"DM: We exist as a band because we sell t-shirts. Our job is that we sell t-shirts and the way we promote those t-shirts is by playing music. If we were talking strictly economically, that’s just a fact.
LL: Weirdly, it’s also our most direct engagement with the money we make and with our fans. We’re often selling our own shirts at the merch table; that’s actually how we talk to a lot of fans and get feedback on our sets. We get cash in our hands; that’s one of the most direct economic exchanges in our lives as musicians. So, it is funny because it seems cynical, but it’s actually one of the more grounded exchanges in what we do."
As it turns out, I had a nice little chat with their drummer when I bought one of their tshirts.
The world is full of these weird business cases where people aren't aware of the actual product, like how Starbucks US morphed from a coffee shop into an iced dessert drinks company that also incidentally sells hot coffee.
Edit:
Other fun examples -
In the mid-2000s, Porsche was an incredibly successful hedge fund that also sold cars who tried to acquire VW using a short squeeze.
Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
I don't know if the Starbucks example is quite the same as the band example. If anything, their focus on iced desserts shows that they know exactly what their audience wants and is paying for.
When I think about the band shirts, I think about this time an indie game dev youtuber did a full breakdown of their different revenue streams. They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
So really, they were an online course seller that used their gamedev youtube content to convince people to buy the courses.
The reality is that Starbucks is the world's biggest unregulated bank, with their claws in the real estate industry. Who got that way by selling the experience of hanging out in a convenient coffee shop.
Their business has run into trouble a couple of times because MBA types in the company lost sight of this, then focused on trying to sell drinks efficiently. Thereby diluting the brand and business.
If you've got 22 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym7YwFq8ZuM is a very informative walkthrough of the history and the business by the always funny youtuber, The Fat Electician. Highly recommended.
IMO, they, like many other companies, were doomed by the constant chase for growth. Once they had a large share of "have a milk-coffee drink in a nice lounge" market, growth slowed. But having a large market share, good margins and growth that is the same as population/gdp (+/-) is just not acceptable.
So they try to find a way to get more growth, even if it changes and perhaps kills what the business was.
Around 2000 the founder stepped away, and MBAs brought in automated machines. They were more efficient and consistent at making the drinks than the baristas, and business tanked. The founder came back in 2008, got rid of the machines, and brought the baristas back. Business took off again.
In the context of AI automation I keep coming back to "cute Starbucks barista" as the archetypal automation-proof job. Because the job isn't producing the beverage, but the little moment of human interaction. (Especially these days, when not much of it remains!)
Same goes with supermarket checkout. I noticed many people intentionally take the line where the human scans your stuff. They enjoy it!
Unfortunately many zoomers do not appear to have been informed of this fact, and will give you a worse experience, "humanity wise", than the self-check out machine!
When you treat your job as robotic, aside from making the experience worse for all involved, you are also competing with actual robots, i.e. competing on speed, price and consistency, which is not a great place for a human to be.
I'm assuming you're talking about those Clover machines. They were really, really good and well designed IIRC. Trying to automate the barista with them; well, that's where they messed up!
Well, not the original role. That was to bring some americanized version of European/Italian coffee culture to the US. Serving espresso based drinks in a comfortable public cafe style setting. It was very popular for a long time. Busy cafes full of people, selling lots of drinks, opening new shops, etc.
I thought it was also, so I looked at United Airlines 2024 Annual Report to confirm or deny my position. [^0]
If you look at their revenue sheet, you'll see that UAL made ~$51B from passenger revenue (tickets sold * available seats across their entire fleet) while they made ~$24B from "other revenue", which includes, amongst other things, annual fees from credit cards.
Same with Delta, though they made ~$10B from their "other" revenue. [^1]
However, it's a bit of a positive feedback loop situation. The "other" revenues in these 10-Ks don't tell the whole story.
Airline frequent flyer programs have tiers with minimum flight and spend requirements per tier. This benefits both frequent flyers and VFR customers (visiting friends and relatives).
If you travel a lot for work (frequent flyer), there are very heavy incentives to get to that top tier. Customer service at the highest tiers is eons better than what you'd get at lower tiers. You also get priority boarding, first-crack at upgrades, upgrade certificates that move you to the top of upgrade lists, and more. These benefits make air travel, which many people don't like doing, much more tolerable.
