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Music Downloads = Expensive Concerts?
melonman writes "According to an article at BBC News, $250 tickets for the latest Madonna tour are the fault of P2P file sharing. 'Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales, Professor Krueger argues. But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed, meaning that artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts and feel less constrained in setting ticket prices.' And it seems David Bowie agrees. Is 'the fans always get fleeced' the rock industry's equivalent to Moore's Law?"
It's simple supply and demand and the desire to maximize revenues and profits.
If you were Madonna and her management, would you rather sell:
10,000 tickets at $250 each, totalling $2,500,000
or sell:
20,000 tickets at $100 each, totalling $1,000,000 ?
In Madonna's case, she'll likely sell out at the hire price anyway and pocket $5,000,000.
I just wont go to their concerts. Just like the more they jack the prices of CDs up, the less Im going to buy them.
Concerts were always priced at whatever the market would bear. The argument that artists were previously satisfied with their CD sales and therefore generous in their concert pricing, I don't believe for a moment.
Or maybe Madonna et al are money-grubbing who...
Seriously. $250 per ticket? Whatever happened to "making music for the purpose of making music?"
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
How is overpaying to listen to crap in person any different than overpaying to buy it on CD?
Underprice? I know of bands that will preform for $250 total!
"What does slashdotting mean?"
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And the latest gas prices are due completely to the rise in price of a barrel of oil.
Oh, and by price of a barrel of oil, I mean CEO salaries and bonuses.
mmmmm executive greed mmmmmmmm
Madonna can charge $250 because that is what she wants to charge and people WILL pay it to go see her. On the other hand, look at Pearl Jam. a very popular band is selling tickets for their latest show for a whole $54 ticketmaster.com. This article is a bunch of shit.
What kind of seats are you gonna get for that cash?!
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I usually find the BBS writer less brain dead than this article's.
Let's see: these are artists who have made millions upon millions, so the need to tour is just about zero. So they jack the price up.
Conclusion: illegal file downloaders cost live performance goers piles of cash. Um, yeah. Perhaps a better read is money hungry artists will fleece anyone they can for their new multimillion dollar home. Perhaps royalties *are* down on has been artists because of a combination of lower recording sales and their own stale presence on the market. So all they have is to repackage themselves doing classics live.
That doesn't really support the conclusion very well. Then they go interviewing people who bought scalper tickets to a sporting event to somehow prop up the story? Please.
Sig under construction since 1998.
When Robert Plummer states that artists need to charge more for their concerts to make up for sagging records sales due to file sharing, he conveniently leaves out the important fact that it is only the most popular artists that actually see a decline. As David Blackburn of Harvard illustrated in his paper, On-Line Piracy and Recorded Music Sales (PDF warning), the record sales of relatively unknown artists benefit from the exposure P2P file sharing gives them.
So, if the big names want to charge outrageous sums for their concerts, let them. As of now, the tatic seems to be working, but as the situation develops, I think they'll wind up pricing themselves right out of the market.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
$250 tickets for the latest Madonna tour are the fault of P2P file sharing.
The prices are due to the public's willingness to pay $250 to see Madonna. The public is either stupid are has more money than sense. None of it has anything to do with P2P. If the public refused to pay $250 by simply not going to any of her shows, you'd see her tickets going for $50 in no time.
when we talked about napster everyone said they should make their money off concerts. now people are complaining?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
only if you see crap music. i pay less than 20 bucks for most of the concerts i go to. then again, they aren't concerts -- they are "shows."
also, the prices will be the highest the market will tolerate.
Ticket prices were already taking a turn for the obscene before p2p ever gained popularity. Now they have a convenient excuse: "It's not our fault, we're just poor musicians trying to make a living, it's your fault you shameless downloading fans! p.s. please buy a couple $50 T-shirts on your way out".
- Toby
I still wouldn't see a Madonna concert even if they paid me $250.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Without us, these stars would be working in a drive through at Taco Bell. The best to handle this is by not buying their overpriced music and not attending their shows. Their arrogant selfish people who feel that making millions isn't enough?!?! Gimme a break! I haven't bought a CD in over 10 years and have no plans to do so in the future.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I'm not falling for this highly specious argument. The ONLY reason there are "concerts" is so the actual "artist" can get that rush that comes from having a very bright light shined into the eyes while trying to remember the lines to his/her thirty year old "hit".
