Leg 2 NA 2022 Pearl Jam Posters

AS9006 · September 2022

Let me do some math here, bear with me. How many posters you think are sold at a show? Ill shoot from the hip and say 2,000, i really have no clue. 2,000 x $40 (is that he going rate?) = $80,000.
Artists "are allowed" to sell what 100 to 300 posters on their website for say $100. Thats $10-30,000.

80k vs 10-30k doesnt seem right for the artist who did all the work. Imagine if my numbers are way low and they sell 3, 4, 5,000 maybe more posters at a show.

Think of all the $ the machine and the individual artist could make w a pre sale. 1 poster per ticket. You would crush and everyone makes a ton more money. We as fans are happy bc we have our memento. Only people upset are the slimeballs selling their newly bought poster on ebay.

tschav · September 2022

One thing missing from that is posters draw people to merch stands. Wait in a long line and you'll likely buy a few other things (sticker, lighter, shirt, etc) since you've been there long enough - or worst case scenario you buy something else if a poster's sold out.

Agreed that artists should be paid more, which is why most opt to use their payment to print their own lot of APs to sell. Much respect to them for the hustle and dealing with us poster fanatics.

on2legs · September 2022

AS9006 said:

Let me do some math here, bear with me. How many posters you think are sold at a show? Ill shoot from the hip and say 2,000, i really have no clue. 2,000 x $40 (is that he going rate?) = $80,000.
Artists "are allowed" to sell what 100 to 300 posters on their website for say $100. Thats $10-30,000.

80k vs 10-30k doesnt seem right for the artist who did all the work. Imagine if my numbers are way low and they sell 3, 4, 5,000 maybe more posters at a show.

Think of all the $ the machine and the individual artist could make w a pre sale. 1 poster per ticket. You would crush and everyone makes a ton more money. We as fans are happy bc we have our memento. Only people upset are the slimeballs selling their newly bought poster on ebay.

But they didn’t do all the work. They did design the poster. But It requires a huge infrastructure to sell merch. The band has Tsurt doing the merch for a reason - because it’s a lot of work and requires a ton of organization.

Even if they did it online, rolling and mailing thousands of posters is well beyond what most artists are able to do. Did you ever see the photo of Brad Klausen’s pickup truck loaded with poster tubes on his way to the post office? And that was only a 100 AP’s. Now imagine that poor guy having to roll and transport thousands of posters.

Not to mention, the band knows people line up for posters at a show and end up buying a ton more merch while they’re at the merch counter.

I get you’re looking out for the artist but I think you’re way underestimating all the factors involved.

SHZA · September 2022

AS9006 said:

Let me do some math here, bear with me. How many posters you think are sold at a show? Ill shoot from the hip and say 2,000, i really have no clue. 2,000 x $40 (is that he going rate?) = $80,000.
Artists "are allowed" to sell what 100 to 300 posters on their website for say $100. Thats $10-30,000.

80k vs 10-30k doesnt seem right for the artist who did all the work. Imagine if my numbers are way low and they sell 3, 4, 5,000 maybe more posters at a show.

Think of all the $ the machine and the individual artist could make w a pre sale. 1 poster per ticket. You would crush and everyone makes a ton more money. We as fans are happy bc we have our memento. Only people upset are the slimeballs selling their newly bought poster on ebay.

You're also leaving out printing costs, which subtract from the $80k figure

OceansJenny · September 2022

AS9006 said:

Let me do some math here, bear with me. How many posters you think are sold at a show? Ill shoot from the hip and say 2,000, i really have no clue. 2,000 x $40 (is that he going rate?) = $80,000.
Artists "are allowed" to sell what 100 to 300 posters on their website for say $100. Thats $10-30,000.

80k vs 10-30k doesnt seem right for the artist who did all the work. Imagine if my numbers are way low and they sell 3, 4, 5,000 maybe more posters at a show.

Think of all the $ the machine and the individual artist could make w a pre sale. 1 poster per ticket. You would crush and everyone makes a ton more money. We as fans are happy bc we have our memento. Only people upset are the slimeballs selling their newly bought poster on ebay.

Agreed but the poster doesn’t have the value stated without the band’s name and show date on it. I’m guessing that’s how band management has gotten the artist to do it for little to no commission. No way we would know any of these artists if they didn’t do PJ posters.

Demand for the posters will go down if they are easily accessible. The scarcity and rareness is what drives some folks to buy, so they can make a profit. If there’s no profit to be made sales will be way down, just to us normies that want the poster from our show.

AS9006 · September 2022

Yes lots to consider, here is another question why are the artists only allowed to a few hundred? Let them print and sell what they want after the show. If i knew i was making $100 per poster, i'll sit and roll posters all day and mail them out the next.

I dont agree with the poster will bring people to merch tent, people are coming either way poster or not.

Which leads me to these show specific stickers, are they also selling out the night of the show? I see stickers being sold on ebay for 30 bucks when they cost 2 at the show? Whats up with that?

OceansJenny · September 2022

Brad mentioned rolling and mailing those posters is the worst part of the job. Band management caps the artist sale probably for the same reason they cap the run at the venue: a bit of scarcity drives demand.

Before the posters took off merch was not a big money maker. Back in the 90s you could just walk up to the merch stand a buy a shirt. No one was queuing for 3 hours to buy a sticker. But also back then album sales were the bigger money maker. Now bands have to rely on touring and merch to make any money.

I think most of the time the stickers sell out, but not always. What folks can get on eBay will depend on scarcity. For Asbury the run was really low (they lost a box or two) so that sticker can garner a good price. I think a lot of flippers buy everything and see what they can get for it.

Loujoe · September 2022

They get to use pj brand. Most of these artists I'd have no clue of if they didn't do a pj poster.

droptheleash9 · September 2022

OceansJenny said:

Brad mentioned rolling and mailing those posters is the worst part of the job. Band management caps the artist sale probably for the same reason they cap the run at the venue: a bit of scarcity drives demand.

Before the posters took off merch was not a big money maker. Back in the 90s you could just walk up to the merch stand a buy a shirt. No one was queuing for 3 hours to buy a sticker. But also back then album sales were the bigger money maker. Now bands have to rely on touring and merch to make any money.

I think most of the time the stickers sell out, but not always. What folks can get on eBay will depend on scarcity. For Asbury the run was really low (they lost a box or two) so that sticker can garner a good price. I think a lot of flippers buy everything and see what they can get for it.

Exactly this. Merchandise is such a massive money maker these days. Pearl Jam's stuff, believe it or not, is still reasonably priced compared to a lot of artists. Heard a rumor from a friend with a connection to the promoter that in 2016 PJ made $3 million off of merch from just the Fenway shows. If true, that should tell you everything you need to know as to why it's such a focus of the band's management.

tdawe · September 2022

droptheleash9 said:

OceansJenny said:

Brad mentioned rolling and mailing those posters is the worst part of the job. Band management caps the artist sale probably for the same reason they cap the run at the venue: a bit of scarcity drives demand.

Before the posters took off merch was not a big money maker. Back in the 90s you could just walk up to the merch stand a buy a shirt. No one was queuing for 3 hours to buy a sticker. But also back then album sales were the bigger money maker. Now bands have to rely on touring and merch to make any money.

I think most of the time the stickers sell out, but not always. What folks can get on eBay will depend on scarcity. For Asbury the run was really low (they lost a box or two) so that sticker can garner a good price. I think a lot of flippers buy everything and see what they can get for it.

Exactly this. Merchandise is such a massive money maker these days. Pearl Jam's stuff, believe it or not, is still reasonably priced compared to a lot of artists. Heard a rumor from a friend with a connection to the promoter that in 2016 PJ made $3 million off of merch from just the Fenway shows. If true, that should tell you everything you need to know as to why it's such a focus of the band's management.

Agreed that it’s a big money maker,
more so than it used to be, but that just raises the question: if it’s so critical to the business model, why do they not seem to be maximizing on it by going further towards a DTC (ed. note: “direct to consumer” not “Dance of the Clairvoyants”) model? The persistence of the flippers, even if they end up losing on some items, plus the crazy lengths that fans are willing to go to in terms of line times demonstrates that there’s more demand than supply. And it’s true that under the current model, they can’t just expand supply infinitely because there are real physical/logistical constraints around how much of this stuff they can actually put through venue merch stands on show day.

