hckrnws
The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'
by c420
I was reading an interview with the band "Agriculture" recently and they had a really interesting take on this. From this interview https://www.treblezine.com/agriculture-interview-quiet-viole... :
"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.
It's very smart of them to recognize that.
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.
I don't know if the Starbucks example is quite the same as the band example. If anything, their focus on iced desserts shows that they know exactly what their audience wants and is paying for.
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.
The reality is that Starbucks is the world's biggest unregulated bank, with their claws in the real estate industry. Who got that way by selling the experience of hanging out in a convenient coffee shop.
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.
IMO, they, like many other companies, were doomed by the constant chase for growth. Once they had a large share of "have a milk-coffee drink in a nice lounge" market, growth slowed. But having a large market share, good margins and growth that is the same as population/gdp (+/-) is just not acceptable.
So they try to find a way to get more growth, even if it changes and perhaps kills what the business was.
There's more to the story than that.
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.
I'm assuming you're talking about those Clover machines. They were really, really good and well designed IIRC. Trying to automate the barista with them; well, that's where they messed up!
They also went from semi-auto espresso machines to full auto
In the context of AI automation I keep coming back to "cute Starbucks barista" as the archetypal automation-proof job. Because the job isn't producing the beverage, but the little moment of human interaction. (Especially these days, when not much of it remains!)
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.
Yeah, I guess if you can't grow revenue, the next best thing is to grow profit by cutting costs (or try both at the same time).
Honestly, their espresso has always been undrinkable, IMO
to add to this, the iced dessert drinks are still caffeinated, so they still fill the purported role of a Starbucks.
Well, not the original role. That was to bring some americanized version of European/Italian coffee culture to the US. Serving espresso based drinks in a comfortable public cafe style setting. It was very popular for a long time. Busy cafes full of people, selling lots of drinks, opening new shops, etc.
> They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
Obligatory "in a gold rush, sell shovels" ;)
> Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
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.
The version I've heard is that airlines are credit card companies that also fly passengers on airplanes.
Also the one about Target being a real-estate company I've also heard about McDonald's.
My understanding is that's true for McDonald's. They own all the stores and rent them out. Target owns its stores but does not rent them out.
It's not true.
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/...
Starbucks is also (one of?) the largest payment processors in the world, with also a perpetual like ~$2B float from its customers
And McDonald’s is known to be primarily a real estate company. Berkshire Hathaway is meant to be an insurance company. Military aircraft manufacturers are really maintenance companies.
> Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
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.
Or that GM is a bank that also sells people the collateral for loans (i.e. cars).
Or Blockbuster being a massive real-estate company. Or McDonald's for that matter.
Similarly Wether spoons, the chain of pubs in the UK.
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.
On the other hand, the naming of Blockbuster[1] makes more sense with that context.
Because Blockbuster Video played a pivotal role in early-1900s segregation in the United States?
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.
Yeah I heard it describes a movie where the line to get into the theater went around the block.
edit: ah, but wiki disagrees <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)>
The movie term derives from a different piece of slang, a WWII term for a large bomb that could destroy an entire block.
Before movies bombing was a bad thing, a successful movie was "exploding" like a blockbuster bomb.
Car manufacturers being financial/loan organizations is another.
RV companies are more-so that than car companies.
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
Now do the International Code Council, and Harvard, and Unicef, and government departments, and, and, and.....
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.
Great band!!! The Spiritual Sound is an excellent album.
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!
1. I understand the truth of it
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 want to support the band, but feel like only a fraction of the money spent on merch goes to the target.
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 guess they are technically not middle men because they sit one the start of the value chain, but the company making the t-shirts, the one selling it and the one printing on it are still making good profits. On top of the actual costs of making those printed t-shirts.
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
the t-shirt itself benefits the band because it's free advertising, it keeps the band on the radarof your friends etc. even if you wanted to paypal them, they would probably prefer you to buy (and wear!) t-shirts
Slight correction: I just received an advertising blow-in from Ollie's listing Hanes and other brand women's tees for $1.99 each. That's for short sleeve, long sleeve or tank top in various colors. The indicated competition is stated to sell them for $2.49. Not that this is RETAIl pricing in the U.S.A.. I'm guessing wholesale will be even less.
well, now you're getting needlessly pedantic in a way that just makes me wonder why would someone do that. seriously, nobody expects that a band is weaving fabric by hand to cut into patterns to sew into shirts. everyone here understands that you have to buy the shirts at your expense to sale at a mark up that earns profit. what a ridiculous thing to argue
Merch is the most profitable thing for the band. They can mark it up however much they want. $35 tee shirts are very profitable.
