The difficulties of touring and venue merch cuts have been a hot topic in metal lately. Devin Townsend recently elaborated on how insanely expensive touring is and how "the ability to make money on tour is almost completely gone now," while Bad Omens directly called out venues for taking roughly 20% of merch sales.
Now Dark Funeral guitarist Lord Ahriman has weighed in on Instagram and he's pulling no punches. Ahriman outright states that he feels venues are killing the live music scene with merch cuts, adding that there have been some nights that Dark Funeral owed more back to the venue than their guarantee was even worth. Which is insane – Dark Funeral essentially paid to play for a night, and then still had to get to their next show with their income in the red.
"The sad truth is that [Devin Townsend] is right. The venues will slowly kill the live scene with their outragious merch cut. You should clearly be ashame of yourself! Next up for bands will be to start selling merch out from the bus trailer outside the venue, or just quit touring. Id rather do the trailer option though… we gotta keep the scene alive!
"Just to give you an exemple how crazy it all is, which also explain why the merch prices have gone up so much at the shows. On this tour, there's been a few nights where we have had to pay the venue more for selling merch then our guarantee. And as everyone knows, on this stage merch income usually are the main income/profit for the bands, even more now with all the increased costs (gasolin, flights, visas + more). And with a 20% or more merch cut + tax theres not much left for the bands.
"I could go on forever on this issue but I wont, but I'm sure you get my point. Anyway, I sure hope more bands & fans start to raise up against this bullshit. It gotta stop!!!"
