The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'
english.elpais.com
english.elpais.com
"DM: We exist as a band because we sell t-shirts. Our job is that we sell t-shirts and the way we promote those t-shirts is by playing music. If we were talking strictly economically, that’s just a fact.
LL: Weirdly, it’s also our most direct engagement with the money we make and with our fans. We’re often selling our own shirts at the merch table; that’s actually how we talk to a lot of fans and get feedback on our sets. We get cash in our hands; that’s one of the most direct economic exchanges in our lives as musicians. So, it is funny because it seems cynical, but it’s actually one of the more grounded exchanges in what we do."
As it turns out, I had a nice little chat with their drummer when I bought one of their tshirts.
The world is full of these weird business cases where people aren't aware of the actual product, like how Starbucks US morphed from a coffee shop into an iced dessert drinks company that also incidentally sells hot coffee.
Edit:
Other fun examples -
In the mid-2000s, Porsche was an incredibly successful hedge fund that also sold cars who tried to acquire VW using a short squeeze.
Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
RVs are put together by methheads and there are less protections (such as no lemon law for RVs) for the consumers. Many RVs spend there whole one year warranty period in the shop with no actual fixes being done and then the warranty runs out. The people that do hear about RV problems, buy new thinking that will be less problems, when in fact the newer RVs are the lower quality ones that have issues. There are YouTube channels dedicated to this phenomenon (https://youtube.com/@LizAmazing), and why one famous consumer lawyer (Steve Lehto) says "You Must be INSANE to buy an RV These Days": https://youtube.com/watch?v=xElhTNS_xn8
A great video where one major manufacturer does not even properly VIN their RVs leading to a $600,000 fine given to one RV owner: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zGOANydJURQ
I think it's much more likely it's just a reference to extremely popular and economically successful movies but happy to be proven wrong.
Before movies bombing was a bad thing, a successful movie was "exploding" like a blockbuster bomb.
edit: ah, but wiki disagrees <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)>
More interestingly, they tend to set up in historically significant or listed buildings and as a result, preserve them. Not unusual to find a Spoons set up in an old 19th century bank or something.
When I think about the band shirts, I think about this time an indie game dev youtuber did a full breakdown of their different revenue streams. They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
So really, they were an online course seller that used their gamedev youtube content to convince people to buy the courses.
Their business has run into trouble a couple of times because MBA types in the company lost sight of this, then focused on trying to sell drinks efficiently. Thereby diluting the brand and business.
If you've got 22 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym7YwFq8ZuM is a very informative walkthrough of the history and the business by the always funny youtuber, The Fat Electician. Highly recommended.
So they try to find a way to get more growth, even if it changes and perhaps kills what the business was.
Around 2000 the founder stepped away, and MBAs brought in automated machines. They were more efficient and consistent at making the drinks than the baristas, and business tanked. The founder came back in 2008, got rid of the machines, and brought the baristas back. Business took off again.
It really is the experience that is being sold.
Same goes with supermarket checkout. I noticed many people intentionally take the line where the human scans your stuff. They enjoy it!
Unfortunately many zoomers do not appear to have been informed of this fact, and will give you a worse experience, "humanity wise", than the self-check out machine!
When you treat your job as robotic, aside from making the experience worse for all involved, you are also competing with actual robots, i.e. competing on speed, price and consistency, which is not a great place for a human to be.
Obligatory "in a gold rush, sell shovels" ;)
The reason we don't evaluate things in this "measure what is actually goin on" manner is because the actual goings on are only able to go on as they do so long as a public image that emphasizes something else is maintained.
People wouldn't go to starbucks in the manner they do if they thought of it as a sugary drink place.
Freakonomics Radio had a series about airlines. They claimed this was not true and that frequently flier points only accounted for 5% of profits.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/freakonomics-radio-take...
WSJ said it was true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTW8RDJUEE
I don't know who to believe.
Also the one about Target being a real-estate company I've also heard about McDonald's.
