Rock heavyweights Garbage are quitting touring despite a strong following – is being a working musician becoming increasingly unrealistic?

Is being a touring musician becoming increasingly unrealistic?

Shirley Manson of rock band Garbage recently made the announcement that the group would be “curtailing” their “headline touring business” in the wake of ‘“untenable” economic circumstances.

Garbage are currently on tour in the US, and made the announcement at a recent show in Washington, DC, saying: “We have just decided that the economics have become untenable, so this is kind of the last time that we’ve decided we’re going to get on a bus and just tour all over North America.”

So if Garbage – a band with a considerable following (2.7 million Spotify monthly listeners, for some degree of perspective) – can’t make the economics of touring work, what does that mean for fledgling artists?

Speaking to the crowd at the band’s recent show at the Mission Ballroom in Denver, Colorado, Manson elaborated once again on the band’s decision to rethink their approach to touring.

“It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts,” she said [via MusicRadar].

She noted that she and her bandmates are thankful for their 30-year career to date, adding that they have “no complaints”, however she retains her outward stance on the increasing impossibility of touring artists to make it financially viable so that “we all start to understand what exactly is going on in the music industry”.

“You see all these big pop stars, and they’re making billions and billions and billions of dollars and they’re rich and they’re glamorous and they’re amazing.”

Manson makes no specific reference here, but it’s worth noting Taylor Swift – by many accounts the biggest artist in the world right now – raked in over $2 billion in ticket sales.

The problem, Manson continued, is that “most of the music industry is not made of these big pop stars. They’re made of working musicians”.

“This is not a pity party for us,” she went on. “This is an alarm call for all the young generations of musicians who are in our wake, and who we feel duty-bound to speak up for because there’s nobody speaking up for them. There is no governmental body. There’s no fucking real effective union for musicians that fights for young musicians to get paid.”

It’s certainly true that an increasing number of artists are questioning the economic viability of touring in 2025 and beyond.

The Chemical Brothers, for example – an English duo who are arguably one of the biggest names in dance music – said in 2023 that touring was no longer “viable”, adding: “The costs have gone up so much.”

And earlier this year, a fund was set up to help UK touring artists, with Annabella Coldrick, Chief Executive of Music Managers Forum saying: “So many artists and their managers work unpaid on loss-making tours for many years in the hope of growing a fanbase, developing their live performance and creating long term careers. They are having to make tough financial decisions to make ends meet.”

Touring is an incredibly complex business with many moving parts, and depending on the scale of the operation, the fees paid to stagehands, booking agents, management and so on need to be deducted from ticket sales before the artist themselves gets their cut. As the cost of touring continues to rise, in turn, so do ticket prices.

Rounding off her speech at Garbage’s Denver show, Shirley Manson also reflected on the number of parties which take a cut in the music business before the artist gets their piece.

“The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherfuckers on streaming platforms who get paid royally by record labels, who get paid royally by Ticketmaster, who get paid royally by merch companies, who get paid royally – the list goes on and on and on. There’s accountants. There’s lawyers. They’re all fucking getting paid, except for the musician,” she said.

And that’s not taking into account the rising prevalence of ticket touts buying up available tickets and reselling them at hugely inflated prices. According to a study last year by global research firm YouGov, UK concertgoers pay an extra £145 million annually to ticket tours, with nearly half of surveyed fans saying they struggle to identify legitimate resale platforms.

It’s not uncommon for fans to have to pay hundreds to see their favourite artists, so when Live Nation launched an initiative earlier this year offering $30 tickets on over 1,000 gigs in summer 2025, fans were no doubt elated.

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of MusicRadar, Guitar World, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer.