An Open Letter From Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear just posted this bulletin on MySpace:

I'm so very annoyed about the state of touring and selling your own T shirts. Essentially here's the deal. I'm MORTIFIED that our T shirts were sold last night for 25 dollars. That's just wrong. But guess what, we had ZERO choice. The venue FORCED US TO SELL IT FOR THAT and to boot they wouldn't allow us to get behind the table and sell it.

Essentially the bigger venues you play the more greedy they become and they start taking 25-35% of your merch. This of course forces bands to sell their stuff for higher. Taking into consideration of course that American Apparel shirts are not cheap and the taxes and screen printing fees and shipping fees. When a venue takes 35% of your T shirt sales you essentially make no money unless you raise the price 5 bucks.

Last night, we were willing to just basically not make money and sell it for lower because we were just so embarassed to have T shirts be so much, but the venue forced us to price it at 25 bucks. And well, we are the support band and basically every sale is extremeley crucial to fund the trip, pay for the big auto bill from when the car broke down, gas, lodging, etc.

Anyhow, I just wanted to apologize to people. If you ever wonder why the fuck is this band selling their T shirts for so much I promise you it all centers around how greedy the venue is. Unfortunately lovely beautiful theaters and great sounding rooms tend to be more corporately run and thusly tend to take higher cuts. This of course does not excuse a 60 dollar Beyonce T shirt.

Rant finished.
ps. Record labels (major labels only) are beginning to take cuts of merch too because they know that's the only place bands often make money (because nobody buys CDs)

True dat. It's actually only venues in the United States (and possibly Canada) that take a percentage of merch from bands. What, they didn't make enough from ticket sales and booze?