As was said earlier, Maiden is a business as well as a band. Even if they wanted to give something big to the fans and cover all the costs themselves, transport, venue costs, staff and all, it's considered irresponsible to run a business in such a way that it's losing money or missing out on making money. As much as we'd all love to think music is life for these guys, they got where they are today by being highly professional.
Exactly. To go out on the road and say, "we don't
need to make money!" is just insane. Of course they need to make money. Music is a job, no matter how fun it looks.
Well, I truly and honestly believe that Maiden has so much money already that they could never run out. I'm guessing that each band member has at least $20 million in the bank and possibly double or triple that depending on if/how they invested it and that is MUCH MORE than enough money to do everything for free if they wanted to.
Ok, let's look at it using that logic. Any of the money that is invested is not getting touched, so let's say each member has $20 million in the bank. Now, back home, each member is facing payments on houses, cars, electricity, gas, food and all of the other things that normal people deal with every day. Plus, they are supporting a family, most likely paying for their children to go to good schools, including the incredibly costly colleges or universities. So let's cut about $5 million from every body's total worth to account for bills, debts, future living costs for an entire upper class family, and we're left with $15 million each (assuming each band member makes the same amount of money, which I doubt).
Knowing the grandiose scale that encompasses an Iron Maiden world tour, I would say that each tour costs at least $4-5 million (and that's being conservative). So, roughly two tours a year, six band members at $15 million, plus accounting for inflation, that's another 8-9 years of touring. Let's say the band wants to release two albums in that time and they pay for those albums out of pocket and take no return/make no profit. When you take the costs of recording, releasing, and promoting an album, let's knock a couple million off the top.
We now have about 7 years worth of future enjoyment of Iron Maiden. That puts the band at retirement age. Theoretically speaking, Maiden goes out on top, 7 years from now, they're bigger than ever. But guess what? They haven't made money in almost a decade! Plus, they've been spending their savings to continue making music and touring. So now we've got six retired men with families (who are only accustomed to the lifestyles of millionaires) living like Joe Paycheck-to-Paycheck, minus the paychecks. No, something's not right here...
. I had the secret hope that they could release two albums before retiring..