Tom McRae Interview: Cost of Music

How live indie music is suffering from outdated ticket pricing

Sep 26, 2007

Tom McRae has always been prolific when it comes to touring. However, in part 5 of our interview, he tells us how this is becoming more difficult all the time.

For Tom McRae and most other artists, the most enjoyable part of promoting any record has always been performing live. Whether it's as a support act to win new fans or as a headliner, connecting with the audience not only helps share the artist's music, but also acts as a way to make money from merchandise and record sales.

However, as Tom tells us in part 5 of our interview with him, old-school pricing tactics are no longer relevant today, and artists are suffering because of it.

My sincere thanks to Tom for being such a genial host, and to Jon Uren at Fruitcake Management for organising everything.

Tom McRae interview

Suite: We spoke earlier about touring and the different forms it can take – is there any type of venue or place that you prefer to play?

Tom: Well what excites me right now is playing places that I’ve never been to before. I’m going to be doing some gigs in Korea in November, and I’ve never been there. I’d like to play in Japan – I’ve only been there once. And I’ve never been to Australia or New Zealand so I’d like to go there too. The honest answer is wherever I am, on whatever stage, I’m going to do the best I can for that audience. I think if you think any other way, they wouldn’t come back.

Tom: Well, it’s a huge subject, but I think the whole music business is in total freefall at the minute, a real disaster, and I think it’s going to take 10 years to sort the whole thing out. Look at the (soccer) Premier League in the UK – you have 6 teams who do okay, and then you look at everyone under them that are starting to struggle financially. It’s tricky – I mean, it used to be that I could make money touring. The trouble with touring is that the set-up was you’d have tour support from your label to keep you on the road. They'd pay the cost of the band, and basically make a show happen night after night. They would then write off that money, on the understanding that they would then charge £10 or £15 for tickets, so people would think it was worth the risk for that price.

Tom: Right. And that would keep the label happy because then these new fans would go out and buy the next record. What we have now though doesn’t represent what it costs to tour. I mean, even if I’m doing a band show in London to 2,000 people, I should be charging £40 to recoup what it costs me to put the show on. But of course, no-one would come and that’s because we’ve established an unreasonable economic price for the shows. People now are saying “we’ll save our money and go see U2.” I think there’s a whole middle ground of music that’s going to disappear. Musicians will tour if they’re 19 and want to get in a band and have fun – and they should, it’s brilliant and that’s exactly what they should do. But the 30-35 year old guys and older, who’re not really making it; they’re just going to think “forget it, I’ll stay here in New York, or London, and play all the gigs I can get", and they’ll stop looking at music as a way of making money.

Tom: Well music’s free now, and also general. I walked into a record store the other day, and saw all these lumps of plastic separated into genres, and I didn’t get it. I look at music as music, not genres – like on my iPod, I’ll have Chet Baker next to Clem Snide and it’s all music and people see it like that. Companies, though, are looking at ways to find the new model where people will pay, or pay more, but then people look at an artist and say, “well he’s on a label, he doesn’t need my money”, so honestly, I don’t know. And I’m not too sure I really care – I think it’ll either work out or it won’t and I can’t control that. What I do know is that I have brilliant fans who buy a ticket; buy a t-shirt; they probably buy an album and it turns into a £50 night and that means I can go and play the next venue.

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