The economic (supply and demand) reasoning would actually be this: Concert tickets generally sell at a price where supply ROUGHLY equals demand. Therefore to sell at a higher price, demand must be higher now than it used to be. The reason: peeople have a music "budget". They can now get music for free so allocate their budget to concert tickets instead. Demand goes up and so do ticket prices. Their reasoning is wrong: entertainers can't just charge more to make up for lost sales: they can only charge at a price at which the tickets will sell!
historically "bands"(except for the super established acts like Madonna/etc that have more favorable recording contracts) have made their money on the road (the performance, t-shirt sales, cut of the concession/etc).
With CD sales the artists (with some exceptions) generally get such a small portion of the take. There's countless stories of musicians/bands with number 1 singles/albums and are broke (and not necessarily from living in excess) at the time their album is number 1.
You obviously go on the road to help promote/further your CD/band, but you also do it to make money.
*shrug* I find this argument suspect.
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Artists have always complained how little money is left over from record sales after the blood-sucking record companies extract all of the various contractual fees.
only fools and idiots would spend that amount of money to watch a performance by anyone (especially madonna)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This is the way it's *supposed* to work.
Bits can be copied. DRM will never work. So instead of praying for better DRM, let the music be free and serve as an *advertisement* for your concerts!
I've seen ticket prices as high as $400, $500 and up for seats to shows and that's fine. It's called supply and demand. Fans can't copy a concert seat, so they pay the going price.
Of course, all that being said, I think that the RIAA is wrong when they say that CD sales are down as a result of P2P. CD sales are down because the music sucks.
Okay, the high price is because some artist are just downright greedy. Big stadium shows have had the best tickets in $150+ ranges for years. The concert is still one of the biggest money makers for artists, who in reality get little from their actual record sales. This is no some evil trend that always occurs either. A few years ago we were hearing about the change to small venue shows with cheaper tickets and smaller crowds. This is still not uncommon in some larger cities where these venues thrive on college and teenage fans.
Also, using Madonna is a poor example. Several artist (and for some odd reason her included) just demand high concert ticket prices. They obviously haven't crossed the point in supply and demand where people are not buying tickets, so if you can make more money, go for it. This is the idea behind capitalism, isn't it? I still know there are cheap tickets available and places, and paying $100 or more was never something I was willing to do for a concert.
There currently is money to be made, if it isn't already, on selling concert recordings online. Some artist due give away select shows for download. I believe this could make some money for people who want to remember the experience or who really like live recordings.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I mean it couldn't have anything to do withh the fact that her latest album isn't selling so good (by her standards) could it?
The artists they name in the article have made a good record in decade.
Bowie has advised his fellow performers: "You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring, because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left."
Seems to me Bowie is saying play more shows not raise the prices so high nobody will show up.
I gave up on concerts years ago. Everyone just stands and screams, so the volume is cranked to the point where you either wear earplugs or suffer hearing damage. The folks near you are either drunk, high, peeing at their seat, throwing up or all of the above, and generally rate a 9.5 on the Asshole Scale.
Whee. :-\
20.000 tickets at $100 each = 2 Mio. (not 1).
:)
however, somebody like madonna will ALLWAYS play at concerts that are sold out - the demand (10s of thousands of people wanting a ticket) is obviously much higher than the supply (one concert in any given area). so.... your point is valid - your math is not
Using this logic:
- All home prices go up because some people do home improvements
- The minimum wage keeps increasing because the baby boomers are getting older
- The average lifespan of a human keeps increasing because we're evolving into a superhuman race of mutant beings, of which the Q continuum fears greatly.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The last time I went and saw David Bowie in concert, it was for his Earthling tour. He was playing a relatively small venue in Atlanta and only charging $30 per ticket. It didn't come close to selling out. While the article does explicity state that Bowie sees the need to make more money off of concerts, his solution is "doing a lot of touring," not charging $200+ per ticket. Madonna has reached the status where she can charge $200+ per ticket. Most musicians will just see less attendance if they raise ticket prices. Looks to me like if this article is implying anything, it's saying that the days of good studio performers who can't play live are numbered.
