It’s astounding how often people conflate advances and loans when talking about the music industry. If anything it’s closer to seed capital than a loan.
Advances are recouped from the sales of your albums or tickets. Assuming you’ve made a good faith effort to fulfill your obligations you don’t need to repay the advance or pay interest on the advance if your album doesn’t sell.
> Assuming you’ve made a good faith effort to fulfill your obligations you don’t need to repay the advance or pay interest on the advance if your album doesn’t sell.
It depends on your contract. Usually, poor sales won't result in needing to repay an advance. However, there are plenty of other clauses that the contract could contain that would lead to the contract being canceled and potentially the advance having to be repaid (due to delays, editorial disagreements, poor quality, etc.)