Yeah, also the fact that most venues take a cut of merch sales really dampens the idea that buying merch directly from artists is the best way to put money in their pocket.
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!
Never heard about venues taking a cut off the merch - that’s fucked up… They already take (in almost all cases) 100% from drinks and bar sales. In my experience the ticket sales and merch go completely to the artist. Anything else I would consider a rip-off
In larger UK venues this has been happening for some years now, there is a campaign against it: https://thefac.org/venuedirectory
This has been followed up by similar action in the US as well: https://weareumaw.org/my-merch
That is certainly the case with many venues in the US after the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger. Independent venues are much more rare, due to the LiveNation monopoly, but make their own deals with talent that are reasonable to both parties.
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.
It's the only thing that works at scale.
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.
Just give them money directly without the merch. Or purchase their music, most (small) bands sell it directly as well.
If the band signed with someone to help produce the album you're buying, they probably owe a cut to cover the costs of recording, mixing, cutting/pressing, releasing that album.
> 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.
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?
MC Frontalot and MC Lars had a fun take on this same concept in "Captains of Industry", which you may enjoy, depending on your feelings on old nerdcore hip-hop.
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?
I was hoping someone made this comment! It remains high on my list of Frontalot songs. Big fan of “I’ll Form the Head” and “Stoop Sale” also from that album as well.
Agriculture has just joined my rotation thanks to this story. The process works.
Now go buy a t-shirt!
Great band, cool shirts. Gotta say all the Flenser bands got the memo on strong merch.
I think all this talk of entertainment economics is missing the point of the article. Yes, today bands more money from tshirts then recordings. However, in the 70s and 80s they typically made a lot of money from LPs and CDs. In the time of the Ramones, that was how bands made money.
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.
The argument has been made that punk finally broke in '91 with Nirvana and then Green Day and myriad other pop punk bands selling records. And there's also a case for the bands, especially of the '77 era New York scene breaking, but doing it by playing less textbook punk-sounding music (Blondie, Talking Heads, etc).
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.
In the same way, LeBron James has earned more money from selling shoes than playing basketball.
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Well, Brian Eno said of Velvet Underground's first album that it didn't sell many copies but everyone who bought it started a band.
Yeah, thinking the same with regard to the Ramones. They are name-dropped so often by bands that came since—pretty sure it is not because of a t-shirt.
It's even more prolific than that. Ramones-core is a sub-genre of pop-punk, and it's awesome. Teenage Bottlerocket, Screeching Weasel and Swingin' Utters are some examples that come to mind.
They're definitely a household name because of the tshirt, same with Joy Division
"your favorite band's favorite band"
This is how you end up with a Big Star album.
that's Pile!
I’m a big fan of rock and metal music and often go to concerts. I’ll always buy a t-shirt of the main band I go to see, even if I don’t particularly vibe with the design, because I know it’s an additional way to support a band I like.
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 wish I had, and the only shirt I ever got at a show was from Necrophagist. A girl I was seeing at the time left my house wearing it and I never saw it again :(
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!
That’s unfortunate! But you can start your collection going forward haha :)
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!
Thanks for the headsup, I will definitely try to make it out to see them again!
why don't they have donate pages or venmo QR codes at the concert? I am serious. I don't want more stuff. I don't need tshirts. I don't need trinkets. I legitimately love music and want to support, but it is so difficult. Best I can find is digital sales of an album that doesn't cost them any manufacturing/shipping costs.
I go to shows fairly often and I see bands with venmos and stuff all the time. Could just be the kind of concerts you're going to.
Comment was deleted :(
I read that Aerosmith made more money from Guitar Hero game royalties than from their albums. And it's been true for a long time that most acts make more from touring and merch than song sales.
If you read the article, it will be clear that one of its core theses is that their lighting tech and graphic designer was essentially a pioneer of selling merchandise as a revenue generator for a band.
My favorite example of this is Joy Division. They’re the band with that cool white-on-black ridge line plot shirt. If you haven’t listened to their music before, go check it out. You probably won’t like it very much. I don’t know how many records or shirts they sold, but their ratio of shirts sold to records sold has to be one of the wildest.
The bulk of those shirts have got to be pirated, but for a while they were selling them at Bandy Melville, a clothing store whose target demographic has seemingly very little overlap with fans of Joy Division. The ultimate triumph of the signifier over the signified.