I thought it was also, so I looked at United Airlines 2024 Annual Report to confirm or deny my position. [^0]
If you look at their revenue sheet, you'll see that UAL made ~$51B from passenger revenue (tickets sold * available seats across their entire fleet) while they made ~$24B from "other revenue", which includes, amongst other things, annual fees from credit cards.
Same with Delta, though they made ~$10B from their "other" revenue. [^1]
However, it's a bit of a positive feedback loop situation. The "other" revenues in these 10-Ks don't tell the whole story.
Airline frequent flyer programs have tiers with minimum flight and spend requirements per tier. This benefits both frequent flyers and VFR customers (visiting friends and relatives).
If you travel a lot for work (frequent flyer), there are very heavy incentives to get to that top tier. Customer service at the highest tiers is eons better than what you'd get at lower tiers. You also get priority boarding, first-crack at upgrades, upgrade certificates that move you to the top of upgrade lists, and more. These benefits make air travel, which many people don't like doing, much more tolerable.
If you're an infrequent flyer, getting to that airline's mid-grade tier usually gets you more free checked bags and priority boarding. Checked bags are EXPENSIVE after the first freebie (thanks, Southwest!) which is usually enough of a draw to get people to chase that status. (If you live near a hub, you can gamble and hope that the gate agent offers to check bags gate-side for free to speed up boarding, but that's not foolproof. Anyway, checking baggage is a fool's errand; one-bag for life!).
Getting the airline's co-branded card usually provides bonuses that make it easier to hit those tiers. So you get the card and put all of your personal (and corporate, if your company allows it) expenses on the card.
Airlines also have gotten very aggressive about pushing the card onto gen pop. You're almost certainly going to get hit with a 60-80k mile offer on every flight you take in the US for spending ~$3k on that airline's co-branded card, no matter the airline. (It's almost always enough for a round-trip ticket to some coveted location in the US, on an award flight, which are harder and harder to come by, but that's another topic for another post.)
United flew 173M customers in 2024. $3k card spend from even 10% of those customers is $52M! And that's before you consider that most people will continue spending on credit cards after earning the spend benefit! (However, at $0.01/mile earn rate, the $14M worth of flights United would be beholden to is recorded as a "frequent flyer deferred revenue" liability. But, again, the chase for status and benefits would generate more revenue that's hard to forecast, though I'm sure the airlines have forecasting models in place.)
If this interests you, and if you like math, "The Global Airline Industry" by Belobaba et. al. is a fantastic book that explains this and other peculiarities of how airlines work. This was recommended to me by an old colleague that ran a small airline. It's excellent.
[^0] https://ir.united.com/static-files/d4c854c7-427c-49a9-8129-d...
[^1]: https://s2.q4cdn.com/181345880/files/doc_financials/2025/q4/...
They're exactly as much a real estate company than a mom & pop store that owns their space. They just have a lot of stores.
2. The inefficiency bugs me
I.e. I want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target. Same with websites that have mugs and such. I don't want another mug, I don't want to pay 5.99 for shipping, I don't need to support the white box oem mug manufacturer.
But I guess in the real pragmatical world, that's the support mechanism that actually works :)
I even recall going to a show many years ago where the lead singer refused to sell his t-shirts at the venue and implored us all to meet him outside at their tour van for direct sales. I don't think he got invited back to perform there!
This has been followed up by similar action in the US as well: https://weareumaw.org/my-merch
LiveNation operates so much of the venue spaces they can take whatever they want. Artists have been complaining to congress about it since the merger in 2010.
I know some musicians are using Patreon but patreon takes a cut as well.
Now Although I don't like github but one of the last things that I like about github is that github sponsorships don't charge anything extra than the costs it would have itself and you get chargeback protection.
Would there be a genuine interest in using Github for sponsorships by Musicians, are there any real world musicians* who are doing that?
