What does Dave Matthews do with his money?

David John Matthews (born January 9, 1967) is a South African-born American singer-songwriter, musician and actor, best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band. Matthews was born in Johannesburg, and moved frequently between South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States while growing up.

From 1991 to 2003, Matthews predominantly focused on songwriting and performing with the Dave Matthews Band, which he started in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. Since then, he has also done various solo performances and produced other records. During the period from 2000 to 2010, his band sold more tickets and earned more money than any other act in North America.

In addition to music, Matthews has had multiple acting roles. He has also won 2 Grammy Awards: one in 1997 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group â€" "So Much to Say" and one in 2004 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance â€" "Gravedigger".

Net Worth:

Dave Matthews's Income / Salary:

Per Month: $2 Million

Per Week: $500,000

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As usual, the list of North America’s top-grossing music tours of 2010 was heavy on AARP-eligible best-selling rockers: Bon Jovi, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, the Eagles, and Paul McCartney all figured in the top 10. But tucked among them, taking in $72.9 million, was the Dave Matthews Band, the ‘90s-era jam-loving college-town rockers known affectionately as DMB (and less affectionately as “the Dave Matthews Bland”).

The band is nothing to sneeze at, of course. It has won a Grammy. Six of its seven studio albums have hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Still, compared with the other big touring acts of 2010, DMB is a featherweight—”Stay” is no “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Bon Jovi (who, to be fair, will not be eligible for AARP membership until 2012), Roger Waters, and Paul McCartney have helped sell 130 million, 200 million, and north of 1.3 billion records, respectively. In the course of its two-decade-long career, DMB has moved a more modest 30 million.

But in an industry busy having its foundations rocked, in a matter of speaking, it hardly matters. Analysts and executives have long lamented that the music industry is dying. That is not quite true—it is the record business that is clearly done for, and in its place, touring stands as the top moneymaker for many industry participants. DMB lives to tour, making them not just popular, but very, very profitable.

When I say DMB lives to tour, I do not jest: Every summer for the past two decades, the band has hit the road. In 2010, that meant playing 62 shows in 50 cities to 1,270,477 fans—more than any other artist touring in North America. The group also took trips to Europe and South America, and there was a Dave Matthews and guitarist Tim Reynolds mini-tour. And the year was hardly unusual. Since 1992, Dave Matthews Band in its various iterations has played a whopping 1,692 shows.

So the precipitous decline in record sales in the past decade has hardly hurt DMB’s profitability: The band makes the bulk of its money touring anyway. And it makes a lot of money doing it. According to Billboard Boxscore, between 2000 and 2009, DMB sold more tickets to its shows than any other band on the planet, moving a staggering 11,230,696 tickets. (No other band sold more than 10 million tickets in the same time period.) In the aughts, DMB grossed more than $500 million from touring alone.

On top of that, of course, there are profits from merchandise, records, and other revenue streams. As long ago as 1998, DMB reportedly pulled in $200,000 a day in merchandise sales on tour. Plus, DMB has a reported 80,000 fans paying $35 a year for fan-club membership. And it benefits from a large catalog of cheap-to-produce live-show discs and DVDs. “Without any marketing or promotion, Live at Red Rocks debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart and was instantly certified platinum,” the band itself boasts of a 1998 album. “[It] provided fans with a high quality and reasonably priced alternative to the over-priced, ill produced, and illegal live DMB CDs.”

Part of DMB’s success undoubtedly comes from managing its tour so well—because gross ticket sales do not always translate into profitability. Lady Gaga, for instance, was also in the Top 10 for ­2010, grossing $51 million in North America, charging legions of fans about $100 a pop. But the shows proved enormously expensive to put on, what with the army of scantily clad backup dancers and dozens of fancy costumes—including a bra that shoots sparks, a feathered bird get-up, and an enormous wearable gyroscope nicknamed “the Orbit.” Add in the fountain of fake blood and the price of flying such nonsense around the world, and extravagance cut into the bottom line. The tour actually lost money at first.

In contrast, DMB’s tour seems downright humble. There is food. There is merchandise. There are video portions. But mostly, there are just the jams and the fans—and that’s how DMB obsessives like it. Indeed, the band cultivates enthusiasts particularly well, a main secret of its success. It keeps ticket prices low in comparison with other big shows, an average of $58.79 compared with, say, $91.56 for arena-rockers Aerosmith. It offers a high proportion of plum tickets to fan-club members and offers them tons of freebies and special deals online. It also plays a stable roster of songs, but jams or improvises at each gig—meaning DMB fans tend to hit up the tour every year, often more than once. Thus, while even the biggest-selling artists front the occasional flopped tour, DMB never does.

If that sounds familiar—not the music, the strategy—it’s because DMB is pulling an old trick, one pioneered by the Grateful Dead, a band beloved of business school professors and folk-lovers alike. As described in the delightful Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead,the famed jam band produced only a few well-known albums and songs. But they toured constantly—playing about 200 shows a year from 1965 to 1995. And they courted their fans, treating the concert like a service rather than a commodity, and their fans like members of a community rather purchasers of a product. Lo and behold, the Dead became one of the most successful bands of all time.

