Friend of mine is a big name artist. He has to pay his record label everytime he performs his songs. For big tours he gets exactly one dollar of each ticket. He can make money off of other stuff though depending on how the show is setup he can get money from alcohol and merchandise sales. He's done smaller sets of shows where they charge him 30-50k to perform even if the record label had no part whatsoever in putting the shows together. Like if he wants to play at a local bar where we grew up he has to pay them.