I never even thought about this part of the industry. I just assumed that the hotel did the artists' laundry
Most hotel laundry services I've encountered seem to be priced for one or two critical items. Cleaning a week's worth of items would be prohibitively expensive for most people, and I would be surprised if big productions would be interested in burning several hundred, if not thousands of dollars a week per person just for laundry.
On the flip side, it would be rather amusing to see the entire support cast for Madonna or U2 huddled about grumpily in a coin laundry waiting for other people to finish.
I’d love to see the numbers for a “regular” band, or even broken out examples by category of “stardom” - say, The Strokes level, Bon Iver level, newer up-and-coming artists like Phoebe Bridgers, and then finally your local touring bands and last but not least the guy busking at Whole Foods.
As I understand it there is decent money to be made at most of those levels above local bar bands. But it ain’t easy. There’s a lot of people who go for it that frankly don’t have “it”, though. And some of them make it for a while. Hardly anyone makes it a lifetime career, like Willie Nelson or Elton John.
I see that $15B number looks like it's coming from some IFPI reports. I don't know what that org includes but it doesn't sound even close to accurate.
So I can absolutely imagine that medium to big acts would be quite expensive.
At that price point it seems both faster and cheaper to buy a new pair of quality socks.