If you're an infrequent flyer, getting to that airline's mid-grade tier usually gets you more free checked bags and priority boarding. Checked bags are EXPENSIVE after the first freebie (thanks, Southwest!) which is usually enough of a draw to get people to chase that status. (If you live near a hub, you can gamble and hope that the gate agent offers to check bags gate-side for free to speed up boarding, but that's not foolproof. Anyway, checking baggage is a fool's errand; one-bag for life!).
Getting the airline's co-branded card usually provides bonuses that make it easier to hit those tiers. So you get the card and put all of your personal (and corporate, if your company allows it) expenses on the card.
Airlines also have gotten very aggressive about pushing the card onto gen pop. You're almost certainly going to get hit with a 60-80k mile offer on every flight you take in the US for spending ~$3k on that airline's co-branded card, no matter the airline. (It's almost always enough for a round-trip ticket to some coveted location in the US, on an award flight, which are harder and harder to come by, but that's another topic for another post.)
United flew 173M customers in 2024. $3k card spend from even 10% of those customers is $52M! And that's before you consider that most people will continue spending on credit cards after earning the spend benefit! (However, at $0.01/mile earn rate, the $14M worth of flights United would be beholden to is recorded as a "frequent flyer deferred revenue" liability. But, again, the chase for status and benefits would generate more revenue that's hard to forecast, though I'm sure the airlines have forecasting models in place.)
If this interests you, and if you like math, "The Global Airline Industry" by Belobaba et. al. is a fantastic book that explains this and other peculiarities of how airlines work. This was recommended to me by an old colleague that ran a small airline. It's excellent.
And McDonald’s is known to be primarily a real estate company. Berkshire Hathaway is meant to be an insurance company. Military aircraft manufacturers are really maintenance companies.
Now do the International Code Council, and Harvard, and Unicef, and government departments, and, and, and.....
The reason we don't evaluate things in this "measure what is actually goin on" manner is because the actual goings on are only able to go on as they do so long as a public image that emphasizes something else is maintained.
People wouldn't go to starbucks in the manner they do if they thought of it as a sugary drink place.
Similarly Wether spoons, the chain of pubs in the UK.
More interestingly, they tend to set up in historically significant or listed buildings and as a result, preserve them. Not unusual to find a Spoons set up in an old 19th century bank or something.
RVs are put together by methheads and there are less protections (such as no lemon law for RVs) for the consumers. Many RVs spend there whole one year warranty period in the shop with no actual fixes being done and then the warranty runs out. The people that do hear about RV problems, buy new thinking that will be less problems, when in fact the newer RVs are the lower quality ones that have issues. There are YouTube channels dedicated to this phenomenon (https://youtube.com/@LizAmazing), and why one famous consumer lawyer (Steve Lehto) says "You Must be INSANE to buy an RV These Days":
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xElhTNS_xn8
A great video where one major manufacturer does not even properly VIN their RVs leading to a $600,000 fine given to one RV owner:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zGOANydJURQ
I.e. I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target. Same with websites that have mugs and such. I don't want another mug, I don't want to pay 5.99 for shipping, I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer.
But I guess in the real pragmatical world, that's the support mechanism that actually works :)
> I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target.
Maybe you don't have any friends that are in a band, but if it's the band members or friends of the band selling the merch, they are getting 100% of the profit. They design the shirts, they pay for the printing of the shirts, they then sell the shirts directly with their own hands. There's no middleman taking cuts. Now, if you're buying their merch from some 3rd party website, that site probably takes a cut. Some bands selling merch on their own website could still be coming directly from the band if one of them, or again a friend, sets up the site with their own accounts using square/stripe/etc and deals with the fulfillment themselves they are minimizing cuts as well.
I guess they are technically not middle men because they sit one the start of the value chain, but the company making the t-shirts, the one selling it and the one printing on it are still making good profits. On top of the actual costs of making those printed t-shirts.
