Loveable Welsh band Los Campesinos are amongst UK indie’s great survivors, moving adroitly from the mid-00’s twee pop movement to earning full-on ‘beloved indie institution’ status, becoming fully independent by the time their seventh album ‘All Hell’ reached number 14 in the UK chart – the band’s highest placement – in 2024. They’re also known for being transparent about the financial reality of being a seven-piece touring band, regularly releasing data to show the complexity and monetary reality that lies behind their operation.
This week, they released the data behind a recent 11-date North American tour, and it’s a revealing and fun – if dispiriting – read, especially considering it begins, “By now it’s widely accepted that the live industry is fucked for 99% of us.” Despite the chart success, the band all have day jobs, they explain, and “use their holiday allowance to tour. Being in this band is not our primary income. We choose to tour because it’s fun.”
After fees and taxes, the band received just shy of £100,000 to play 11 shows. The band details all the subsequent essential costs of touring, including travel, crew wages, accommodation and a whopping £5,415.82 on US visas – and after totting it all up, reveal that total expenses of the tour come to £101,827.95. You don’t need to be an eagle-eyed maths whizz to note that that’s a bigger number than the one they were paid to tour in there first place.
But wait: merch! Luckily, Los Campesinos! fans really love the band, and the band has a whole bunch of nice merch to sell – and behold: the band made £40,336.54 profit on merch. That’s not, they note, simply then divided by the seven members – it needs to be spent on future projects, and so on: hence their day jobs.
For their band, they conclude, “touring is expensive and packed with financial risk, but marginally possible.” Our takeaway from all this: buy merch.