I mean, it's *just* music. Why have we, as consumers, allowed ourselves to take it so seriously that it's turned into such a huge industry?
Sigh.
This has nothing to do with P2P. If you sell out with $100 ticket price. next time ask $125. Still sell out? Raise the price more, etc. Simple economics.
But hey, it's always good to bash P2P...
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
I'd rather have a smaller packed house who payed more than a larger venue who payed less. Smaller venues cost less money to put on show, more profit gets kept. It's simple business.
I have no evidence to say whether this is actually correct or not (but, I suspect, neither do the authors of the article).
But if it is true, is it really so bad? Some will pay $250 a person to see Madonna play. OK, fine, it's their money and they can do what they like with it.
Meanwhile, we have access to P2P software that lets us sample all sorts of new music. Then I can spend my own money (and probably significantly less than $250) on seeing A Given Independent Band.
Over time, maybe fewer people will go and see Madonna play. Then where will she get her $250 from? At the same time, more people will be prepared to pay a little more to see A Given Independent Band (in the same way that bushfires make fire detectors cheaper, heightened crime makes door locks cheaper - more producers entering the lurcative market). I don't think I mind this at all.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
I was going to post a nice indepth post here, but saw the tag that said bullshit, and well, that sums it up.
It seems the less sophisticated music becomes, and it seems to increase its desophistication exponentially, the more expensive exponentially ticket prices become.
The upside is more people will go to bars and see new bands for cheap instead of going to see big label riaa pushed artists.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Besides, given the predatory nature of the recording industry towards artists, most only made money by touring as it was.
Additionally, high-end acts (supergroups, mega pop stars, etc) have always had insane pricing on their appearances anyhow.
So I don't see how something like this is a humongous surprise to anyone with enough neurons to form a synapse.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The way I come to a decision on if I go to a given concert is simple.
.. than no dice.
If the cost of the ticket will buy more than half of a given artist's major releases, than I won't think of going.
Specific example from recently.
Depesh Mode is coming to Kansas City next month. Tickets are around $100 per person for the cheapest seats.
At $15 per disk I can buy 6 1/2 of their major releases since their start = no sale.
When you have to spend $200 for a night out with your SO, unless it's "extra special"
Professor Krueger of Rhode Island Aeronautical Academy. Their athletic teams jerseys read "RIAA" for short.
I believe their mascot is the Shark.Also, lets not forget that Madonna hasn't had a number one hit for years. She is trying to correlate poor record sells with file sharing, when she should be associating it with her continually shitty music.
Personally, I blame high ticket prices on people illegally sneaking into concerts and stealing sound from legal concert-goers. I propose a system of Digital Concert Management, where all sound output is encrypted using a closed-source algorythm (and compressed to save bandwidth costs - 128kbs should be fine). Legal concert goers are then given headsets containing a Trusted Concert-Going Chip which decodes the compressed signal and plays back the audio through a complementary set of approved headphones. Of course, discussion of how to decrypt the signal, or even overhearing the encrypted signal without permission from the content producer, would be a criminal offence. Everybody wins!
Music Downloads = Expensive Concerts?
Well if you put it that way, of course it'll be true. This is a common mistake with the assignment operator. What you meant to say was "Music Downloads == Expensive Concerts?" This will test to see if the statement is true, then return.
She'd have to do way more than sing for $250...
Awww, pooor, poooor Madonna... Yeah, right. A Madonna torrent sounds like a waste of bandwidth to me.
Sad old women with pretense to British aristocracy.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
$2,500,000 - $2,000,000 = $500,000, the additional amount she would gain by selling half the tickets for $250 instead of $100.
Now, if she can sell out at the higher price, she would gain an additional $3,000,000 dollars ($5,000,000 total, not counting taxes and other expenses).
I do agree with your point about how it is supply and demand, though. It has nothing to do with piracy, it has everything to do with maximizing profits. If people are willing to pay $250 to see Madonna sing, then why should they only charge $100?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
"Whatever happened to "making music for the purpose of making music?"'
We're talking about MADONNA here.
source of revenue... So it's no wonder that if the artist wishes to make more money, they would raise concert ticket prices.
/. to find stories regarding this topic.
There's really no change here.
