How the Venue Merch Cut Works
When Silent Planet threw its shirts into a Milan crowd in June, it was protesting a fee most fans never see. Here is how the merch cut is calculated, and why it stings.
On June 9, the metalcore band Silent Planet played Alcatraz in Milan and gave away its T-shirts for free. Singer Garrett Russell threw shirts into the crowd mid-set, and the band pointed fans to a discount code for its online store instead. The reason, per Consequence: the band said the venue wanted a 25% gross fee on merch sales plus an additional 22% tax, a structure the band called predatory.
The fight is not new, but 2026 has brought it back into the trade conversation. Australia's ABC ran a feature in June marking three years since Architects and other bands publicly called out the practice, and reported that it is still widespread. To see why bands care, it helps to walk through the money.
What the cut is
A merch cut, sometimes called a merch fee or commission, is a percentage of the artist's merchandise sales that the venue keeps on the night. It is written into the venue's deal with the promoter or the artist, and it is settled at the end of the show along with the ticket money.
The rates vary by market and room size:
- Documents seen by triple j put Australian venue cuts at roughly 10% to 20%, according to the ABC.
- The manager of the band Heavensgate told the ABC that one venue on a US tour took 20% to 30%, plus seller fees and other charges.
- Alpha Wolf's guitarist said one Italian venue asked for 43%.
- Metal Hammer reported cuts as high as 25% on top of local tax in 2023.
Who does the work
The justification for a cut depends on who sells the goods. At arenas, the ABC explains, the venue usually supplies its own staff and point-of-sale systems across several stalls. At small and mid-size rooms there is typically a single table, and the artist brings both the seller and the card reader. In that second case the venue is charging a percentage for floor space and access to its audience, not for labor.
Why gross matters
The key word in most of these deals is gross. A cut taken on gross sales comes off the top, before the band pays for the merchandise itself.
Take a hypothetical night with $2,000 in shirt sales. If the shirts cost the band $700 to make and ship, the band's margin before any fee is $1,300. A 25% gross cut is $500, which removes more than a third of that margin, not a quarter. If local sales tax is also taken from the gross, as Silent Planet said it would be in Milan, the band's share shrinks again. The higher the production cost, the bigger the bite a gross fee takes out of profit.
The fee can also dwarf what the venue pays the act. Silent Planet's Alex Camarena told Metal Hammer in 2023 that one band's merch cut had sometimes been double its guarantee, meaning the venue took back more from the merch table than it paid the band to play.
How acts push back
Bands have three tools, none of them free.
- Sell elsewhere. Make Them Suffer have sold from their van outside venues, the ABC reported, and Silent Planet moved sales online for the night.
- Negotiate. Some venues waive or reduce the cut for support acts, or take a fixed handling fee instead. The ABC notes that rooms run by CLBR's Nate Farrell, including Oxford Art Factory, charge a storage and logistics fee rather than a percentage.
- Pick the room. The UK's Featured Artists Coalition launched a 100% Venues registry in 2022 listing rooms that take no commission, and in 2023 a major promoter said its US clubs would stop taking merch cuts and pay a $1,500 travel stipend, NME reported.
A cut on gross takes its share before the band has paid for the shirt.
The leverage problem remains. Make Them Suffer's Sean Harmanis told the ABC that naming venues can hurt future bookings, since the rooms that charge are often the ones a band needs to play. Until that changes, the merch table will keep doing double duty as both the band's paycheck and the venue's second bar.