Kendrick Lamar just made history again.
And while Drake is somewhere punching the air (sorry, OVO fam), his Seattle show with SZA brought in $14.8 million, which broke his own record by about $5 million from a show he did in Minneapolis back in April.
Now if that weren’t enough to make you pick sides in this beef (that is of course, besides the actual song, ‘Not Like Us’), I’m not sure it will. But with all these tour drops feeling like the Hunger Games when they go on sale, and crazy tour grosses flash across our timelines, do we ever really think about what’s left after all the bills get paid? Because after all, your money —that mortgage payment we’ve all been dropping — is going somewhere when it leaves your bank account. Or at least that’s what I was wondering after I bought those Breezy Bowl tickets.
And while tour prices are absolutely ridiculous, and in many cases we can blame the artists for dynamic pricing, even when artists are pulling in millions, the actual cash they take home can be surprisingly… not millions. Take Kendrick’s record-breaking night – he’s officially the first rapper to gross over $9 million from a single show, beating out Eminem’s previous record of $8.7 million from a 2019 Melbourne concert. But gross revenue and profit are two totally different animals.
Industry folks will tell you that after venue fees, production costs, crew salaries, and all the other stuff that comes with putting on a massive show, artists might only pocket around 15–25% of that gross number. Sometimes less. Which means even a $14 million night might not translate to what you’d expect in the artist’s bank account.
That $14 million night will most certainly break the bank if they want it done right. On our end, what we may see is artists flying through the sky, and using explosives, but the production costs alone for things like can often reach $1–2 million per show, not to mention crew wages, insurance, and transportation for dozens of trucks and buses. The financial machinery behind a blockbuster tour is massive — and expensive.
Let’s put this in perspective with some other major tours. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour wrapped up last year with $579 million in total grosses from 56 dates, making it the highest-grossing tour by a female artist in history. She’s currently out on her Cowboy Carter Tour, which started in April and runs through July with all-stadium shows. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour became the first tour to hit $2 billion, but even with those astronomical numbers, the economics behind the scenes tell a more complex story.
The thing about touring is that it’s basically like running a traveling circus. You need trucks, buses, crew members who know how to set up stages in different cities every few days, security, catering, insurance policies that cover everything from weather cancellations to equipment failures. And imagine also having to move all of that gear internationally?
For smaller artists, the math gets even tougher. Recent data shows that only about 57% of indie touring musicians actually turned a profit, and those who did make money averaged around $3,800 in net revenue. That’s for an entire tour. Yet most of them said it was worth it because touring builds a fanbase and creates opportunities that streaming just can’t match (such as a merch and fan meet & greets).
And even ticket prices have been going up and up, but that doesn’t automatically mean artists are making more money. A lot of times, those increased costs are going toward bigger production values, higher venue fees, or just the general inflation of doing business (hello Trump and these damn tariffs). It’s not uncommon for an artist to gross millions and walk away with hundreds of thousands after everyone else gets paid.
What makes Kendrick’s achievement even more impressive is that hip-hop touring historically hasn’t commanded the same massive grosses as pop tours. The fact that he’s now breaking records alongside artists like Beyoncé and Taylor shows how much the landscape has shifted. His “Grand National Tour” still has more dates coming up in North America before heading to the UK and Europe this summer.
The touring industry has also gotten more competitive lately. The number of mid-level touring artists dropped from 19% to 12% recently, while even superstars saw their share decrease from 44% to 36%. This means there’s less room in the middle — you’re either selling out stadiums or struggling to make touring financially viable.
Artists like Kendrick, Beyoncé, and Taylor have figured out how to make the economics work at the highest level, but obviously they’re the ones at the top of the food chain. They’ve built audiences willing to pay premium prices, they’ve got teams that can negotiate better deals with venues and promoters, and their productions create experiences that justify those high ticket costs. I mean we all know and are familiar with the Beyoncé effect, and it trickled down everywhere. When Kendrick walks away from a $14.8 million night, even after all the expenses, he’s still taking home life-changing money. Money that most artists may never even see in a lifetime, especially if they’re an indie or smaller artist.
Kudos to Kendrick for breaking these barriers as a hip hop artist, because the game is changing and the artists have to change with it. It’s much more than the music, artists have to think like CEOs, balancing creative vision with financial reality, because one miscalculation can turn a successful tour into a money-losing venture. The big 3 (Kendrick, Bey and Taylor), have done it successfully, proving they are in fact, not like us!