Well, it was a public domain picture of pulsar, and I remember seeing it in Scientific American before the band used it. I had the shirt, loved it. Had tix to see them on their first tour of the states and then Ian had to go and off himself.
That's a band I have seen mentioned here on HN quite a bit, but I have never heard of anywhere else. I proably do know a couple of their songs but just in a way that I would say "I've heard that before" not that I would be able to say "oh that's Joy Division."
Has anybody recently interviewed Ian Curtis to get his thoughts about their shirt sales?
I doubt he would have much to say on the subject these days.
If the Ramones put their name on all sorts of merchandise does that make them sellouts?
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.
The concept of "selling out" requires you to have some core values which you and your audience share. If you're a hard rock band and you make a cringe disco album because that's what the record label told you to do, that could be seen as selling out. If you're an anarchist crust punk and you get signed to a big label that could be selling out. If you're an underground DJ and you do the soundtrack for a big movie that could be selling out.
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.
In short, selling out is when your art takes a back seat to making money (when it had previously been the other way around).
consider it from the perspective of those who have no art. it's like a threat of decapitation for people who never had a head. headlessness is the norm and carries no fear
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They should market Ramones' branded propofol for everyone that wants to be sedated. :P
I believe in the idea that if you really do the hell out of something, you can make up for a lot of shortcomings. Quantity and spirit can substitute for quality in almost all artistic pursuits.
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.”
> Bill Withers on selling out: “Sellout… I’m not crazy about the word. We’re all entrepreneurs.
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."
Sell meant "give" in Old English, including the sense of "give up", "surrender", "betray". (Their word for sell was equivalent to *be-buy.)
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 believe you missed the point
I dunno, the guy likes words. At least i learned something :)
I also like the Ramones and my Ramones shirt. I was trying to implicitly say what Arkhaine_kupo above me has now said.
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).
Noone expects the etymology inquisition.
No one expects the etymology inquisition.
For me the gold standard take on "selling out" is "Hooker with a Penis" by Tool.
> they were terrible musicians
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.
I once saw a documentary on them, one of the critics had a quote that really stuck with me (paraphrasing):
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.
But have you tried recording your version and also playing it in public and promoting it for decades? It’s possible that’s what is making the one thing sound like it has something hard to name, and the other one not.
Like if you are sloppy there is an element of randomness in the output, and any particular randomness will be difficult to replicate.
Punk is not easy, they were developing new techniques and song writing approaches. Otherwise you tell me why we talk of Ramones as being different from older rock like say Led Zeppelin. I will say by the time we get to bands like Minor Threat we have genuinely new song structural paradigms that never existed in rock music.
And to say nothing of course of the mechanical finesse and stamina required to play this kind of music.
for this stuff its mostly just a question of buy same gear really. they play a bit 'wild' so esp live it wasnt like super clean. but the sound is mostly having the right kit including recording gear / setup or live equipment etc. depending on what ur trying to do.
playing sloppy isnt too hard to replicate.
I know most people don't take the concept of "selling out" seriously anymore, but the Ramones would not be sellouts for making Ramones merch. If they had turned into a hair metal band, where they would otherwise not make hair metal, just so they could sell a bunch of records, that would be selling out. Merely making money is not selling out
So something like getting Phil Spector to produce their record?
given the massive influence of 60s girl groups on the Ramones, I would say that getting one of the architects of that sound to produce their record is not selling out.
To stay on the "hair metal" example I gave, getting Mutt Lange circa Pyromania to produce a Ramones record would be selling out.
You’re going to bring up Phil Spector and not mention the story of Spector threatening the band with a gun in the studio?
How are they terrible musicians? They played their specific type of music extremely well. Like, technically better than most people will ever be at music. People loved seeing them play. I still enjoy their records. So, what is terrible?
Maybe it was part of his schtick but johnny often bragged about not practicing. He wanted the concerts to be raw. The mistakes were part of the art.
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.
"technically better than most people"
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).
The Beach Boys also unabashedly liked money. I saw The Beach Boys - what was left of them anyway - with one the original members talking on stage basically talking about how he still did touring because he liked driving around in a Bentley.
"They are one of the most influential bands of all time and yet they were terrible musicians."
And that is exactly why they were so influential.
"Hey fellas, let's start a band!"
Terrible in which way? Did not use counterpoint sufficiently elegantly? It’s punk, mate. Try to do a set downpicking like Johnny.
Yeah, punk was a bit of a rejection of the polish of the big bands of the time. In a sense, the "horrible" was sort of the point. And for the shock value. But did that really mean they were horrible? Probably everyone kind of sucks at first. But it's hard not to improve your skills once you have got to a point where you have done a certain number of shows because you created a sustainable cash flow to support it.
There was an interview with Joey (maybe in the greatest hits liner notes?) where he said at the beginning they were trying to cover their favorite songs from the 50s and 60s but they couldn't figure them out. So they wrote their own that were easy (my word) enough to play.
Imo they were terrible musicians but a world class band.
>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.
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?
No, for many, wearing band shirts or adopting a specific style is signaling.
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.
> Isn't a band's purpose to produce good music and aren't people supposed to like musicians because they produce good music?
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.
And that's the question, right? I like the ramones because they are loud, fast, and catchy. Is that enough to call it good music?
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.
What is good music though? I think the OP meant that the Ramones were terrible musicians in the sense that they were technically "good", i.e. most jazz musicians are much better technically. But that's the whole point the OP is making, to make good music you don't need to be technically good, i.e. to play the most complex guitar solos or be extremely accurate in your timing on the drums.
"One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz" -- Lou Reed.
I remember there was a whole debate about Lou being a sellout for appearing in an ad for a Honda Scooter. Such innocent days...
It depends who you ask, not everyone weight the same considerations about the things they contemplate to.
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.
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Music is something you can do without formal training. Much like how you can be a terrible programmer but still create popular software. Just like how maybe what the world wanted at some moment was a slow PHP alternative to moveabletype, maybe the world also wanted sped up, stripped down, 60s girl band songs, without complicated rhythms and harmonies.
Not trying to say that Wordpress v1 was terrible software written by terrible programmers, but I hope you get my point.
It's a commercial act, the 'punk' costumes carefully chosen for the right signalling, by a couple of middle class kids. What's with this idea that your taste in music must spring from the purest and rawest authenticity, preferably (in no particular order) poor, rebellious, substance abusing, ethnic, and so on. Leading to all these musical acts styling themselves like that.
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.
Remember when Jack Black ditched his long-time friend, threw him under the bus, for being mildly edgy against the establishment?
Any respect I may have had for Jack Black was completely lost when he did this.
When his money was on the line he chose his side and showed his true self.
Gotta pay for those 'jelly beans' somehow!
I don’t. What are you referring to?
Was Jack Black in Almost Famous? Are you thinking of PSH. I've mixed them up in my head myself, and I have no clue why. I was a Tenacious D fan from day 1, so it's not like they're 2 actors I'm only vaguely familiar with. And they aren't super similar in many ways. Yet they're somehow interchangeable in my movie memories.
You're right, thanks for the correction. It's a very Jack Blackesque character, in my defense.
How delightfully cynical. Instead of thinking taste in music “must” spring from your cynical take on what authenticity us (which I agree is impossible to define and almost a useless term at this point), maybe people just… like the music, and it somehow speaks to them. Musical taste is famously subjective and entirely down to what music you heard before etc
I dunno, Seems like author of article is projecting, I feel like most people would be happy if they made that much of an cultural impact
I wouldn't go as far as assuming the author is projecting, but the last paragraph of the article is indeed aligned with your second point:
> 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.
I have a friend that worked with them. I sent him the article. He’d know, if it was correct.
And?
Friend probably still sleeping
Yup. Happily retired.
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.
Weird that the perception of value is how much money a product makes. Sure they sold more t-shirts than records, but without the records the t-shirts would have been worthless.
Impact on other people is probably the best measure of value. Pirating is a value-enhancer.
I'm not sure if this an urban legend but, it's cool anyway. The name "Ramones" is an adaptation from "Jamon", Paul Jamon, a fake name Paul Mccartney used in hotel check-ins to avoid stalking fans. So most if not all Ramones members through history changed their last name, family name, to "Ramone" to honor the tradition and be a Remone forever in Rock history. Again, this is cool enough for me on top of the great music they've made.
I highly recommend Simon Reynold's history of post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again. An oversimplified version of his argument is that punk as a movement barely existed. It was an extremely brief cultural moment, represented by a small number of bands, the most influential of which (The Sex Pistols) was basically manufactured.
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.
I thought about it a lot growing up, as I loved both the ethos, sound and culture of punk. Radical acceptance, the grotesque denial of the aesthetism that is used to sell products etc was all appealing back then.
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.
I wasn't even alive at the time, so I've only experienced the whole punk and post-punk scene after the fact. I always found myself way more drawn to post-punk music, and it's nice to know that you really did have to be there to experience how radical punk felt, regardless of its origins. The waves of musical scenes that spread out from that initial punk moment took that energy and ran with it in some radically different directions.
