Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Moshpit Passion, Jinjer bassist Eugene Abdukhanov opened up about the harsh realities of touring in the modern era. According to him, musicians are “at the very bottom of the pyramid” when it comes to making money on the road.

Abdukhanov said the following:

“It’s hard to find the proper words, and not to swear… I, of course, oppose and I deeply hate the whole idea of basically stealing money from bands, especially when venues have bars and make tons of money on booze. And especially cutting merch money from support bands who very often barely make any money on merch itself, and they don’t have anything else. And at the same time, I understand that there is no way out of the situation. Because of the whole system, how everything is made, everything turned upside down.

Musicians, from being at the very top of the pyramid, like artists, actually everything’s supposed to work for musicians, they turn to be at the very bottom of the pyramid. Because the musicians are working for everybody else. This is how it is done. It turns out that the musicians are working for management, the musicians are working for labels, the musicians are working for booking companies, promoters. And it’s very, very obvious when you see a settlement, financial settlement of a tour. Because you start from there, and you see the money and then you see all the cuts and what you’re left with is incomparable with what was at the beginning.

I can complain about this forever. But I see to the core and the core is just the world we live in. This is how everything works and everything is turning. So once open market and free capitalistic society turned into a deeply monopolized market where everything belongs to certain entities which control the majority of the market. I will not say names. This is definitely bad. But I just don’t see a solution.”

[via Blabbermouth]