Originally Posted by kane

It depends. Some bands, well many bands, have bad deals and they make very little off of the record sales partially because the labels spend a lot of money promoting them and that money all comes out of the artists royalties. That said, a band also gets performance royalties for having songs played on the radio or on services like Spotify and Pandora. They also can make money selling merchandise and licensing their music for things like ringtones, but for many bands touring is the big source of income especially if they are a well-known, popular band that can sell out big venues at prices that are pretty high.

If you are a big, well-known band then you can get a big advance for recording an album. For example many years ago right after Dude Looks Like a Lady hit for Aerosmith they signed a four album deal worth $50 million dollars. They knew they would likely never see a penny of royalties but they got $12.5 million up front per record then went on the road and made bank so they likely cared less about record sales.