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There are a couple of questions about touring on the site, and one of them, mine of course, has been mentioned as possibly being off topic.

For me, touring is very much a part of musical performance, but I understand if it is off topic. However I would like to see some consistency. We do after all have a tag for travel.

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    I would probably classify this under "music business", which is indeed something you can major in at a music school, but there haven't been too many questions about it save for copyright and legal issues, which have been defined as off-topic. – NReilingh Aug 15 '14 at 14:17
  • I haven't looked, but I would expect most questions tagged "travel" to be about how to travel with instruments safely. – Monica Cellio Aug 15 '14 at 22:51
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    I think your question is a good one, although specifically asking for an app to solve the problem runs afoul of the shopping/identification rules. Perhaps you could edit it to ask for a solution to the problem, rather than an app recommendation? – Bradd Szonye Aug 16 '14 at 2:10
  • @MonicaCellio yep : music.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/travel. – Dom♦ Aug 16 '14 at 14:40
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I'm assuming it's https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/22864/is-there-tour-routing-software-available. The closer probably thinks of the question as "boat programming". Since you need to eat on tour, should diner recommendations be part of this site? That said, I think this is a useful question, since it is about specific problems faced when booking a tour.

At any rate we should not make all touring questions off topic.

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    I'd agree with Meaningful - touring questions are not off topic, but that question specifically is a maths or coding question - the problem isn't a music practice or performance related one, it is a routing one; the sort of thing logistics companies deal with daily. – Doktor Mayhem♦ Aug 16 '14 at 10:14
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I would propose the rule of thumb that if your question is not specific enough to music that I could, for instance, swap in "athletic team" or "inspirational speaker" or "author" in for "musician" without changing the gist of the question (or any of its possible answers), then it's pretty definitely not on topic for Music.SE.

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    "pretty definitely" :) – Meaningful Username Sep 2 '14 at 8:27
  • For "pretty definitely" read "probably"… (+1 BTW…) – Bob Broadley Sep 2 '14 at 9:40
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Touring questions are on topic, however this question does not really pertain to the music side of touring. Here is an excerpt from your second paragraph:

The trouble is, there are many different ways to get from point A to point B and I need to find a way to solve the problem of optimizing the route that I take that keeps the band playing the most nights, pays the most and also reduces our travel time.

The only part of this that involves music is that a band is touring from point A to B. This problem is a travel logistics problem and can be seen with anyone who needs to travel to many places especially for business.

This is an important topic and I understand why you would ask the question, it is just at it's core more about travel logistics then music. There are other SE's that may be able to help you with travel logistics like Travel.SE (I found a similar question on it).

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