An interesting piece from the Marillion web site about why they aren't playing Manchester on the current tour:
A Note from the Band : No Manchester for Marillion...
Reluctantly, we are not playing Manchester on the Somewhere Else Tour. Our old friend, The Academy, is closed for refurbishment. All the other suitable venues in Manchester have a policy of charging a 25% merchandise commission. Basically this means that if we sell one of OUR tee shirts or CDs (already bought and paid-for by us) to you, (OUR fans) we must pay the VENUE one quarter of the money YOU part with! You might think this is outrageous. You might even wonder how it can be LEGAL and so do we.. Unfortunately, it's rapidly becoming the norm at venues throughout the UK and Europe and we have decided to take a stand against this practice which is really no more than plain extortion.
All venues (quite reasonably) charge artists no-small-amount to hire the place, to provide security for the show, and to cover venue staff and running costs. The venue then takes a ton of YOUR money across the bar on the night and despite the fact that we, the artists, are responsible for the bar being full of thirsty customers, SOME venue owners somehow feel they have an additional right to ask for a hefty slice of artist's tour merchandise!
So we're going to Liverpool instead (it's Liverpool's turn anyway), but we'd love to do both.
We charge ?12-15 for our t-shirts and refuse to put the prices up just to cover the merchandise fees which is what has been suggested to us in the past. Why should we make the fans pay? Of course we could put a higher price on the concert tickets but we don?t want to do that either. Why should we be forced to do that? Selling merchandise on tour can often make the difference between an overall loss and an overall profit so we don't want to be forced to give it all away. We've asked for 25% of the bar takings in return but, oddly enough, the venues won't go for that!
Some venues want to charge 20% for t-shirts, 15% for CD?s and a massive 30% for programmes - we don?t understand or accept this concept either.
With us it is a question of the revenue and also of principles. So we're boycotting the gigs who want a merchandise percentage, and we're getting together with other band managers and forums to spearhead a campaign against this practice.
We hope you understand and can make it across to Liverpool or Leeds instead.
