Where’s My Money? Season 6, Episode 10
Season 6 of the multi-award-winning podcast Where’s My Money? has arrived to keep bringing you the financial content that helps you be better with your money.
enable.me partners with rova to bring this podcast to life and stimulate the conversation about finances with everyday Kiwis. Where’s My Money? follows the story of Reagan – a man chasing the Kiwi Dream but feeling stuck living month-to-month – and his discussions with the experts about what he may be doing wrong and how to fix it.
One man. One million dollars of debt. One podcast to find a way out.
Ever wondered why concert tickets cost what they do, or why some of the world’s biggest artists seem to skip New Zealand altogether?
In this episode of Where’s My Money?, Reagan goes behind the curtain with Six60 bass player Chris Mac and promoter Dave Munro from Eccles Entertainment to unpack the business of live music. And it turns out the gap between a sold-out show and a wildly profitable one is a lot smaller than most people think.
What comes through clearly is that this isn’t just a conversation about ticket prices. It’s about risk, logistics, freight, margins, and what happens when a band has to start thinking like a business if it wants to survive.
Sometimes the biggest careers start by accident
One of the best parts of the episode is Chris Mac’s origin story, because it’s purely personal instead of PR polished.
He says he was only supposed to fill in with Six60 for three months after losing his job as a music teacher. “End of three months, I just ended up sticking around and it’s been 17 years later.”
It’s a line that sets the tone nicely, because for all the scale Six60 operates at now, Chris still talks about the band with a kind of disbelief. “I wasn’t supposed to be here that long,” he says, before adding that he doesn’t think the band was really meant to last that long either. The gigs just kept coming, and people kept turning up.
It’s a good reminder that even very successful businesses often don’t begin with some grand master plan. Sometimes they begin with talent, timing, a bit of luck, and enough momentum to keep going.
Every band is a business, whether it wants to admit it or not
Chris shares his view that artists have always been businesses, even if they don’t like thinking of themselves that way.
“I think every band is a business,” he says. Then he makes the point in a way that feels very Chris Mac: if you’re a painter, you still need to sell enough paintings to buy more canvas and pay your rent. Music’s no different.
That matters because it cuts through a lot of the fake divide between art and commerce. Yes, the art matters. Obviously. But if you want to keep making it, touring it, recording it, and building a career around it, money has to come into the picture somewhere.
Chris says Six60 was serious about that from early on, putting a portion of what they earned back into the band. “We would all put in a percentage back in, like, 20% back into the band. So, we’d always have a kitty. So, we’re always growing it.”
That’s a useful business lesson hiding inside a music story. Growth often looks less glamorous than people expect. Sometimes it’s just disciplined reinvestment, done over and over again.
A sold-out show doesn’t mean easy money
Next, Reagan leans into the topic of what most punters never see.
From the crowd, a show can feel simple. You buy the ticket, turn up, watch the band, go home. But Dave and Chris do a great job explaining just how much infrastructure sits behind that one evening, especially for outdoor or “greenfield” shows.
Reagan puts it simply: “Everything has to be brought in,” to which the boys agree. The stage, the bar, the toilets, the fencing, the power, the set-up, the pack-down, the staff, the freight. It all costs money before the band sees a cent.
And as Chris points out, “those are all the people who are getting paid before the artist.” That’s one of the clearest lines in the whole episode, because it immediately reframes the idea of a ticket price. You’re not just paying for a band to walk on stage. You’re paying for the entire machine that makes the show possible.
Even big bands can have lean months
Reagan asks how long it can actually take a band like Six60 to get paid after a major show.
Chris’s answer is basically: longer than you’d think. He says it can take “months” because of all the moving parts and because everyone else has to be paid first. Then he adds something a lot of people probably wouldn’t expect from one of the country’s biggest acts: “you can have lean months for sure.”
It’s a useful reality check. From the outside, successful music careers can look like a straight line from popularity to money. But the episode makes it clear that cash flow and profitability are not the same thing, and scale often creates its own delays and pressures.
If that’s true at Six60’s level, you can imagine how much tighter it gets for smaller acts.
The business model matters: guarantee or profit share
Dave Munro is especially good in the more technical, financial parts of the episode, particularly when he breaks down guarantee versus profit share.
A guarantee is exactly what it sounds like. “An artist is guaranteed… that is what they’re getting regardless.” If nobody shows up, the promoter wears the risk. A profit share is different. In that case, the artist doesn’t get their share until the costs are known and the profit is actually worked out.