It's been reported time and time again, that file-sharing has had very little or NO impact on music sales. Do a search withing
I stand by my own opinion that the majority of music file sharers are the same type of folks who used to sit by the radio with cassette-recorder and recorded music off the air. They were NEVER going to buy the premium product, unless they absolutely loved the music.
There seems to be fewer high quality albums - ie, albums with more than one or two tracks actually worth listening to. Is it any wonder that sales have been declining?
Now, let's add in those people who are still holding a grudge with the music industry over their CD price fixing and their attempts at forcing price changes on the legitimate online music sales.
Does the term "Shooting one's self in the foot" come to mind? Or would "blowing one's own head off" be more appropriate?
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
For that price you should get the seat in which your view is exclusively the tips of her pubes. Or more accurately - HER seat.
"We hate to do it, 'cause the fans really have enjoyed the other key signatures. But we can't afford black keys on our pianos anymore. Sorry. It's 'cause of piracy. So really it's the listeners' fault."
Please use RIAA radar to avoid giving these tools another cent, ever.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Aging rockers have had the gall to charge ridiculous ticket prices long before P2P.
They're just old and don't want to tour as much.
What boggles me is that anyone would pay that much to see fading performers.
One girl I date long ago was a huge Paul Simon fan. So I got her tickets for her birthday. They were at least $100 a piece. She want a shirt? 30 bucks for some sweat shop labored fucking shirt.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Is 'the fans always get fleeced' the rock industry's equivalent to Moore's Law?
No, it's a side effect of conspicuous consumption. Quite frankly, people who spend $250 on a concert ticket are going to have no problem shelling out $15 for a CD - they might not be able to make rent, but music's important.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
I can't be bothered to google the related articles at the moment, but I do remember reading about this exact thing in China several months ago.
The gist was that CDs in China are so pirated, recorded music is considered nothing more than advertising and a cost of doing business for both the artists and studios. With the street price on a CD somewhere around $1, the money is made on live performances -- what can NOT be truely duplicated -- and endorsements.
The article was exploring the directions that the U.S. & European music markets will have to explore once their iron grip on copyrights no longer means anything.
It looks like this is the path that will be taken. As if Ruth (aka not-the-virgin-Madonna) needs any more money as is.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I don't believe for a second that it's about p2p piracy, but if we assume it's true for a few moments, who's really getting hurt? It's not the artist, because they're alreadying getting screwed over by the record companies, so what measly amount they lose from lower CD sales is a drop in the bucket. So after the 20% the artist gets (Out of which, they have to pay back a large share in advertising costs, production costs, salaries of their manager and producer, etc), that's 80% that the record company gets. So any claims of it hurting the artist is bullcrap, if anything it's hurting the record company first and foremost. If you feel bad about the peanuts that the artist is losing, mail them a few bucks, then work to lobby Congress to give the copyrights to the songs back to the artists, not the record company.
$250 to see a Madonna concert - much too low. They'd have to pay me a LOT more than that.
[Insert pithy quote here]
In the late 80's and early to late 90's people replaced their record collections with cd's. Buying the cd version of all their favorite albums. That artificially inflated sales. When everyone caught up with their collections, Rock and Pop sales started dropping.
Country and hiphop still sell more then ever.
The major label model is dying fast (excellent). Bands were always exploited for basically a loan where everyone else gets paid. You wonder why everything is crap on the radio its because no one will take chances.
Touring was always the way they made money.
You think bands make any money? here is a famous article from steve albini
The Problem With Music
by Steve Albini
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.
Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A & R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire." because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.
Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all
Recording artists are seeing less and less of their revenue from CD sales, but we have the record labels to thank for that. Labels get a huge portion of CD sales (and there's surprizingly little money to go around for a best-seller to begin with once they're done selling wholesale to Walmart). Labels get no portion of ticket sales. Coincidence? Of course it is, blame piracy! I don't know what these people would offer their shareholders as an excuse if they one day suceeded in stomping out file sharing.
Market dynamics have been well-covered by the precious comments. Full agreement.
Another difference is the cost of equipment for modern productions. Today's productions load in more gear than ever. The gear is getting more complex (read: expensive) for more dazzling effects. Light and video systems especially, but sound has grown a lot more, too. Gone are the days when a couple hundred fixed par cans, a few risers, and a stack of amplifiers would make a concert. Effects don't come cheap, but audiences expect them more than they realize.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I just bought myself a $250 guitar.
