You’ve finally hit it big; you’ve been working hard in your studio, got your music up on the requisite streaming platforms, and have accumulated enough of a regular audience to justify going on tour. It’s a milestone that a lot of independent musicians never reach, and you should be enormously proud of this development in your career as a musician.
However, you probably won’t be touring the country in a bus with your name emblazoned on it, enjoying the finest food, wine, and hotels like the golden age musicians do in biopics. Touring is rough, especially as an independent band or a band just starting out. The massive expenses of organising, preparing for, and fulfilling even a smaller tour are sometimes hard to stomach. It’s possible for smaller bands to do so, but it takes meticulous planning, a strict budget, and agile thinking when everything goes wrong.
In this article, we’ll be showing you how to navigate your first touring cycle, giving you tips and tricks for conserving money, financial record keeping, and strategies for navigating touring through economic uncertainty.
Minimise Expenses
As we’ve already stated, it takes a lot of money to go on tour. Unless you happen to have a huge amount of capital just sitting around, your first priority should be to minimise costs as much as possible. Make a budget to get a high-level view of your expenses for the tour, accounting for food, lodgings, and gas throughout the duration of the cycle. Like any budget, this financial planning tool will allow you to identify monetary pressure points, problem areas that need to be trimmed down on, or weeks when your playing income might not fully cover your expenses.
When you’ve got a solid picture of your financials in place, you can then take steps to minimise how much your band will spend while on tour. These steps can include:
- Avoiding hotels as much as possible: There will eventually be a point in your tour where the temptation to sleep in a real bed is too great to ignore. However, postponing that point for as long as possible, opting instead to use sleeping bags or couch surf, is a great way to save yourself an average of 100 dollars a night on hotels.
- Spread out your tour: Traveling to multiple cities in the span of weeks is possible for bigger bands with more established fanbases; it may be challenging for a band your size. Instead of planning a tour with several consecutive shows in different cities, try adopting a region-to-region approach, playing two or three shows per region over the course of weeks.
- Visiting the supermarket: Fast food costs can get crazy, especially when chains are your go-to for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Stop by a local supermarket weekly and opt to purchase staples like sandwiches, cold cuts, and preserved foods.
Your budget is also one of your most significant allies while trying to manage expenses on the road, as it’s your main source of financial bookkeeping. Keeping up with it by making a note of each and every expense and making sure there’s still room for contingencies is the best way to make sure your tour stays on track; bad bookkeeping to do so can result in all manner of consequences, including sudden financial losses, harm to your reputation with organisers and merchandising partners, and even show cancellations.
Maintaining Financial Stability When Income’s Low
Of course, the health of your budget – and your tour – largely depends on the income you get from each show. Unfortunately, that is something that can widely vary, depending on venue pricing, merchandise sales, and each show’s average turnout. The life of a touring musician, especially one that’s just starting to build a dedicated fanbase, is the life of someone constantly navigating economic uncertainty, wondering whether their next show will finally sink their budget or if it’ll bring an unexpected windfall that will finally let them sleep in a real bed.
Fortunately, entrepreneurs’ techniques to sustain their businesses during economic uncertainty also apply to the touring space. These techniques include:
- Maintaining an emergency fund: Emergency funds, established in this case from your band members’ collective savings, are used to cover the group’s expenses only when those expenses greatly exceed the touring budget. These funds can also serve as a safety net in the event of a major mishap, like your touring van’s tyre blowing out mid-transit. Funnelling a small percentage of excess income from successful shows into this budget is a great way to ensure it remains healthy, and that you can continually draw upon it as needed.
- Diversifying income streams: Merchandise is one crucial way musicians accumulate additional income while on tour; but have you considered other ways you can add to your band’s wallet? Crowdfunding sites like Patreon, streaming sites that allow people to purchase perks like Bandcamp, or even interacting with fans through platforms like Cameo are great ways to cultivate your fanbase while bringing money in.
- Get insurance coverage: Insuring your vehicle, your gear, and even your personal health with adequate coverage will help you recoup some of the financial costs if anything goes wrong while on tour.
While there may be feasts on your tour, there will likely be famines. Be prepared for when thick turns to thin — your future self will thank you.
Managing expenses on tour doesn’t have to be a titanic task, even if you’re just learning how to do it for the first time. Follow the above tips and tricks, and you’ll be able to construct a tour that will allow you to cultivate and grow your fanbase without breaking your band’s bank. Don’t forget to have fun!
By Indiana Lee