In a new interview with Goldmine, Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci explained why the band never relied on income from record sales and revealed what their main source of income is.
“Well, here’s the interesting thing about that. For Dream Theater, we didn’t really have a lot of commercial success,” the guitarist explained. “We did have a song on our second album ‘Images and Words’ (‘Pull Me Under’), which was a rock radio hit and garnered a gold record for us. But other than that, we couldn’t really rely on selling millions of records at first. We started our career with the mindset that our future lies in touring and in live performances. So we did that very early on. We were an international band, and we developed an international fan base from the get-go. So we didn’t feel any paradigm shift that you just mentioned because we had already established that.”
He continued: “We were a major touring band, not reliant on income from record sales, but reliant on income from touring and merchandise and all that stuff. So it worked in our favor as far as that’s concerned. It’s not like we were a pop band who were just selling millions and millions of millions of records, and then we could play a couple of shows a year. We had to play 150 shows on tour all over the world. That’s how we made our money. Yeah, so that never changed, thankfully.”
While the band seems to rely on tours rather than record sales, Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess thinks not relying on music to make money is a much safer option. “I would say to somebody, even if they’re extremely talented, I’d say, just realize that the chances of making money with this are very, very small — minute — no matter how good you are. So think about how you can make money without having to rely on the music that you’re doing to make that money. It’s a much safer way to do it.”
“If somebody has a great brain for more than just music, how can you find something that you make money with that you can also have some time so you can be a happy musician and buy the instruments that you want. And not have to rely on, ‘I’ve gotta get a gig playing in a bar somewhere, ’cause I have no money, and I’m scraping pennies off the floor.’ It’s not bad advice, and I’m sad to have to say it, because I’d like to have people, young [and] old, who make music think that, ‘Okay, I’ll just do this, and that’s gonna be my life.’ And that’s getting really, really hard,” Rudess added.
Dream Theater is currently working on their new album. The upcoming album is called ‘Parasomnia’ and it’s on its way to 2025. The band is teasing the new release through the arrival of a new song called ‘Night Terror.’