Luckily for rappers, touring is where all the money is! The average concert attendance this year has gone up to 9,109 people. If the same well respected, mainstream rapper sells tickets for $25, and assuming that he has an attendance of about 9000 fans, he will make $225,000. It is impossible to tell exactly how many concerts a rapper will do, with cancellations and all, but I am assuming around 30. This means that the average rapper will make 6.75 million dollars from touring. The only problem with this is that touring costs money. On tour, he will need to pay for food, gas, drink, hotels, equipment, transportation, and a roadie crew. Some tours (for bands like U2) can cost tens of MILLIONS of dollars. For our purposes, let’s say the tour costs about a million dollars. What is left? 5.75 million dollars. Then, there are all of the other rappers that are on the tour. They need to be paid as well. For example, artist Mac Miller is currently on tour with 4 other rappers (Chance the Rapper, Earl Sweatshirt, Action Bronson, Vince Staples). When you buy a ticket, you’re paying to see all of them. So, the 5.75 million dollars are split in 5. This means each artist makes 1.15 million dollars.
All in all, if you are a well respected, mainstream rapper you only make 1.25 million dollars every year. That’s pretty far from 25 sittin’ on 25 mill (Drake).
Hopefully, we've answered the question how do rappers make money? and how much do they really make?
If you'd like to learn more about the lives of famous hip-hop musicians or rappers, check out these popular books below. They are definitely worth a read!
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