If you want to support them you're more than welcome to message them and ask for their Venmo, or reach out to their agent (if they have one) or them directly and ask who to make the check out to. That just doesn't work at scale.
Maybe you don't have any friends that are in a band, but if it's the band members or friends of the band selling the merch, they are getting 100% of the profit. They design the shirts, they pay for the printing of the shirts, they then sell the shirts directly with their own hands. There's no middleman taking cuts. Now, if you're buying their merch from some 3rd party website, that site probably takes a cut. Some bands selling merch on their own website could still be coming directly from the band if one of them, or again a friend, sets up the site with their own accounts using square/stripe/etc and deals with the fulfillment themselves they are minimizing cuts as well.
I imagine it's not hugely expensive at the volumes bands need, somewhere from $3-10 per t-shirt depending on quality, and maybe double that for hoodies? And if you are buying online shipping and handling, which is another $5-10 that I'm paying and isn't going to the artist. Not a huge deal. But if you don't care about the physical product and just want the band to have some money that's still a good bit of inefficiency
More importantly you were also missing the point. The issue is how much of the $20 you pay end up in the hands of the band. Where in the value chain that money is spent doesn't matter. What matters is how much is spent on delivering the t-shirt to my doorstep and how much is in the band's bank account
The point is that punk rock was culturally very influential but never very musically popular. God Save the Queen was a hit record but that is the outlier.
I think it is useful to consider that a lot things that endure are not the things that were popular at the time, particularly with music. I saw the Pixies at the Hollywood Bowl a couple years ago and it occurred to me that when they had recorded the songs they are known for I saw at venues not much bigger than bars. They were never really that popular. Or Elliot Smith, who was seriously obscure in his short lifetime.
I do think The Ramones were robbed in way. If radio at the time wasn't ready for them, classic rock radio now should be. Most of them play The Clash already.If Blitzkrieg Bop is too weird or raw, "Rock 'n Roll Radio" is polished enough that it would fit right in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrKmP7oU9U
It's pretty funny, and includes Fronalot's characteristic wordplay with lyrics like:
> Captains are we. Of what? Industry.
Which could also be taken as:
> Captains are we, of what industry?
As far as this interview: I mean, that's every band ever; the music is an ad for their shows and merch, which is the product. Some, like these folks, come to grips with this easier/quicker than others!
In my opinion that alone is worth it, but it is a fun piece of memorabilia. Although I don’t wear most of them in my day to day, especially the older ones.
I’ve got shirts from about 2008 onwards, which is the year I first went to see Sabaton and Disturbed.
I went to see Amon Amarth headline in ~2013 and Sabaton was one of the openers. I had never heard of them before but they actually were on par with Amarth's performance and I've been a fan ever since!
Yeah Sabaton is great, I’ve been a fan since Primo Victoria, their debut album. They’re also doing an NA tour this year (after rescheduling some dates). I’ve mostly seen them tour in EU so this is a good chance for those outside EU to see them live!
I joke, of course, and I'm a big Ramones fan. I've had numerous iterations of that shirt over the years. I often use them as an example when discussing "what is good art?" They are one of the most influential bands of all time and yet they were terrible musicians.
Imo they were terrible musicians but a world class band.
Here's Bill Withers on selling out: “Sellout… I’m not crazy about the word. We’re all entrepreneurs. To me, I don’t care if you own a furniture store or whatever – the best sign you can put up is SOLD OUT.”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sell
Etymonline says the meaning "betray for gain" is from 1200. So this is probably where "sellout" comes from. Compare with "he sold us out".
There's an entry for sellout too: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sellout "corrupt bargain".
I suppose there's often another layer to it, which is that you might think your favorite band (or, say, Apple) has principles and will stick to expressing certain important things. But then they might lose sight of the principles and start churning out lowest common denominator shit for money. It's not as simple then as money=bad. It's more that money as the goal means you have no goal (and your corporate mission statement is a feeble apology for that).
