Something i pndering over SK is it really possible to make a some kind of living for all the members,
Tour in Japan of course,and USA and UK,and it likes they skipped even cenraleurope and Canada to cut down charges.
Well, it's a good question, especially for Risa who's young and single.
If they had unlimited time and energy, SK could tour the whole world.
But after 30 or 40 days on the road, touring does more harm than good.
You can't have fun and play great shows when you're sick and tired of it all.
You can also destroy yourself physically.
So I think they are concentrating the effort where they expect to see their
strongest sales of recorded music, outside of Japan. Skipping Canada
wouldn't be a slight to their Canadian fans, just a business decision reluctantly
based on expected return for expected effort.
Top mainstream rock bands with giant arena shows make money on tours.
I mean, the Rolling Stones can sell out as many seats as you've got for
triple-digit ticket prices. That can be something over a million in ticket sales
before merchandise for one single event. Of course, the costs are also huge.
But when you're basically playing in a bar, with *no* guaranteed fee — because
who's going to guarantee it? Good Charamel? Tomato Head? — as independents,
Shonen Knife are on equal footing with any bar band, except they can ask $12 or $15
for a ticket and keep most of it.
The arithmetic is that, when 5 or 6 people drive 8 hours to a venue that holds 250
people, and 180 customers show up, you've spent maybe a third of what you expect
to make at the door on travel, food, and accommodations before you arrive. Rentals,
insurance, international plane fares, salaries to the paid crew... all additional and
inescapable. That doesn't leave a lot for souvenirs and bags of potato chips.
This is why you see Melt Banana reducing its personnel to two, and lugging its own
gear, and doing all its own driving no matter how wearing that gets. Also why bands
like Akabane Vulgars or THE LET'S GO's are tweeting photos of the couches they
slept on when they visit the US.
When SK sell a decorated cymbal at a show, it's money to operate the van
for... a little while. The saving grace is that many fans who turn up will spend
several multiples of the ticket price for whatever's on the merch table, and
that's cash in hand.
At the next Tomato Head business meeting, does this look like a business?
I don't know, I've never been to their meetings.
Once upon a time, touring was considered a marketing cost of pumping up
record sales. That might make sense even now in Japan, because there they
still pay quite a lot to own music on physical media, but actual rock is just not
mainstream music for audiences anywhere as of now.
Spotify and iTunes and Amazon and so on are doing their best to kill the CD
in Japan, and they'll succeed eventually. Along the way, they'll change the
relevance of music labels and outlets like radio completely. As hundreds upon
thousands of little bands around the world claim their tiny fraction of the
declining amount consumers spend on music, fewer and fewer groups below
the top tier are making a living just by writing, recording and performing music.
When Naoko says the music business in Japan is not too bad for women, she's
thinking that as long as you can stay married, there's plenty of opportunity
and you don't absolutely have to be earning enough to live.
Not such a good model for the men. But at least don't look for girls' rock to
decline anytime soon.
I put a lot of my hopes in bands like Otoboke Beaver and the Tomboys. They're
well-adapted, energetic, committed. You follow the people you like on streaming
music platforms, right?