Lots of things to talk about here... https://twitter.com/sankles/status/1381872065641320449

Glasto isn’t a great example to make the greater point about bands losing money touring. It’s non-profit and it’s awesome. I would pay money to play there. Whereas I would pay a lot of money to *not* play say, Reading.

You can lose money on individual shows but make money on individual tours. You do certain festivals
because maybe industry people will be there and you’ll get better bookings next time around, or you wanna see The Wurzels play Combinr Harvester or whatever. Business reasons.

Profit or loss decisions can run over more than 12 months. For instance, you might get slightly shitty festival bookings one summer, totally kill it, then get much better bookings if you carry on touring into the next summer season, and get into decent profit.

Or even longer term, you may see all of this as an investment in a career, that’s gonna put you in a good position 3 or 4 or 5 years down the line. Most small businesses would be expected to make a loss for the first few years BUT...

That’s the central issue; seeing bands as businesses. You could record all your touring as losses, but if you were a normal small business you’d expect to pay even the company directors a salary. There isn’t enough money coming in for bands to do this.

Bands aren’t regular businesses. They have a form and function and a reality outside of that world. Supply, demand, efficiency - it makes limited sense to talk about these things in relation to what should be, at its core at least, art.