It's all the tithes.
To the Kaballah group, Xenu, Joe Pesci, etc.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Artists need to make more money ?! Like Madonna is short of cash and needs to charge 250 a ticket?
The Grateful Dead did it right - let your fans record your shows, but charge money for the concerts. I wish all artists would release their music as free downloads, but of course pay to see them perform live.
that the music industry posts year and year.
Every year they bitch and moan about how they are getting screwed, and every year they post a higher profit than last year.
Makes you kind of think they are all liars...oh wait they are.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I prefer to buy straight from the band or venue.
Maybe off topic but it bothers me nonetheless, so i spew
I wouldn't download Madonna's crap EVEN if it was for FREE.
She had her turn at changing the world or expressing herself years ago but that's over now. She should yield the stage to others now who have something real to express instead of sheer greed.
People are waking up from their coma of being blind sheep paying high prices for music. Storage is cheap and there's not that much cost/overhead to distributing music online via some truly legitimate download service. They know this but still won't reduce the price.
These dinosaurs are about to go extinct. It's just a matter of time.
Never underestimate the purchasing power and gullibility of soccer moms.
Tickets typically cost, what, $50~100 for general admission to a big act?
$250 - $50~100 == $150~200 in anticipated "lost" profits per ticketholder due to music piracy
Yeah, I usually spent $150~200 on records for a band that I see live (riiiiight). Bear in mind that that's $200 net...given that the typical CD sale gives an artist let's say $5 profit (that's being generous, because artists usually get a bigger cut of the record sales at concerts), which means that concert promoters expect every audience member to buy approximately 40 cds (or 30 cds and a t-shirt).
Clearly, p2p filesharing is at fault! Back in the good old days, people used to bring wheeled carts to concerts just to carry all the loot that they bought home with them! I guess we'll have to raise the prices *appropriately*!
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
...because we all know Madonna needs the money. People need to stop taking it firmly in the rear with "piracy" as the excuse. I wouldn't pay $250 to see anyone for a regular ticket, she's not God, she's not even worth a $5 door charge IMO.
I'm sick of hearing about the poor starving multi-millionaire artist having to do this and that because someone realized their latest CD was junk before they even made the purchase. In the end it's really just about jacking ticket prices as well as selling the CDs and crippled DRM version, Madonna makes out six ways to Sunday and nobody calls her bluff because, "file sharing is bad, mmm k, because it's bad."
Sixty dollars is more than enough, and this is an average ticketmaster price, to turn quite a profit and make touring into quite a lucrative venture for an artist. This is a clear cut case of an artist being greedy and her fans, rich, stupid or a combination, being dumb enough to accept it.
I still say there's something creepy about a 50 year old woman still making songs talking about "boys." I don't care if she's had 8 facelifts and does yoga every day of the week she's still a creepy old lady singing songs that should be way below her maturity level.
Meh, I don't think I'd pay 250 dollars to see Jesus resurrected, so you take this route on a large scale and you won't find me at your concert, or buying your overpriced CD, and then you'll really have a reason to bitch.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, album sales are up 3.6% on 2005 in the US (article), caused in part by a large increase in *legal* downloads.
Actually, in many cases they've been charging below what the market would bear, which is why shows sell out so fast -- the low prices create too much demand.
What they should do is continue to raise the price just until the shows stop selling out.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They last time I checked, many artists did not get much money from albums sales. Sure they got some money but unless they were a big name, they got very little. The record companies got most of the money from album sales. Most artists made their money from concerts. And big names charge a heck of a lot for their concerts anyway. For example, the Rolling Stones. It's the way it's always been.
I don't see the correlation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
From 1996 to 2003, they rose by 8.9% a year
Seems to me file sharing didn't really start to take off until 1999-2000. I guess they were just trying to stock their coffers early?
He soon found out that rock concerts and American football games were subject to the same market forces.
And why buy tickets to a football game when I can just download it for free? Um.. wait..