I imagine it's not hugely expensive at the volumes bands need, somewhere from $3-10 per t-shirt depending on quality, and maybe double that for hoodies? And if you are buying online shipping and handling, which is another $5-10 that I'm paying and isn't going to the artist. Not a huge deal. But if you don't care about the physical product and just want the band to have some money that's still a good bit of inefficiency
Slight correction: I just received an advertising blow-in from Ollie's listing Hanes and other brand women's tees for $1.99 each. That's for short sleeve, long sleeve or tank top in various colors. The indicated competition is stated to sell them for $2.49. Not that this is RETAIl pricing in the U.S.A.. I'm guessing wholesale will be even less.
the t-shirt itself benefits the band because it's free advertising, it keeps the band on the radarof your friends etc. even if you wanted to paypal them, they would probably prefer you to buy (and wear!) t-shirts
well, now you're getting needlessly pedantic in a way that just makes me wonder why would someone do that. seriously, nobody expects that a band is weaving fabric by hand to cut into patterns to sew into shirts. everyone here understands that you have to buy the shirts at your expense to sale at a mark up that earns profit. what a ridiculous thing to argue
Alternative framing that sounds less pedantic: Nobody was complaining about middlemen in the first place. The argument you responded to was "I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer". Meanwhile you were talking about the opposite end of the value chain, which in no way refutes any of the complaints made.
More importantly you were also missing the point. The issue is how much of the $20 you pay end up in the hands of the band. Where in the value chain that money is spent doesn't matter. What matters is how much is spent on delivering the t-shirt to my doorstep and how much is in the band's bank account
Yeah, also the fact that most venues take a cut of merch sales really dampens the idea that buying merch directly from artists is the best way to put money in their pocket.
I even recall going to a show many years ago where the lead singer refused to sell his t-shirts at the venue and implored us all to meet him outside at their tour van for direct sales. I don't think he got invited back to perform there!
Never heard about venues taking a cut off the merch - that’s fucked up…
They already take (in almost all cases) 100% from drinks and bar sales.
In my experience the ticket sales and merch go completely to the artist.
Anything else I would consider a rip-off
That is certainly the case with many venues in the US after the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger. Independent venues are much more rare, due to the LiveNation monopoly, but make their own deals with talent that are reasonable to both parties.
LiveNation operates so much of the venue spaces they can take whatever they want. Artists have been complaining to congress about it since the merger in 2010.
If you want to support them you're more than welcome to message them and ask for their Venmo, or reach out to their agent (if they have one) or them directly and ask who to make the check out to. That just doesn't work at scale.
> I.e. I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target. Same with websites that have mugs and such. I don't want another mug, I don't want to pay 5.99 for shipping, I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer.
I know some musicians are using Patreon but patreon takes a cut as well.
Now Although I don't like github but one of the last things that I like about github is that github sponsorships don't charge anything extra than the costs it would have itself and you get chargeback protection.
Would there be a genuine interest in using Github for sponsorships by Musicians, are there any real world musicians* who are doing that?
If the band signed with someone to help produce the album you're buying, they probably owe a cut to cover the costs of recording, mixing, cutting/pressing, releasing that album.
MC Frontalot and MC Lars had a fun take on this same concept in "Captains of Industry", which you may enjoy, depending on your feelings on old nerdcore hip-hop.
I was hoping someone made this comment! It remains high on my list of Frontalot songs. Big fan of “I’ll Form the Head” and “Stoop Sale” also from that album as well.
Great band!!! The Spiritual Sound is an excellent album.
As far as this interview: I mean, that's every band ever; the music is an ad for their shows and merch, which is the product. Some, like these folks, come to grips with this easier/quicker than others!
I think all this talk of entertainment economics is missing the point of the article. Yes, today bands more money from tshirts then recordings. However, in the 70s and 80s they typically made a lot of money from LPs and CDs. In the time of the Ramones, that was how bands made money.
The point is that punk rock was culturally very influential but never very musically popular. God Save the Queen was a hit record but that is the outlier.
I think it is useful to consider that a lot things that endure are not the things that were popular at the time, particularly with music. I saw the Pixies at the Hollywood Bowl a couple years ago and it occurred to me that when they had recorded the songs they are known for I saw at venues not much bigger than bars. They were never really that popular. Or Elliot Smith, who was seriously obscure in his short lifetime.
The argument has been made that punk finally broke in '91 with Nirvana and then Green Day and myriad other pop punk bands selling records. And there's also a case for the bands, especially of the '77 era New York scene breaking, but doing it by playing less textbook punk-sounding music (Blondie, Talking Heads, etc).
I do think The Ramones were robbed in way. If radio at the time wasn't ready for them, classic rock radio now should be. Most of them play The Clash already.If Blitzkrieg Bop is too weird or raw, "Rock 'n Roll Radio" is polished enough that it would fit right in.
Sure, when you compare a "nice suburb" to a "rough area" of the city you'll come to such conclusions. But if the city you lived in is anything like mine, that disorder you experienced is likely highly localized to those "rough areas". Given this, it might be more helpful to compare a "nice suburb" to a "nice area" in a city.