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
Man it's really too bad that that's the headline, because it's a great tribute to Arturo Vega, and I don't understand why it has to come at the expense of such a seminal band. If what Eno said about the Velvet Underground is true, then album sales don't account for much in the grand scheme of things anyway.
> what is widely regarded as the album that invented punk
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).
Shawn Stussy printed shirts to promote his surfboards and ended up being the originator of “streetwear”
Well that goes for most bands doesn't it?
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.
I think what the article is driving at is that The Ramones are the _first_ band where that became true.
Are they? I mean they're world famous. I'm sure there were thousands of local bands before them that made a penny from merchandise. Maybe they didn't even have finished records to sell.
Has anyone ever read, or even seen, THRASHER skateboard magazine?
I have stacks of them still saved in boxes from the 80's.
I mostly looked at the pictures.
Yes, for millions of skateboarders it was essential pre-2020. Not it's fault it became trendy for people like Rihanna to sport an edgy skater aesthetic.
Isn't the whole point of touring to sell merchandise?
Today perhaps. But in the past the artists money from selling records. So the tour was to promote the album, rather than the other way around
Getting paid for live performance was the traditional way for musicians to earn money for centuries. Record sales was a temporary thing that is now gone.
Live performance is also now gone.
Live performance is about status signaling. A party with a live performer (or at least a DJ) is considered fancier than one with just a streaming phone.
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.
Those are more like live appearances. Basically them doing stuff while a DJ plays a recording of a song the "artist" probably had 1% part in writing. Expensive karaoke. The actual musicians of the world lose money doing live performances these days.
The "artist" has quite a difficult job as well, even with the machine behind them doing a lot of the creative and practical work.
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.
> 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
Payouts from records were also quite meager unless you were already a well-known act.
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.
Sometimes the band would get pennies from an album sold in stores, but they'd get almost the entire price of an album sold by them at a venue.
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.
Sadly that wasn’t true in the past either for the majority of acts. The labels made money from both parts back then.
I’ve read that many contracts involved the label fronting a ton of money to the band to produce and promote the album.
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.
They're played every day on the radio, on streaming services, etc. Billions of listens vs. thousands (?) of shirts.
> Billions of listens vs. thousands (?) of shirts.
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.
I mean I sort of believe that most Ramones t-shirt sales came along because of the listens, but then again I see lots of Misfits t-shirts on kids born this century and considering it's in Denmark it seems unlikely it's because their parents were big Misfits fans.
Of course Misfits had a much more impressive visual aesthetic, so that might explain their continuing design relevance.
Maybe fifteen years ago, I saw a teen wearing a Pink Floyd shirt and my internal thought was to ask her which albums she liked (sarcastically, I was pretty jaded at the time). I didn't approach her, of course, that'd be mean.
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...
I find their music repetitive. I could certainly listen to one or two songs, but not a whole album or show. And I would have no qualms wearing a T-shirt of theirs.
So there you have it.
I get a lot of content about "how to promote your band"* and it's almost ALL about finding "superfans" you can sell merch to - so the actual art is reduced to ads for t-shirts
* I've been in the same (unsuccessful) band since 1987 - obvs I have a day job too
Motörhead and Nirvana are probably in the same situation.
I was talking with a friend who is a promoter and runs a regular dj party kind of thing, not unlike 'boiler room' back in the early days. he makes all his money selling merch.
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
Fascinating! Always love these backstories. The Ramones were brilliant - I don't have a favourite album but my most-watched DVD is The Ramones Story
So the band's image resonated more than their music.
How does it haunt them when they are dead?
And they explicitly said that they didn't wanna be buried on a pet sematary!
The Ramones are haunting us all.
Invented punk? nah.
I don't mean to be crude, but how can it haunt them, when they're all dead?
Wikipedia says 3 of them are still alive (Marky, Richie, C.J.).
It's the inverse of Spinal Tap - only the drummers survive!
Who buys music these days? A few people might buy LPs but that eats up storage. Streaming doesn’t do very much for the bottom line.
well you can’t pirate a t-shirt or hear it on the radio or cover it at a local show, and it’s super easy to make a new t-shirt design compared to an album, maybe I’m overthinking this but it doesn’t seem like a surprising metric, especially for a punk band
Seems like The Ramones were way ahead of their time, whether they knew it or not. Before the digital age, most bands made the bulk of their their money from record sales. Concert tours were just promotional events for the latest album. That model has since been flipped to what The Ramones were doing 50 years ago - "music sales" earns little compared to concerts and merchandising. Now that's punk rock! LOL
I think you are describing the most successful bands. I wouldn't be surprised if the average band good enough to play a small venue made more money on the shirts than the records and tapes. People weren't choosing them from among all the bands at the record store but from all the experiences in the town that night.
