‘The average musician makes $12 a month,’ Garbage singer says in onstage rant

Ahead of Garbage‘s two Bay Area concerts later this month, frontwoman Shirley Manson is using the stage to sound off on what she calls an “alarm call” about the state of the music industry.

“It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts,” Manson told the crowd at Denver’s Mission Ballroom this week.

She went on to explain why this would be Garbage’s final run of shows in a video clip that has quickly gone viral.

“The average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify,” she said. “They’re sleeping in their vans. They’re holding down numerous jobs. They’re playing their guts out every night. The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherf-s 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. … They’re all f-ing getting paid, except for the musician.”

The sentiments echo comments made earlier this year in which Manson criticized what she called the “thievery of the record industry” and the lack of any real unions to protect artists.

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Garbage: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 23. Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce Rd, Saratoga. 8 p.m. Oct. 23. The Warfield, 982 Market St., S.F. www.axs.com

Manson, whose band broke through in the late 1990s with hits like “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains,” has sold more than 20 million albums.

“I bring this up every night because I think it’s imperative that we all start to understand what exactly is going on in the music industry,” she said.

The singer has delivered variations of this speech at several stops on their Happy Endings tour. The latest version gained wider attention after members of Fishbone shared a video of it on social media.

“This is not a pity party for us, 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,” she said.

She warned that fans themselves will lose if the system doesn’t change.

“You are the ones who will lose out on a generation of esoteric, risk-taking, creative, adventurous weirdos, rebels, agitators and provocateurs,” Manson said.

Garbage’s farewell North American tour runs through mid-November, with local stops scheduled for Saratoga’s Mountain Winery on Oct. 23 and at the Warfield in San Francisco on Oct. 24.

Their latest album, “Let All That We Imagine Be the Light,” was released this spring to critical acclaim.

This article originally published at ‘The average musician makes $12 a month,’ Garbage singer says in onstage rant.