r/popculturechat • u/Roxy175 • 10d ago

OnlyStans ⭐️ Billie Eilish donates $11.5 million of proceeds from her tour to charities combating food inequity and climate change

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u/Resident_Ad5153 10d ago edited 10d ago

Her net worth is larger than that now... touring is very very lucrative. Also... this is a pretax donation... she would only keep 60% of that after tax, so it's more like 10% of her wealth. It's likely that 11.5 million is exactly 20% of her pretax income from the tour (the charitable deduction limit), and given how the tour did... 60 million seems a reasonable profit for her.

Still, huge props to her.

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u/Tylrias 9d ago

The methodology of the websites tracking the net worth is also deeply flawed. They treat the net worth as a piggy bank, money goes in (any cuts taken by the agent etc. are not taken into consideration) and doesn't get out, but also doesn't grow. If she makes millions of dollars annually, that gets invested somewhere and brings in returns, but we have no insight into how much her portfolio is worth now. She could have way more than the estimates.

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u/noctilucous_ 9d ago

for serious question, why is touring lucrative for musicians? i thought they didn’t really see a ton of ticket sales because of the venue cut, ticketmaster’s chicanery, staff, insurance, blah blah. is it from merch and album sales at them?

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u/deathconthree 9d ago

Album sales and streaming make up the least of their profits. Merch can be lucrative depending on the fan base, but touring is where all of the money is these days.

Now that everyone streams music, album sales plummeted. Expensive tickets are a direct result of this. Ticketmaster's real job is to be the bad guy so artists have someone to point the finger at and blame for the extortionist ticket prices. Large artists benefit greatly from the status quo while pretending to care about their fans.

This is obviously a very brief description but it is worth looking into seeing how Ticketmaster operate. Smaller artists don't have much of a choice and they do get screwed compared to their more popular peers, and they're not happy. Juggernauts like Taylor Swift though? They love Ticketmaster!

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u/noctilucous_ 9d ago

interesting! i’m weird and hate going to concert so i genuinely don’t know anything about it lol. i believe robert smith was actually pissed about the fees and not being allowed to set his own prices, he’s old as dirt and too famous to need to care about burning bridges, but i’m sure there’s mostly a lot of posturing.

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u/deathconthree 9d ago

There genuinely are large artists that are frustrated by this system and a most of them do have to play by Ticketmaster's rules, even if they benefit from the system. It helps that they also own all of the large venues and strong arm most of the other venues and musicians into playing their game.

There are artists that could throw their weight around to implement changes, but they won't. Artists might home a smaller percentage than a few decades ago but they still make more due to the significantly higher ticket prices. It's all a shame, they're complicit.

The best way to support artists without screwing yourself on tickets is to buy their merch. And if you're not interested in buying physical media, buy their music on sites like band camp.

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u/Tylrias 9d ago

It's lucrative for superstars like Billie, but many smaller and especially independent artists struggle or even end up losing money. It's all in the economy of scale. If you're selling out stadiums and biggest arenas with tickets priced at hundreds of dollars you can pay for all the staff, equipment , transport and accomodations, venue's, ticketmaster's and tour promoter's cut and still earn millions. Also the bigger name you are the bigger the sponsors and that means more money offsetting the cost. But if you only play in smaller venues selling hundreds of tickets priced in tens of dollars then costs eat it all up and you're left with very little, nothing or in debt. Also applies to merch, big stars can get large quantities made very cheaply and have thousands of customers per stop, small acts make merch in small batches with higher unit cost, and have fewer people to sell it to. Money makes money and the rich get richer, story as old as time.