That makes me wonder if the meaning of a sellout artist was an analogy to an event which became commercially popular, and was (literally) no longer accessible to long-term fans.
I think this is the prior that not everyone shares. Yeah if you consider yourself an entrepeneur that has no values except transactional economic perforamnce then its tautological that selling everything is good and the best.
If you however consider yourself an artist, if you think the comercialisation of certain things is inmoral, if you think transactional relationships are hollow or even damaging... then the idea of selling everything as good is nauseating.
Punk in particular is pretty antithetical to the ideas of consumerism and commercialisation. So its a genre and cultural movement where selling out is not only possible, but heavy demonised.
Bill Withers would be juxtaposed to someone like Gil Scott Heron in terms of where their music stands. And he was described as such when he broke out
Will Layman on Scott-Heron said "In the early 1970s, Gil Scott-Heron popped onto the scene as a soul poet with jazz leanings; not just another Bill Withers, but a political voice with a poet's skill."
Not only are the songs they wrote really good and catchy, Ramones are one of those bands where it sounds so easy anyone can do it but if you give it a try, you quickly find out it’s difficult to get the nuances right and your results, unlike theirs, sound crude and obviously amateurish.
They’re like AC/DC in that respect. Or Melvins.
Like if you are sloppy there is an element of randomness in the output, and any particular randomness will be difficult to replicate.
playing sloppy isnt too hard to replicate.
And to say nothing of course of the mechanical finesse and stamina required to play this kind of music.
If you or I drew a square, it’s unremarkable anyone can draw one. But someone had to be the first guy to drawn one, and that guy is the genius.
To stay on the "hair metal" example I gave, getting Mutt Lange circa Pyromania to produce a Ramones record would be selling out.
This makes me to wonder why do you and other people like them and why were them influential?
Isn't a band's purpose to produce good music and aren't people supposed to like musicians because they produce good music?
The Ramones were middle class kids, who started a band in high school when they were outcasts. They literally crafted new identities, writing tough lyrics and posing for photos with dour expressions. They weren’t cool enough being themselves so they became someone else.
The style is more important. It’s almost a point of pride that they don’t know how to play. Punk ironically has always been this way. There are so many rules you have to follow to be considered truly punk; you have to rebel in a very specific way. You have to look a certain way or you are out of the club.
In the 80s and 90s, your favorite bands were your identity. Cliques formed based on what obscure band you liked, and if nobody knew who they were, you were even cooler. Dig through the record store crates to find that rare vinyl nobody else has.
Hence more t-shirts sold than albums. Nobody gets your cool signal if you are silently rocking out with headphones on. You have the shirt; you were there, man.
Where I grew up, the misfits skull t-shirt was more iconic. Today you can buy it at Target.
For some people, the esthetic get the biggest factor, for some other social message it convey is more important, and other will want a balance.
The classical example is separation of author from its work dilemma.
I remember there was a whole debate about Lou being a sellout for appearing in an ad for a Honda Scooter. Such innocent days...
Not trying to say that Wordpress v1 was terrible software written by terrible programmers, but I hope you get my point.
They were influential because they ushered in a new style of playing music. I remember reading an interview with The Clash and someone (Strummer?) mentioned that when the Ramones first played in london it was like a bomb going off. They were amazed that a band could play so fast and they all went home and tried to replicate it.
Originality is part of it. Today a band that sounded exactly like the ramones probably wouldn't go far because it's already been done.
Its a fascinating topic for me.
There are two definitions of "good" here, that are different.
1. "good musician" means a musician who is skilled or adept in their instrument. I'm separating this from if a musician is good at writing music.
2. "good music" means music that is entertaining or enjoyable.
The Ramones were not incredibly skilled in their instruments. They wrote music that many people found enjoyable. They were not good musicians, but they created good music.
The Ramones were sellouts and posers, just like most bands. Wearing them on a t-shirt to signal 'punk', the joke's on you. It's an "industry of cool", like Jack Black's character says in Almost Famous.
