From Road Warriors to Zen Masters: Taming Live Music Tours’ Financial Chaos

1. The thrill and stress of the road

Life on tour is a kaleidoscope of adrenaline-pumping highs and bone-crushing lows. The roar of the crowd, the exhilaration of a killer set, the camaraderie of the crew – it's a world most will never experience.

But behind the curtain of glitz and glam lies a hidden monster: stress and the toll of a tour on mental health. The relentless schedules, the late nights followed by early mornings, the ever-present pressure to deliver a flawless show, and the lack of real down time are all ingredients of a recipe that can taste a lot like burnout if you’re not careful.

2. Waking up to mental health in the live music industry

Thankfully, there's a growing awareness of the importance of mental health across the industry. Initiatives and support groups are springing up, recognizing that the well-being of those that make live music happen is crucial to fostering a thriving ecosystem.

We're thrilled to see this happen, and are truly impressed by some of the groundswell initiatives that popped up in the last years. Some of the initiatives that impressed us:

1. The Back Lounge
2. MITC and their newest book
3. Backup Tech (with 24h help line!)
4. Music Minds Matter
5. This post from Amplify Her Voice
6. …

We care deeply about mental health at The Pack; 2 of our 3 founders come from a psychology background, and one of them even wrote his masters’ thesis on the effects of job related stress on how often people make work-related mistakes.

One key insight from that thesis is that having “resources” at your disposal to help balance out the demands a job throws at you is crucial to avoid negative stress. A resource can be a colleague to share the workload with… or a (software) tool to help you do the job.
So we know our way around the topic, and we’re specifically interested in doing our part to battle one specific stressor… Financial stress.

3. Financial stress: the villain 

For tour managers, production managers, artists, and the crew, being on tour can feel like a constant financial tightrope walk. 

It makes intuitive sense that punching numbers into a spreadsheet in a backstage, after 4 hours of sleep, while being interrupted every 5 minutes isn’t the most effective way of running a tight financial ship. Nor is it a zen and stressless experience.

In the same vein, it makes a lot of sense that as a crew member you want to be sure you get paid / reimbursed on time, in accordance with the agreed payment schedule. Having to live with financial uncertainty, and having to chase payments, is simply bad for mental health.

And unfortunately sometimes the tour manager is the unwilling bottleneck. Squeezed between the unholy triangle of a crew member who needs to get paid, a spreadsheet that needs updating (or an invoice that needs your approval), and business management who needs to make the transfer. Guess what, pretty bad for your mental health as well.

4. Helping to slay the villain - The Pack as shield

“So whatcha going to do about it?” we hear you ask. Great question!
We believe in a world where the magic of live music is unburdened by financial anxieties. And so, we want to do our (small) part to take away some of the stress on tour.

We don’t see ourselves as yet another platform; we’re here for you, and we’re not going away. Use our platform as a shield against financial chaos; taking at least that stress away from you as much as we can.

Here’s what you can count on us for:

• Effortless Budgeting: Ditch the Excel and embrace an intuitive system where you can build budgets directly linked to your tour calendar. 
• Invoice-Wrangling Superpowers: Upload and approve invoices and expenses like a ninja. No more “where’s that document”-related stress.
• One-Click Payments: Upload a Tour Float before the tour, and pay your crew and suppliers instantly. No more stress due to late payments or not knowing when a payment will go through.
• Crystal-Clear Transparency: All agreements, documents and payment statuses in one place. Get instant insights into the financial picture, make informed decisions with confidence, and say goodbye to the stress of the unknown.
• Accountant-supporting Exports: We export all your data for you in a way that makes your accountant happy and productive. Ready to upload to any accounting package - we can even generate your invoices for you. No more bookkeeping stress.
• Historical Data: always have the previous tour budgets at hand, so you’re only a couple of clicks away from double checking what happened last year.

Here are the steps for unlocking your shield against financial tour stress:

1. Schedule a 30 minute call with us so we can help you get set up.
2. Create your first tour and follow the steps to get your crew & suppliers paid.
3. Enjoy lifetime The Pack support.

Is this going to take away all the stressors of going on tour? Not by a long stretch.
But we’ll make some of the essential budget-related stuff frictionless. And every stressor balanced by a good resource helps a little bit.

We’re constantly working to improve our platform, so if there are other tour-accounting related pressures you’re facing, or things we can do from our position to improve mental health on the road, we’d love to hear from you!
Drop us a line at ihaveanidea@partofthepack.com, we'd be grateful.

Let's make music, not spreadsheets.