Gee I dunno, maybe record companies are taking a bigger cut of everything, driving up CD prices, ticket prices, merch prices as high as they'll go, to the point where illegal downloading is becoming really popular because they're such greedy bastards? I'm used to reading poorly done studies, but seriously did this guy consider any other possibilities, or did the RIAA tell him to go tell the BBC he's a "rockonomics" whiz, give them $1,000 bucks and hand them a story about how downloading is driving up concert prices.
Bowie has advised his fellow performers: "You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring, because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left."
I don't even know what that means. Water and electricity are free? How does that relate to illegal downloading at all. Sounds more to me like, "New records are overproduced generic crap, THAT's why people aren't buying them, THAT's why concerts cost more because you need a LOT of equipment and lightshows to make Madonna sound good!" Utter crap.
... Why sales are down. The ONLY big $$$ concert I ever went to was the Eagels "Hell Freezes Over Tour" 1994. I felt like a chump paying over $100 for a ticket. And the only CDs I've puchased over the past 5 years have been to fill in gaps in my existing collection. The entire record industry declared war on consumers a long time ago, yet they are complaining when the consumer is winning(avoiding their crazy $$$ schemes)? Sad. I can easily outlast the RIAA by listening to my present collection and picking up bargain bin music if need be.
DIE DIE DIE you POS RIAA
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Or maybe Madonna et al are money-grubbing who... ..."making music for the purpose of making music?"
Surely you aren't instinuating that noise pollution that Madonna puts out could be called "music" are you?
First, musicians found out they could make money by making music. So they made it their careers. That was a good thing; it led to higher-quality music as they could focus on their art.
Then musicians got managers. Their managers took a portion of their profits in return for helping them make a greater profit. the managers, not being artists themselves, sought to maximize profits to increase their own income. Thus was born marketing of music. It got the musician more listeners, so they didn't mind the commercialization, as their art was reaching more people.
Eventually some manager thought it would be a good idea to make a business of distributing recorded music. Again the musician's income was spread out, requiring greater revenue for the musician to make the same amount of money. Another layer of non-musicians was added to the mix. The art got watered down as it became more and more a business.
Today, the record labels control the market. They create musicians; find a blonde who can dance and barely sing and they'll make her into the next one-hit-wonder. They mass-produce formulaic lyrics and music, choreograph elaborate stage performances, and call their latest corporate rubber stamp an artist.
The internet scares them so much because it strips away their control. In the past forty years, they have developed a system by which they determine a song's popularity before it is through recording. They set the radio play. They decide how many albums will be produced. They produce and distribute the marketing material. From the first time you read an article about a new "artist" to the first time you hear them on the radio to when you walk in the store and pick up a CD off the big cardboard display by the front door, the labels have controlled everything you read, heard, and saw. Digital distribution--legal or otherwise--makes it possible for people to sample songs outside the top 40 stations.
Has file sharing cost them record sales? Probably. But that's not the problem; the radio cost them record sales. Television cost them record sales. Anything that distracts people from music will reduce the sale of records. The problem here is they can no longer predict the market as accurately as they once could. This translates into more money being spent on marketing and research and a greater risk being placed on any given project. In other words, even if they didn't lose a single record sale to file sharing, they'd still lose profit...and they don't like that.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
generally, only their biggest fans would pay such an amount... and their biggest fans are usually the ones who have already bought all cd's, dvd's etc. So they're ripping those people of twice. At least there will be no complaints about 'not enough tickets' etc.
However, I don't really think it's a ripoff... Not that I think the show will be worth 250 dollars, but I also don't think the 5000-dollar 'gaming pc's' are worth 5000 dollars. But apparently there are people buying it. It's really basic economics... if you have, say, 100.000 seats, you need to set the price such that the demand will approximate 100.000. No use setting the price too high so only 20.000 people will attend the show, but also no use to set it too low so you make less profit. The word 'economics' is hidden in 'rockonomics', and just like companies, most huge music-celebrities only aim for 1 thing. Profit.
It's a natural way of thinking. If you have 1 car for sale, 5000 people willing to buy it for 1 dollar, but only 1 person willing to buy it for 5000 dollar, will you sell for 1 dollar to make it 'more accessible' or to take the poor people into account?
That being said, I think I'm gonna make me a slashdot account now. AC-posting has been fun, but I'm gonna go for an account before they charge me 250 dollars for it!