I'm glad you chose the experience of taking a walk as your original example because it was instrumental in helping me to decide that I wanted to raise my family in the city.
COVID offered an opportunity for my young family to spend a month in the suburbs and the thing that sticks with me now after all these years later is how much I hated taking our then 1 year-old for a walk as compared to the city. In the suburbs we walked past the same houses on the same sidewalk-lacking streets barely seeing anyone else. If we wanted anything beyond that it required loading our toddler into the car.
Compare this to a nice area of the city where the density allows for a vast array of possible destinations and plenty of folks to smile or wave at on the way. Walks these days could be to the local park on a Saturday morning for the farmers market, or to the local Italian Ice spot because the weather hasn't gotten too cold yet. While it's still possible to have those experiences in the suburbs, it's hard to be as spontaneous when you've got to consider things like car seats and parking.
One of the most recent inter-city routes to open, the Borealis service between Chicago and St. Paul, far surpassed expected ridership levels in its first year servicing 212K passengers over a projected 155K [1]. This comes despite the fact the trip would be faster not only by air but also by car. I doubt we'd see this sort of overperformance if "most people don't want trains".
Literally had the same experience this past weekend driving out to the Chicago suburbs. Doesn't matter if general traffic is going 15 over, you're still going to have a handful of unsatisfied daredevils just blowing past at 30 or more over as they weave between those "slower" cars.
I'm glad you mentioned Genesis because they're the subject of one of my favorite samples. OutKast's famous track "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" contains a sample from Genesis's "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" and upon learning this, I just thought it was so cool that OutKast listened to Peter-Gabriel-era Genesis when Genesis was very much a progressive rock band rather than the pop powerhouse most know them as today.
My personal favorite is a provider that opted to have a separate endpoint for refesh tokens rather than following the spec and using the token endpoint with a refesh token grant type.
I'm not privy to GP's use case, but the "non-standard" part you nodded at makes it far more likely they "rolled their own crypto" and thus the landscape of vulns or leaks introduced by the "how hard can it be" crew is vast. That's not even including the similar, although smaller, risk pushed down upon the consumers since they are also now have to eject from the vetted libraries to interact and start doing their own fun //FIXME hacks
The author of this article lives in La Grange which is a relatively wealthy Chicago Suburb (this is public information on her Twitter profile). Using those same 2019 FBI crime stats referenced in that Wikipedia article, you can find that La Grange experienced zero murders and had an overall violent crime rate of 10 per 100k (vs. Chicago's 943 per 100k).
Given the low crime rate in La Grange, citing crime statistics in this case does not fully account for differences between parenting in Switzerland and US suburbs, even if that suburb happens to be a Chicago suburb.
This is precisely what I do and it's great. Built myself a workstation desktop last year that I wanted to access remotely via an older laptop and it's worked beautifully, even when I was out in Europe for a week last summer.
When my then 4 month-old was hospitalized with RSV last year, the medical staff told us the main issue with RSV in very young children (under 6 months) is that their respiratory system is still immature. That is, their airways are still very small and their coughs are less productive. This means that RSV symptoms that would be manageable for an older child can become potentially life threatening for the very young.
For example, if your toddler has a stuffy nose, you can help them to blow it. For an infant, you need a tool to suction their nose which can be difficult to do. That same stuffy nose might cause poor feeding and dehydration which on top of the general breathing issues caused by RSV can lead to a rapid deterioration in the infant's health.
Even with all the supportive care (oxygen, regular suctioning, a feeding tube), it took a full 5 days in the hospital for our infant to recover.
My first-hand experience with this seems to be consistent with larger trends as well. A recent CDC presentation shows that children age 0-5 months are hospitalized by RSV at far higher rates than any other age group. [1]
"DM: We exist as a band because we sell t-shirts. Our job is that we sell t-shirts and the way we promote those t-shirts is by playing music. If we were talking strictly economically, that’s just a fact.
LL: Weirdly, it’s also our most direct engagement with the money we make and with our fans. We’re often selling our own shirts at the merch table; that’s actually how we talk to a lot of fans and get feedback on our sets. We get cash in our hands; that’s one of the most direct economic exchanges in our lives as musicians. So, it is funny because it seems cynical, but it’s actually one of the more grounded exchanges in what we do."
As it turns out, I had a nice little chat with their drummer when I bought one of their tshirts.