Billboard has published their annual top tours and venues list. The top spot of the year belongs to Puerto Rican rapper/singer Bad Bunny, who grossed more than $373 million. Hard rock and heavy metal garnered plenty of money in 2022 as well, with The Rolling Stones taking the top spot for rock having played just 20 shows.
Here are the details:
• No. 6 – The Rolling Stones grossed $179.3 million across 20 shows with 949,000 attendees
• No. 7 – Red Hot Chili Peppers grossed $176.9 million across 31 shows with 1.4 million attendees
• No. 8 – Def Leppard & Mötley Crüe grossed $173.4 million across 35 shows with 1.3 million attendees
• No. 17 – Guns N’ Roses grossed $93.3 million across 27 shows with 1 million attendees
• No. 20 – My Chemical Romance grossed $87.9 million across 55 shows with 714,000 attendees
• No. 26 – Iron Maiden grossed $76.1 million across 47 shows with 984,000 attendees
• No. 36 – Trans-Siberian Orchestra grossed $54.6 million across 98 shows with 767,000 attendees
Figures only include gross ticket sales and do not represent an artist’s actual earnings. Each artist usually incurs significant expenses — including management, booking agent, promoter, venue, travel, equipment (sound, lights and staging), hired musicians, crew, hotels and buses.
Artists also, however, make income from streams and merchandise sales, which in the cases for high-profile artists, can be substantial. Oddly, Rammstein was not included on the list despite doing sold-out tours all over the world. The omission was likely just an oversight by Billboard.
Touring itself has been a hot topic this year as due to various economic issues, many bands including Anthrax and Stryper, have been forced to cancel planned tours.
Anthrax was supposed to kick off a European trek back in September but “sadly due to ongoing logistical issues and 2022 costs that are out of our control, we have no other option but to cancel the European leg of our upcoming 2022 tour,” the band announced. “It doesn’t work when tour buses double and triple in cost.”
Queensryche guitarist Michael Wilton spoke to the “Signals From Mars” podcast and further elaborated on the difficult situation most touring bands are faced with.
“[The pandemic] kind of decimated the music industry for heavy bands, rock bands and metal bands,” he said. “They made their living touring, and that was shut down. Lots of establishments were closing down. So everything was shutting down and going down to bare-bone operations.”
“I mean, let’s face it: the technology, everything, is changing; the industry is changing,” he continued. “People aren’t buying records. They are streaming. Bands don’t get paid on streams. It’s crap. You do hundreds of thousands of streams and you can buy yourself a coffee at Starbucks.”
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