Downloads do not threaten artists, they threaten labels. Arguably, downloads help artists by increasing the fan-base:
Concerts & tours have been how artists have always made the bulk of their money. Pricing is almost always done on the high-end, following the monopoly revenue-maximizing strategy. A single concert of 50,000 sold seats @ $80 will net the artist 1 M$. _That's_ worth the grind! Artists do not go on tour to support their albums, they release albums to support their tours!
I go to concerts to support artists. When I buy CDs, I know I'm supporting the RIAA.
They are being greedy, and any attempt to justify this by blaming it on the consumer is total BS. Why wouldn't they take the argument to it's extreme: give the music away for free and charge $300 for a ticket to the show?
Simply because they are well aware of the fact that supply and demand drives up the price. Scalpers get most of the tickets and sell them at 2-10x the original price. It has probably long irritated some of these greedy artists (or at least their handlers) that millions of dollars of wealth are created off their work and they get a fraction of it. If it were up to them, they would have jacked up the prices years ago, instead they do it slowly...by doing 'festivals' or 'megatours' for $90. Funny, the list of artists go down over the years, but the prices don't go down by much.
An outdoor, general admission show used to be much cheaper than a smaller venue, but there's nothing to distinguish them anymore. So now you're getting screwed for $40 for two bands, seeing the show from 1/4 mile away. Don't even get me started on Clear Channel and their predatory promotional practices. Forget it, I just won't spend that kind of money on that kind of show.
This nonsense of 'blame the filesharers' just allows them to jack up the price and get more of the scalpers' cut. I'm not shedding any tears for scalpers, but the fans are always the ones who get screwed.
These insights come from the work of an economist at Princeton University in the US, Alan Krueger, who has been described as "the world's first and foremost professor of rockonomics".
Maybe if he was a statistics professor (rockistics?), he would know that CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
What does one have to do with the other? Because an artist has made millions doesn't mean that the artist has stopped producing music. Fans want to see their favorite artists, and if $250 is what the market will bear, then let the artist charge that.
No one is "fleecing" anyone. The fan gets a concert for an agreed-upon price. You don't have to pay it - just don't go.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
not the ridiculous concert riders (someone to have water at 34.5deg F, sort M&M's, make catered meals consisting of lunchmeat with bread that's too small), the immense light shows, the 15 tour busses full of dancers, musicians, and roadies, (one tour bus for the star, more if there is a band that cant ride in the same bus together), all the trucks full of stage parts, lights .... you get my point.
Supplies!
Big names won't price themselves out of the market because they are in a different market from 'relatively unknown artists'. The latter are selling music, the former a brand.
Building such brands is a very expensive and complicated undertaking, and it's what the music business is good at. It is unrelated to the creation of music, except insofar as it sometimes funds the creation of music (buying songs from songwriters, incubating new potential stars, etc).
Filesharing has brought about a largish change in the way music spreads and is funded and distributed, and also, in seperate news, a smallish change in how brands are built. The price of a Madonna concert reflects the need to make Madonna appear as a premium brand, the need to have enough people show up that it feels like a success, the need to not have all the tickets vanish on the first day of sales leaving people to get bored, and so on. It's a whole nuther ball game compared to music distribution.
So, Madonna concerts will always be expensive just as BMWs and diamonds will -- if they were cheap, who'd bother?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm so sick of the broken logic. There's not even logic involved, it's common sense. Its friggin MADONNA not Linkin Korn Hole. Yes, the tickets are going to be expensive because people are going to sell their child for a ticket. Same for someone like Michael Jackson. And how does it make sense that a cheap concert == more record sales (before p2p). That is implying people buy the cd AFTER the show? Who the hell pays $250 to go to a show before they heard the CD!? Wait, ok. Madonna can't afford her electric bill anymore, so she must charge more for concert tickets. How do they decide how much more to sell? I bet they make a projection that the CD will sell X amount of copies and when it doesn't it's p2p's fault - has nothing to do with another shit hole fabricated CD. Nothing at all.
I'm so sick of the bullshit.
Look, why not simply give away music for free, but then charge an arm and a leg for concerts.
Why not make musicians finally work for their money?
Music can be free, just pay for the privaledge of watching your favourite band, artist, symphony in concert.