All of which would lead you, I think, toward the online merch model where you can (1) right size the item runs, (2) eliminate the logistical friction at the venues and (3) make sure you’re capturing the value instead of the flippers. But I think it’s also true that, as much as we here on this board are the core consumers (and the ones who will feed the flippers), they do need to make sure they’re servicing the more casual crowd at the shows. The problem is, right now I find it hard to imagine (lol) that Pearl Jam is actually selling any merch to casual concertgoers, given the ridiculous lines.

When someone mentioned the Metallica QR thing before, I initially wondered what the point of that was supposed to be - it seemed unnecessarily complicated vs. a more straightforward online sale. But I think the idea is that people (especially normal people, not fan club weirdos) are more primed to buy merch at the show than before or after it. But if that’s true, why not have QR codes all over the venue that take you to the online show store where you can just tap tap from your phone? You could eliminate a bunch of logistical issues, and I dare say capture a bunch of sales from people who are having a good time at the show instead of waiting on lines during sets.

Cortez the Killer sent me · September 2022

Reading some of the posts above,
Have they standardized poster sizes to 18x24?
Seems like a way to keep all the costs of printing equal across the board minus some of the inks.
Just a thought.
Even BK and Ames are 18x24

OceansJenny · September 2022

The band management has definitely experimented with different ways to do the posters (I remember a wristband for one of the EV late 2000s shows, but also a giant stack of posters that seemed over printed) and they have landed on the current model. Still theorizing it’s to keep supply just high enough to make good sales but also low enough to sell out every time. Nothing worse than leftover inventory that they now have to deal with.

AS9006 · September 2022

In a perfect world everyone gets a poster and they sell out at the show. Curious bc i know there is a lot of man hours to consider rollling, tubing and mailing a poster. They sell for what $40 at a show? What woud you be willing to pay to pre order a poster to have it mailed to you after the show to cover the extra labor and mailing cost? 50, 60, 70 even higher for a poster to guarantee you will get one?

I got an even better idea. Say everyone who secured a ticket to the show via the fan club is given the option to buy 1 poster at the show. You pre order it and show up to the merch stand with your receipt to receive your poster. This cuts out rolling, tubing, and mailing it. It gives a better idea on how many posters to print. It takes care of the die hard fans. I think that idea there is winner, where do you see holes in this idea?

I am not sure if its possible if you can extend the poster offer to anyone who bought a ticket to the show. If that is possible then everyone can pre order and pick it up at the show. This is utopia. Everyone who wants a poster gets it and merch knows exactly how many to print w no leftovers.

What about the artist couple hundred private poster sells then? We need to figure out how to make up for those lost sales for them.

on2legs · September 2022

AS9006 said:

In a perfect world everyone gets a poster and they sell out at the show. Curious bc i know there is a lot of man hours to consider rollling, tubing and mailing a poster. They sell for what $40 at a show? What woud you be willing to pay to pre order a poster to have it mailed to you after the show to cover the extra labor and mailing cost? 50, 60, 70 even higher for a poster to guarantee you will get one?

I got an even better idea. Say everyone who secured a ticket to the show via the fan club is given the option to buy 1 poster at the show. You pre order it and show up to the merch stand with your receipt to receive your poster. This cuts out rolling, tubing, and mailing it. It gives a better idea on how many posters to print. It takes care of the die hard fans. I think that idea there is winner, where do you see holes in this idea?

I am not sure if its possible if you can extend the poster offer to anyone who bought a ticket to the show. If that is possible then everyone can pre order and pick it up at the show. This is utopia. Everyone who wants a poster gets it and merch knows exactly how many to print w no leftovers.

What about the artist couple hundred private poster sells then? We need to figure out how to make up for those lost sales for them.

That’s an organized and very fair way to do it. But it won’t happen. They want people lined up for merch.