venues, not exploited and marginalized”

This has been such a whirlwind year for me and this season of touring has been no different, it’s shaping up to be one of my most successful ones ever! But with that said, I’m disturbed by the new normal that is developing in the touring world and I want to talk about it, because I don’t think fans are aware of what musicians– especially fully independent musicians– are dealing with now. So buckle up, another manifesto is incoming!

Being an independent musician today means being a small business owner as well as an artist. On tour, I have to pay for and manage show marketing, travel expenses, production costs (including “room fees” at venues, more on this in a minute) and band member wages, as well as all of the other day to day costs and hassles of being an artist, from writing, producing and manufacturing new material to juggling social media to pitching and engaging with traditional media. It’s a lot! And even when tours were more lucrative for artists, they were still expensive, stressful propositions– there’s a reason why there are so many classic songs about the simultaneous thrill and misery of being on the road.

“venues and promoters have become more aggressive about forcing artists to subsidize the costs of their operations while also moving in on artists’ merch revenue and lowering the guarantees”

As a fan, when you think about tours, you probably imagine it works like this: an artist gets booked at a venue for an agreed-upon fee or “guarantee,” the venue and promoter split the ticket sales with the artist, the venue takes in concession and beverage sales and splits that with the promoter and the artist takes in merch sales. Sometimes it really is that simple. But for years, venues and promoters have become more aggressive about forcing artists to subsidize the costs of their operations while also moving in on artists’ merch revenue and lowering the guarantees paid to artists. That aggression went into overdrive after the pandemic, even though a number of major venue and promoter groups, like LiveNation, actually saw record breaking profits after the pandemic.

By any measure, this has been my biggest year as an artist. I did a historic sold out residency at Antone’s at the start of the year, I’ve now gone viral on TikTok and YouTube several times, I played the TikTok party at SXSW, and then I performed at the CMT Awards, live on television! And my tour dates this year have taken me to new places and new crowds and I can see my audience expanding in real time. But at the same time, it is getting harder and harder for me to make a profit on the road because the touring ecosystem is becoming more hostile towards artists. And if it’s this hard for me, what hope is there for artists who are early on in their careers, trying to start their first tours?

“predatory behavior by venues and larger national/regional promoters”

What I, and many other artists are seeing, is predatory behavior by venues and larger national/regional promoters, who are happy to exploit artists while also claiming that people need to support venues if they want to “save live music.” More and more venues are requiring artists to give the venues a cut of merch sales in order to get booked, even though they often provide no help with merch– many of us have our own merch person, and our own tables, and our own displays, so these venues are literally getting money for nothing. On top of that, more and more venues are increasing their room fees, a cost that is factored into the show before any profit can be shared with the artists. The room fees are now often bundled with assorted production costs, ranging from the wages of sound and light technicians to door staff to security. Venues expect artists to pay for every aspect of their organization, even though we are usually only playing one event there and their staff are as vital and common to the operation as the stage itself.

But you know what makes this especially ridiculous? These venues believe we artists should share the burden of their operating costs yet many of them do not believe they should have to share the profits of the bar or concessions. It’s not only exploitative and unreasonable, it is shortsighted and actively harmful to the music ecosystem, and if we as an artist community don’t speak out against it more, it’s only going to get worse, especially since the venues are banding together to get themselves tax breaks like the recent liquor tax refund in Texas, which will reward $100k to music venues that meet certain guidelines, none of which have anything to do with abiding by fair treatment and payment of the musicians themselves.

It goes without saying that the one defining trait of a music venue is that it features live music, and that there is no live music without musicians themselves. As musicians, we should be prioritized and valued by venues, not exploited and marginalized. These venues simply do not exist without us and it’s time they start remembering that again. My peer Cadence Weapon actually started an initiative last year called #MyMerch, asking venues and promoters to voluntarily drop their merch cuts and I think that’s an amazing movement that you should all support if you’re looking for ways to help outside of just buying directly from artists.