Hacker News Reader

Buy a t-shirt. That's the most direct route to actually help them out with as few middlemen as possible.

Can somebody verify this? I'm one who used Groove Shark to discovered music that I really like and then bought it in an effort to support the musician (thanks big music, you just took away one of your means of extracting money out of me).

I would happily wear the t-shirt if I knew that it was in fact the most direct route to actually transfer money to the musician.

I was a professional musician for 15 years. After having kids, the amount of time that I would've had to spend on the road playing and selling t shirts would've far outweighed the time I would've had to be home raising them, so I started teaching myself development in the tour bus. That was 7 years ago.

My old band is still out there, selling out Red Rocks, and any of their merch that you can buy at the show has the highest margin of anything. This is true for every band from John Mayer to the Avett Brothers to your local Dead cover band.

So help me God, buy a shirt at the show or on their website.

I remember that most bands, especially small ones made most of their money off merch. Not sure how it works for larger bands though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com