Lance Bass is peeling back the financial curtain on his days in ‘NSync.
“We had a per diem: $35 per day,” Bass, 47, claimed on the Thursday, October 8, episode of The Zach Sang Show. “Our first check was $10,000 … after years of No. 1 albums, sellout tours. Man, I don’t know how many millions I made off of merchandise because merchandise was insane, and then they finally gave us a check for $10,000. They’re, like, ‘You should be grateful for that. You’ve been working for free for two, three years now.’”
The now-beloved boy band was formed in 1995, where Bass performed alongside JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick and Justin Timberlake. (The group went on an indefinite hiatus in 2002, occasionally reuniting for live performances or musical team-ups in the decades since.)
“You get residuals, for sure, but it’s not much,” Bass acknowledged of his current earnings. “People think I’m so filthy rich from ‘NSync, but no. Not at all. You know, I did well after ‘NSync and I’m very proud of everything I did after that, but I didn’t make money with ‘NSync, like, hardly at all.”
While Bass and his bandmates presumably didn’t see much of ‘NSync earnings, it was a different tune for the group’s record label.
“The label made a F-ton and Lou Pearlman, of course,” Bass said, referring to the late disgraced music manager. “You know, [Lou was] one of the biggest scam artists of all time [and] made a lot.” (Pearlman ran one of the most infamous Ponzi schemes and was convicted of conspiracy, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud in 2008 before he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.)
According to Bass, he once resented Pearlman, who died in 2016 while behind bars, and the label’s stipends — but “not anymore.”
“I did at one time, like, God, who was there to protect us?” the singer lamented. “I was, kind of, mad at the adults in the room … saying, ‘You’re just a kid, you’re fine, dance, land on your knees. You’re young, you know, you don’t need to sleep; you’re a kid.’”
Bass added, “Everyone kept saying, ‘You’re young, you’re young.’ Well, who cares if you’re young? You still need to make a living and set yourself up for the future because [in] most of these cases, it’s a finite time of being able to do something like that, and no one set us up for life after that.”
Bass further noted how the band members had to figure out their financial futures “all by [themselves].”
“We had to start over and fight for that with the stigma of being in a boyband, which was not at the time a good thing to be in this industry,” he said. “You were looked at as less than, you know, you were made fun of. So, try parlaying a career after being in a band like that where no one took you seriously?”