No. Just no, this is backwards. Bands, especially bands early in their career made money from touring. Merch was always a huge driver. Bands got “loans” to record albums with that had to get paid back first before they made any money from album sales.
It’s better now because artists can record pro quality music at home and go direct to consumer with TikTok and Spotify.
I think that’s probably just a universal truth in many industries. How many people have donated to the Linux foundation versus how many people have bought some sort of Tux merch?
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?
The ghost is in the clickbait machine.
Marketing has become the pinnacle form of art.
The Ramones are most defintly un haunted, doubly so by anything as subjective as the "truth" They captured, held up, and released the feeling that litteraly countless humans have experienced, and wished, as it turns out,to display as something "gotten off there chest"
The power of "Kill a Commie for Mommy".
Isn't it normal and typical for musical acts to make more money from concert tours and merchandise sales than the music itself?
As is noted in the article, selling band shirts was not yet common practice when the Ramones starting doing it. Until Napster came along tours were marketing for albums, which were the primary revenue source.
I seem to recall reading that Gary Holt or Jack Gibson, either from Exodus, claim that despite being known worldwide as a thrash metal act they have to support themselves selling t-shirts, since their earnings from touring, albums or streamings won't cover their expenses
It was likely all of them, but the more famous quote recently from Gary is, “People think, ‘Oh, you're a rich rock star.’ No. I sell shirts outta my fucking closet.”
It's not that they made more money from merchandise, it's that they sold more t-shirts than albums. Implying that more people were interested in the "image" of punk rock than the music.
I guess that's the definition of 'iconic' - many a time I have approached someone wearing a Ramones or Motörhead T-shirt trying to chat a bit, only to be told 'Sorry, don't know the music at all, but the shirt is cool...'
Gabba gabba hey!
I can wear out a t-shirt much faster than an album, tape or CD, and I am not very caring of the conditions of albums.
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.
The last time I went to an Exodus show, there were more people in attendance than sales of their most recent album.
Although the article is unsure whether they sold more t-shirts than tickets, implying that people were interested in the music in a live capacity.
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.
Not in the past. When that change flipped from music sales to merchandise and tours, I couldn’t be sure but I’d reckon the early 2000s.
I mean, yeah. I need to buy the album once. I can buy multiple shirts, posters, etc.
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I really enjoy their songs, and I first listened to them in my late 20s, long after the age where bands imprint on you like a baby chick.
Music is always highly subjective, but to my ears, I'd have to agree. Not that my opinion means anything at all.
I think the headline implies as much... people liked the idea of the Ramones more than they liked actually listening to them.
They have certain charms but talent wasnt high on that list.
Pinhead
They didn't. What happened is that one of them (Johnny) was a staunch conservative, so, like Sex Pistols with Johnny Rotten, they are routinely "cancelled" from the punk scene (e.g. they are not real punk, their music sucks etc). Other bands with less musical prowess (like the Exploited) are still idolatred by the punk scene because they were largely anarchists. It's fun that, after 50 years, Ramones and SP are the only punk bands that still generate controversy. Pretty much all the others are run-of-the mill punk bands that we got used to and completely lost any provocative charge.
Johnny Rotten voted for Trump in 2020.
(What? He did. I don't like it either. Well, I thought it was funny.)
shots fired.
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Made my day. Thank you
I was wondering the same thing about Iron Maiden the other day - they seem more of a merch company than a heavy metal band these days.
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.
Kiss too. Kiss was a merch juggernaut.
Poor take. In the last three years alone they've played over 100 concerts. Their set is two hours. They're all in/approaching their 70s. If that's not a band, I'm a pterodactyl.
Even if they are indeed a band, that doesn't mean you are not a pterodactyl, mind you.
But pterodactyl are pretty cool too my mind, so no offense really.
You won't even notice the pterodactyls - they're often in the bathroom!
But the p is silent.
It's the same with the "Star Wars" brand - the biggest chunk of revenue comes from merchandise and licensing, not the movies/shows. Lucas famously became a billionaire by securing merchandising rights in his original contract, not because of the cultural impact of the franchise.
They're tied together - Lucas wouldn't've had the billions if Star Wars hadn't had the cultural impact allowing it to sell all that merchandise.
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