When his money was on the line he chose his side and showed his true self.
Gotta pay for those 'jelly beans' somehow!
I guess with them touring and playing basically non-stop a certain kind of that is inevitable.
Their concert frequency was on par with the otherwise known as most prolific band ever, The Beach Boys. It's just that The Ramones' members all died around third of the way (~20 years of touring vs 60).
I played guitar for a while and didn't have much trouble playing them and I was barely adequate at best.
The hardest song for me was California Sun. I just couldn't figure it out until I realized it had 4 chords instead of three. I learned later that it was a cover.
I don't think most music artists have the necessary relationship with their audience to "sell out", because their music isn't ideological and they don't have a real relationship with their fans. As famous sell-out Laura Jane Grace sang, the content is so easily attainable that the culture is disposable.
And that is exactly why they were so influential.
"Hey fellas, let's start a band!"
Anyway, he would have been one of the folks signing the checks.
If he says something interesting, I might report it back. He sometimes just blows sunshine up my ass, but he's certainly one for interesting stories.
Worked with some of the most deplorable narcissists in history, and hardly ever has a bad thing to say about any of them. I can see how he did so well. They probably loved working with him.
He told me that they got paid plenty of money, but their T-shirt sales were enormous. He said they still sell like hotcakes. Apparently, Nirvana has also done well in that department.
Of course, I can't speak for the general health of each band. They made money, but I'm not sure how well things worked out for them... I don’t think there’s any Ramones, left.
> Many guardians of rock authenticity still complain that today there are plenty of people who buy a Ramones T‑shirt — maybe at some big multinational chain — who wouldn’t be able to recognize even one of the band’s songs. But the truth is that neither the Ramones themselves nor their heirs ever cared about that. In that sense, Arturo Vega’s work was just as important — if not more so — than the band’s first album.
There wasn't enough to that initial punk sound other than energy and posturing. What punk really did was act as a catalyst for an explosion of musical creativity that followed.
The "betrayal" of finding how much of the sound was manufactured happened roughly at the same time as I figrued out how everyone at punk concerts could afford 200£ new doc martens when my shoes were falling apart.
But the reality is I think there was a real underlying "want" for that sound,ethos etc but societally there are no publically owned means of distribution. So if the only way to reach people is through private channels, like radio. Then the only people with reach will be those that benefit Capital.
I think society wanted, needed, cared about the punk ethos against the buy/sell your soul hamster wheel the corporate lifestyle promised. The white picket fence was dead as a dream, but the alternative dreams had no way to reach people without passing through the hands/eyes of someone who could make moeny of the new dream. And thats why it only happened briefly and with bands like Sex Pistols that beneffited someone selling Clothes. There was someone who could make money so the sound was given a stage.
But you can see the seeds planted then to show up regularly. Gyarus in japan rejecting traditional beauty standards, grunge as a response to manicured glam rock, the blog era of rap, the acceptance of non traditional genders like non binary/ neo pronouns etc.
Even acts that probably would not describe themselves as Punk like Sofia Isella, who opened for Taylor Swift, use a lot of the codes of punk with her overt embrace of dirty grungyness as opposed to perfectly presentable femininity.
For example, I love the B52s, and it's easy to forget that they were responding to punk. This video of a show from 1980 is one of my favorite concert videos ever, as it captures that energy that is missing from the studio albums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXfkG7q_0s
It’s better now because artists can record pro quality music at home and go direct to consumer with TikTok and Spotify.
how much of the revenue derived from those listens turn into commission to the musicians?
Those t-shirt sales came about because of those listens, so even tho the music wasn't as revenue generating, it acts as the biggest funnel.
Of course Misfits had a much more impressive visual aesthetic, so that might explain their continuing design relevance.
To the original Ramones you say? Might be hard to deliver.