In many ways, DMB is their inheritor: a serious touring band that has caringly cultivated a devoted fan base and ended up becoming an industry anchor. Some analysts now believe touring will eventually anchor the whole music industry. In the past 10 years, as record sales have collapsed, the touring business has tripled in size to nearly $5 billion a year in total revenue. (That’s mostly due to higher ticket prices, rather than more people attending more concerts.) The year 2010 proved somewhat lackluster: According to Pollstar, the top 50 tours netted $2.9 billion worldwide in ticket sales, down 12 percent from 2009. But the industry expects a stronger 2011, with consumer sentiment improving in the United States and huge acts, like U2, saddling back up.

For the first time in decades, though, DMB won’t be there. “[We] wanted to let everyone know that after twenty years of consecutive touring, Dave Matthews Band will be taking 2011 off,” the band wrote fans last year. “We feel lucky that our tours are a part of so many people’s lives, and wanted to give everyone as much notice as possible.” But, it noted, we “look forward to returning to the road in 2012.”

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Dave Matthews and his band have been making music and touring for the past 25 years. Founded in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991, the band has been one of the top grossing tours year in and year out for decades now, which goes a long way towards explaining Dave Matthews' massive personal net worth of $300 million!

Whether you love them or hate them, you cannot argue with the band's revenue model. (A disclaimer: I fall firmly in the love category and have seen them 64 times in concert, including six times in nine days just a few weeks ago). During the period from 2000 to 2010, the band sold more tickets and earned more money than any other act in North America. The band's most recent album, Away from the World, released in 2012, made them the only group to have six consecutive studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard charts. However, that's not where Dave's $300 million comes from. It doesn't come from his Dreaming Tree wines or his acting roles, either—well, not completely, at least!

Jemal Countess/Getty Images

It is no big secret that the record business is dying — some would even say it was already dead. The advent of the iPod and iTunes (and Napster before that) made buying singles the norm. Spotify and Pandora put the final nails in the coffin for records. All the top earning musicians make their money from tours and merchandise. But unlike Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, Dave Matthews and his band don't tour once every few years with high production values and even higher ticket cost.

Dave Matthews Band has toured every summer, almost without fail, since the early 1990s. (Technically they took 2011 off but played four festival style shows called the Dave Matthews Band Caravan as well as mounted mini tours with Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds. The band is taking 2017 off, but Dave is teaming up with Tim Reynolds again for a trio of shows on the beach in Riviera Maya, Mexico). Basically, DMB lives to tour. And they've figured out a way to make their popular concerts exceptionally profitable.

When I say Dave Matthews Band loves to tour, I am not kidding. Here are some stats for the current decade:

2010: 114 shows played (includes a European tour)

2011: 44 shows played

2012: 78 shows played

2013: 62 shows played

2014: 57 shows played

2015: 75 shows played

2016: 50 shows played

(data via the DMB Hub app)

For the years from 2000 to 2009, DMB grossed more than $500 million from touring alone and sold more tickets (11,230,696) than any other band on the planet. The band plays to more than one million fans on each tour and many of those fans see more than one show.

The key to Dave Matthews' $300 million net worth lies in how the band manages its tour. For instance, Lady Gaga also brings in an enormous amount of money on her tours, but her shows are also very expensive to produce and tickets go for upwards of $100 each. By comparison, DMB's tickets average out to about $60, with lawn seats running $45 and pit or lower reserved $85. But more than that, it is the band itself, of course, that draws in its legion of fans every tour with their long jams and differing set lists.

The band knows how to court its fans and turn that obsessiveness into cold hard cash. For instance, at the recent "Labor Dave" set of shows at The Gorge in Washington State over Labor Day weekend, the band played three consecutive nights to a captive crowd that camps at the venue in order to see them. During those three shows, the boys played 63 songs—without a single repeat—and during the second of the three shows played a song (Cry Freedom) for the first time on the 2016 tour. Unlike Bon Jovi, who plays the same set list night after night, DMB plays a different set list every single night. THAT is why fans see 2, 3, 4, 15, etc. shows a tour. The Dave Matthews Band has never had a tour that didn't turn a big profit.

This tour model was first employed by another legendary jam band, The Grateful Dead. The Dead toured constantly—playing about 200 shows a year from 1965 to 1995. Like DMB they courted their fans and treated the concert like a party rather than a product, and their fans like members of a community. The Dead became one of the most successful bands of all time. Dave Matthews has done the same thing with his band, tours, and fanbase. In 2015, the Dave Matthews Band grossed $41.8 million dollars touring. (I saw five of those shows.)

Now, while Dave Matthews makes plenty of money touring, he also has other revenue streams such as the aforementioned vineyard and acting gigs. Another place that DMB slays is in merchandise sales. All the way back in 1998 the band sold $200,000 worth of merchandise PER DAY while on tour. Now add in the Dave Matthews Band Warehouse fan club, which has roughly 100,000 members paying $35 per year for early access to concert tickets. That's another $3.5 million a year!

Dave Matthews has basically perfected the modern method of making money as a band. And he does it from roughly May to mid-September annually. That is how Dave Matthews earned his incredible $300 million net worth.