No. Haken is already making a dent in touring. They will get a bump from touring with MP. As much as I'd love seeing this Haken is more established in this part of their career to open.
How did you feel about Dream Theater opening for Iron Maiden in 2010?
Bands don't "make it" like they used to, what with everyone and their mom promoting their mediocre music online, they need as much exposure as they can get. Even an older band like DT got extremely lucky in the early 90s. Don't the members of Haken still hold down day jobs? I know a few bands that still work another job to make ends meet, or quit altogether because "making it" in music where it can be your career is tougher now more than ever because of so much competition and trying to stick out from the masses of other acts out there, and keeping the attention of people who have so many choices of entertainment these days, it is overwhelming.
Yes, this is entirely accurate. Rick Beato did an interview with Misha Mansoor and he basically said that he profits very little from touring and album sales. Both of those things eat up a lot of your time and cost truckloads of money. I don't think it's been possible to make a living solely by playing live and recording music. Most of the musicians I knew from music school have done one of the following:
-Gotten teaching gigs (still probably the most consistent way to earn money in music)
-Session work (not as viable now with synthesizers being as good as they are)
-Producing for rappers/whatever or songwriting gigs
-Multiple gigs (I knew people who played in multiple orchestras for money)
-Steady orchestral gigs or choral gigs
-Accompaniment gigs for some pianists
-Day jobs or just putting music as a hobby
-Commercials
Once you hit a certain point you can get sponsorships. YouTube and Patreon have proven to be pretty decent ways to earn money. Also, merch merch merch. You make music to make merch to sell to make music.
But yeah, the barrier to making music has never been lower, and the barrier to making music successfully has never been higher. This isn't anything new, piano went through this HARD over the past century. The upright and eventually electronic piano made it so much easier to buy a piano, and the surplus of teachers made it easy to get lessons. So the standards of playing raised and raised until now it's incredibly difficult to be a concert pianist unless you started grinding at age like 8. Music is the most oversaturated labor market on the planet and that will not change.