That distinction helps explain a lot about why some acts can take ages to be paid, why some tours are so risky, and why negotiations around big international acts can get so wild.
It also explains why the music industry can look flashy from the outside while running on some very unforgiving maths underneath.
Ticket prices are up, but the costs are too
Bringing it back to costs and rising prices, Reagan asks what’s changed in recent years.
Dave says that in the last five years, “the costs have gone through the roof,” especially for those greenfield outdoor shows where everything has to be brought in. He also points to freight costs rising sharply, saying that “the cost of freight stuff around the country is astronomical.”
That creates a squeeze. Costs rise, but there’s still a point where fans simply won’t pay more. Dave says, “in a lot of cases, we can’t push the ticket price up that much. So you just got to weather it. You just got to wear it.”
Higher ticket prices are real, and people are right to notice them. But those higher prices aren’t just artists or promoters deciding to gouge. They’re often the outcome of a much more expensive live environment overall.
Dynamic pricing might make economic sense, but it still feels gross
The conversation around dynamic pricing is especially interesting because the discussion captures both sides of a tricky ethics-vs-finance view.
Reagan points out that dynamic pricing isn’t new and that it already exists in other parts of life, from airlines to hotels to rideshares. Dave agrees, and adds it’s something that feels very true in the local context: “it’s not a very Kiwi thing to do.”
It’s nice to see the conversation not ignore or dismiss the emotional part of the problem. It’s not just about economics. It’s about fairness, transparency, and the way New Zealand audiences expect to be treated.
Dave’s clear that they generally don’t use dynamic pricing for local acts, because it doesn’t fit the market and because local audiences would hate it. Chris echoes that broader ethos too, with the two blending that the conversation around Six60 is always about accessibility and trying to find the sweet spot between not losing money and not gouging the fans who support them.
It’s a nice detail, because it shows ticket pricing isn’t just a spreadsheet exercise. There’s brand, trust and audience relationship sitting inside it too.
Why big global acts keep skipping New Zealand
This part of the episode will probably hit home for anyone who’s looked at an Australian stadium tour and wondered why there’s no Auckland date.
Dave’s answer is blunt: it’s the numbers.
Using Taylor Swift as the example, he points out that if an artist can stay put in a 90,000 to 100,000 capacity venue for multiple nights, that’s just better business than moving an enormous production across to a smaller market. Chris adds: “It’s just a numbers thing.”
That doesn’t mean artists dislike or don’t care about New Zealand fans. In fact, Dave explicitly says that isn’t the issue. It’s cost, capacity, freight, and the simple fact that Australia offers bigger crowds with less movement and less expense.
The explanation feels useful because it takes the frustration out of the realm of “why don’t they care about us?” and puts it back where it belongs, albeit in a tough reality: touring economics.
Sometimes tours don’t stack up, even when they’re successful
Right near the end, Reagan asks the question that sits underneath the whole episode: has there ever been a time a tour didn’t stack up financially?
Chris says yes.
He talks about a recent stadium show in Wellington where the wind was too heavy to play, forcing the show to be pushed to the next night. That change meant they lost around 6,000 people and, in his words, “we lost a lot of money on that show.” Then he sums it up on a level that seems to address both the financial and artistic impact: “it hurt big time.”
That example is perfect, really, because it shows how quickly the live business can turn. A sold-out run can look fantastic from the outside, but weather, freight, delays, and rescheduling can take a huge bite out of the result.
So when people wonder why ticket prices are what they are, this is a big part of the answer. The margin for error isn’t huge.
The real price of selling creativity
What makes this episode a unique and interesting listen is that it doesn’t romanticise the music industry or flatten it into a complaint about expensive tickets.
Instead, it gives a pretty honest look at what sits behind live music in 2026: bigger costs, tighter margins, more risk, longer payment cycles, and a constant balancing act between accessibility and sustainability.
It also makes a broader point that applies well beyond music. Creative work still has to be funded. Passion still has to be paid for. And if you want something to last, whether it’s a band, a business, or a career, someone has to think about the numbers.
That doesn’t make the art less real. If anything, it’s part of what keeps the art going.
Disclaimer: The Where’s My Money? podcast and the information shared by host Reagan White and his guests does not constitute individual financial advice. If you’re interested in receiving financial advice, you can book a consultation with an enable.me coach. Costs apply.
