Garbage’s Shirley Manson Speaks Out Against Music Industry Economics: “This Is An Alarm Call”

Just before they kicked off their current run of dates, the ’90s alt-rock greats Garbage announced that it would be their final North American headline tour. When the band played at Denver’s Mission Ballroom on Sunday, frontwoman Shirley Manson said why Garbage won’t tour like this again: “It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”

In a speech that she described as an “alarm call,” Manson went on to cite things like paltry Spotify royalties and lack of union representation. Manson says that the intent of her speech is to speak up for younger generations of musicians, who maybe don’t have a bunch of classic radio hits and a drummer who produced Nevermind. Here’s what Manson had to say:

We have announced that this is our last headline tour of North America. By that, we mean it has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts. And it’s upsetting, but we’ve had a glorious 30-year career, and we really have no complaints. But I bring this up every night because I think it’s imperative that that we all start to understand what exactly is going on in the music industry. And it’s difficult to get your head around, right? Because 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. But the problem 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. 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. The average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify. They’re sleeping in their vans, they’re holding down numerous jobs, and 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 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.

So I bring this up tonight because you are the ones who will lose out on generations of esoteric, risk-taking, creative, adventurous weirdos, rebels, agitators, and provocateurs. You’re gonna get fucking white bread. That’s it. So thank you so much for coming out tonight, for supporting us for 30 years. Our love is strong for you. Keep supporting live music when you can. Buy vinyl when you can.

Shirley Manson has reportedly been making some version of this speech at different stops on the Garbage tour. This one is circulating at least in part because Manson’s peers in Fishbone posted the video on their socials. Here it is: