How should I know how much touring musician make.

That’s a stupid question anyway.

I mean, think about it.

Does Joe Schmo artist XYZ make anywhere near the ballpark of what Taylor Swift or Rihanna make?

Of course not. The figures on these kinds of things vary so widely that we can’t generalize much at all.

And while the quote below is probably true for the top 1% of hit-making musicians out there, it is not universal.

Countless musicians naturally make more from music sales then from touring.

But what do I know?

But because the money is in ticket sales, not record sales, nonstop touring is the norm, and record making has to be fit into breaks in the grueling schedule.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine

Do the record companies have control of radio?

Or does radio have control of the record companies?

Maybe a bit of both.

It’s like asking if writing agents control publishers, or if publishers control writing agents.

And what about the point where musicians do not need record companies or radio to make a career – and writers don’t need agents or publishers?

Like I said: Both record labels and radio seem to matter less and less.

Although the labels have lost much since the appearance of Napster, they still have one thing no one else has: their control of radio. The record and radio industries have been engaged in a mutually profitable, though at times adversarial, marriage for more than eighty years, and the old folks still love each other. Radio needs music that’s compelling enough to keep people listening through the ads, and the record companies need radio to sell records. Both need hits.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine