In response to the “popular” deathcore act Thy Art Is Murder losing their vocalist over finance, an employee of Outerloop Management, a company that handles the finance of several modern popular metal bands, wrote up a budget analysis of a metal band’s touring budget for our competitors over at MetalSucks. Derek Brewer claims that with sound budgeting techniques and by avoiding expensive luxuries like cocaine, a “mid-level” band can make enough money through touring and merchandise to survive and maintain an okayish standard of living while arguably contributing more to society than a retail drone.

There are a few holes you can poke in Brewer’s assumptions, but overall his numbers give me the impression that a band that gets big enough to receive regular coverage on heavily trafficked news sites can reach some degree of financial security. My real emphasis here is on the idea that getting to the point where your band is even moderately successful to the point of even potentially being fiscally self-sustaining is going to be the difficult part. Barring enormous luck (or a potentially lucrative if musically dubious gimmick like adding a flautist to your grindcore band), building up a fanbase for any sort of creative content requires an immense and persistent amount of work over time. Society in general knows that by now, and by traveling this path you’ll also be in competition with an enormous amount of other bands who think they’re going to be the next big thing and are also working long hours to get noticed. The competition isn’t necessarily going to improve the quality of metal works released (at least by our standards, since most bands aren’t writing specifically for our tastes), but it is something to note if you look at Brewer or similars’ figures and think that someday, you could make it as a metal rockstar.

Tags: finance, lame metal, management, managers, metalcore, money