Since pandemic restrictions were lifted, independent musicians face a vastly more difficult touring landscape than three years ago. COVID shutdowns forced many independent venues to permanently close, limiting opportunities for smaller artists to get their start. The remaining venues are flooded with booking requests from musicians trying to make up for years off the road. While touring for independent artists has never proven easy financially, rising prices make touring more economically precarious than before, with gas, hotel and flight costs skyrocketing in the last year. But with royalties from streaming amounting to about a penny a play, touring is how most musicians make a living. Here are some of their stories.

"Sometimes, you have to prioritize certain things. I'd rather have a place to live than go out on tour, play some good shows, but ultimately come back and have massive debt. It's kind of a matter of choosing your battles, so to speak."

Elliott joined the indie rock trio The Happy Fits on tour in 2021, and ended up filling in on drums for five shows when a member of the band contracted COVID. They couldn’t afford to cancel multiple tour dates, so he played both his opening set and the headlining act. Elliott also caught COVID during a tour last November and lost money overall. He powered through his last sets after testing negative, but struggled to keep up physically with the demands of tour. Touring during a pandemic means artists often juggle recovering from disease while trying to break even.

“Everything falls on my shoulders for the financial responsibility…it was a tough time coming off tour, and still having a bunch of things that need to be taken care of, and not actually having the money from the tour to take care of them.”

The members of Ultra Q love the thrill of touring, but it isn’t a particularly lucrative undertaking for the band. The group makes a few hundred dollars per night of tour. Split between the four of them, it doesn't amount to much.

Ultra Q makes the majority of their profits through merch sales. But many venues take 15 to 25 percent of an artist’s merch revenue. Merch cuts aren’t a new phenomenon, but with finances more unstable than ever, artists are protesting the practice. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, a nonprofit organization known for its activism on the streaming economy and musicians’ rights, started a campaign in November calling for venues to stop taking merch cuts. Over 100 U.S. venues pledged to end the practice, but it’s still commonplace among corportized spaces.

To cut costs, Ultra Q stopped hiring crew on tour at the behest of Chris Malaspina, who doubles as drummer and tour manager for the band. Malaspina keeps a detailed log of expenses and merch sales from each day of tour and creates a spreadsheet to track profits.

"I'm more of a solo project, so I pay my band out. When I tour now, I'm not making anything, everything's going to my bandmates...I have to put a lot of my savings into tour."

Joy Collingbourne, a tour booker at The MOB agency, which boasts a roster of bands including No Doubt and Siouxsie and the Banshees, said she’s struggled to book smaller acts post pandemic. Collingbourne says that venues are looking for acts with more established fan bases. Stone has struggled with finding a tour booker in an oversaturated market.

"There's a lot of new artists and the good booking agents have a pretty full list most of the time...they want people already playing big shows."

Credits: B&W Elliott Douglas photos (Kaitlyn Rock)

"Choked Out" live footage (courtesy of Elliott Douglas)

Thank you to all the musicians and experts who took the time to speak with me <3