Why no albums?
Why do bands sell t-shirts at concerts but not albums?
There must be an economic reason for this. One guess is clothes rarely have tax on them whereas albums do. Another is that the mark up on albums does not make it worthwhile.
Any ideas on why only very small bands sell albums at their gigs?
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pH I am not sure of your sums here.
Say a tshirt sells for 25 uero with 5 euro covering the cost of the t-shirt. The venue takes a stake. I remeber Pavement had the costs of the shirt listed and the venue took a third roughly. so say 10 euro. That still leaves them with 10 euro profit.
Say a 15 euro cd is sold with the record company mking 5. the cost is 5 for tax and transport manufacturing etc. Oh venue takes about 1/3 i think so they do not make any money on cd's
Ok your sums do add up.
Because the CDs are controlled by the record company and the band gets like 10c for each one sold. Whereas a t-shirt selling for 10.00 the band probably get 9.00.
The momento idea is a good one. Record shops to tend to have t-shirts but not many.
Wearing a band t-shirt is like a big advertisement for what type of person you are, maybe because concerts are public they require public displays of allegience whereas people regard buying an album as more personal.
I can see why small bands sell CDs - they aren't widely available in shops, and the audience may not remember the band's name anyway. I think larger bands just don't bother to cart around a load of CDs when most of the audience would have them already... maybe a CD that you can get anywhere doesn't make a good momento of a concert?
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