But how much of traditional broadcast radio license fees accrue to musicians? Zero, unless they happen to be the songwriters (but good news for Max Martin et al.) Record companies also got no royalties from radio airplay (in fact they got in trouble for paying radio stations to play their music.)
At the high end, live performance pays more than it ever has, since the exclusivity is what people are paying for. At the low end, the performers get squeezed because they are competing with lots of amateur DJs or people simply doing without a human.
They have to dedicate a decade or more of their life at a prime age to the character - selling their soul if you will. And not going nuts in the process. Fame and extreme fame would turn any normal person crazy. But you don't have the option of withdrawing, because you have this army of other people depending on you, among other things.
100%, I do feel like fame at such level is a very net negative thing to have. You do get money and fame and there are many times within the media where paparazzi and others have made some celebrities lose their mind. And almost everyone loses a sense of something human with this sense of fame. From Princess Diana to Britney Spears to Justin Beiber.
The tragic true story of Justin Beiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvnnbzcAjOU
Music labels contracts have always been exploitative, they usually require the band to pay back costs like studio time, producer, mix/master engineers, marketing, before getting their cut of royalties in sales, for artists without clout the royalties share would be 75/25 to the label (or worse), more famous acts can get a 50/50 split, again after recouping the costs.
As any passion industry it is extremely exploitative, as much as people like to hate on streaming platforms nowadays the music labels have been the most evil aspect of it all for 70+ years and they managed to lurk in the shadows without attracting a lot of flak.
Authors would get something similar, they'd rarely sell out their advance, but could buy copies for pennies on the dollar and sell them at conventions.
Which meant the band needed to tour to generate the revenue and exposure to pay all that money back. Shirts and posters cost nothing to print and sell for $35 at the table. Exclusive tour merch is collectible.
Streaming and digital production changed this somewhat but the economy seems similar today. Since nobody buys albums and streaming pays nothing, tours and merch are where the band gets paid.
There's this local band. I go to their concerts at least once per year. But we also own 4 of their hoodies in our family of 3. I bet they made more money from the hoodies than from the concerts.
This sort of thing becomes endless debate, but I'm still gonna say The Stooges were way ahead of them (yeah, noticed Iggy in one of the article's pictures).
In Australia, Kmart (Kmart is very popular here) sells lots of retro rock t-shirts. Often from tours that occurred in the 1970s eg Elon John 1974 tour or Led Zeppelin etc.
And why should that fact be haunting? The point of being in a band isn’t to sell records, but to make music. The only reason the t-shirts sold is because the music was good and they were iconic. Where is the ghost?
* I've been in the same (unsuccessful) band since 1987 - obvs I have a day job too
So there you have it.
But years later I remembered that I bought a Pink Floyd tshirt at Hot Topic (for The Wall, scene with the apocalyptic archway with WW2 bombers / planes[0]). I knew who they were as a band and I knew some songs from radio. I didn't really know their music. I didn't become a huge fan until years later. I was that teen girl, turns out.
0. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a4/6e/50/a46e50cd5ac9f67e15ddfd0ba...
Donald Trump, despite his numerous financial schemes, makes a lot of his money selling shirts, or hats, or phones or credit cards with his name on it. it's probably the only legitimate business operations that he has.
it's kinda crazy how, when you boil it all down, so much of the american economy is just selling merch
I've also never seen anyone slam dance carrying a Ramones album, but I have seen them slam dance wearing a Ramones t-shirt that got tore up.
Gabba gabba hey!
Which is a reasonable implication given that punk grew up around the DIY culture. A commercially produced recording doesn't exactly align with the interests of that type of community, even where that community enjoys the music itself.
You can get Iron Maiden beer, Iron Maiden wine, Iron Maiden sunglasses etc. let alone the common merch like T-shirts.
Given many more people can buy merch than can buy a concert ticket (which has inherently limited numbers) I wonder how the two revenue sources compare.
But pterodactyl are pretty cool too my mind, so no offense really.
But the p is silent.