There are lots of one hit wonders out their right now making millions from radio airplay and CD sales. They might appear performing on the Grammies, or have a quick concert tour, then sit on their royalty checks for the rest of their lives.
A artist serious about making music would screw profts from CD and perform a series of concerts year after year. It doesn't have to be some ball busing whirlwind tour where the artist sees 60 countries in 60 days or anything, but just enough of an appearance to earn some decent money and give fans more then what they can get from a music file.
For the most part, most artists know that there are more fans that could care less about seeing them in concert, so why not milk those fans that whould actually pay to see Madonna for $250. As long as the stadium fills up with these losers paying up, the prices will just keep going up.
The problem is that most artists will soon realise that audience attendance will drop AND their music is being distributed for free, so they will end up with nothing but the paltry millions they make from legitimate CD sales.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Like a growing number of people (who refuse to be pigeonholed as "consumers"), I'm re-discovering what music actually means to me. There are many more 2nd-tier (or lower) artists who cannot charge $200 for concert seats. They still depend on earning money in dribs and drabs -- many just get by, and would starve if they couldn't get a gig next week. No shiny-suited lawyer-biz types hanging on these guys. Yet they make meaningful, vibrant, living art. Better still, it's cheaper to try out an unknown artist. For a $10 cover charge, you may have a great time dancing, meeting people, and perhaps as a bonus, discover a musician whose art actually touches you in a way Madonna never could. (And even if she could, would you want her to????)
Or, heaven forfend! you should gather with some friends around a piano or guitar and bongos and actually make your own music! Wow! what a concept!
.nosig
I buy all of my tickets for $0.25 through a cool quasi-legal Russian website. Take that music industry!
I can't wait for AllMyConcertMerch.com to give us cool concert merchandise for $2 to $4 per shirt and $5-$7 for a hoodie.
As I understood it, music videos were (originally, maybe not today) free in order to get people to buy your album, and albums were OK money that drove people to your concert, where you made the big money. And they have always charged whatever they think we'll pay - and this excuse^H^H^H^H^H^H theory sounds better than "cuz". Springsteen won't be a bargain at $200, but then again it wasn't a bargain at $100 either. Ever see what they have to haul around in trucks and buses to do a tour? Ya think maybe the fuel prices are also to blame?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
In the past three weeks, I have seen 10 shows, each costing $2, $3, or nothing at all, and had more creativity and rewarding experiences than what Madonna can give me. It's called independent music. After the show, you can thank the artists/bands personally, and give $10 DIRECTLY INTO THEIR HAND if you so desire. Go to your local mom and pop coffee shop, music store, art gallery, and look at the flyers on the wall. See who's playing. And don't say it doesn't happen near you, I live in Indiana.
Scalping has been a time honored tradition for concerts. Concert promoters decided to cut out the middleman and scalp directly. They saw that people would pay more for tickets and they decided to charge more. This trend has been going on far longer than illegal and legal P2P file sharing. Who in their right mind would pay $250 for a Madonna concert? You couldn't pay me to go to a Madonna concert. I'm not sure who I'd pay that much for. I might pay as much as $150 for a concert for someone I really wanted to see, but concert, plays and music tickets go regularly for up to $75 a pop.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Man I hate those ticketmaster prices. $2.50 to "print at home" so you don't have to bother sending me a ticket? Even if I get will call (which they list as costing $0.00 shipping & handling, as it should) they STILL charge like $4.00 for "shipping and handling." Then they tack on the $4.00 convenience fee on EVERY ticket, what the hell is that!? And no matter what shipping method you choose, they seem to randomly change it for you. Box office is the way to go.
That is absolute crap.
1. Firstly there will be a number of people who buy any given CD anyways, even if the music were downloadable.
2. To say that, well the concerts would be cheaper if you stop downloading, maybe true, for a little while until they just raise the benchmark anyways. Why because they can and stress it out until the market won't pay for it.
3. People may yell but there is competition ! With music not really, there aren't 3 brands of madonnas. Each artist has a monopoly on his/her/its own work.
Sorry artists, time you started representing yourselves with your own online presence, tell the middle men to take a hike. Instead of the shiny nickel you get from the 'man' for each CD, you can perhaps make a buck instead, thats to you like selling 20 records. So you can keep your income even if you only sell 5% of the CDs you used to sell.
My 0.02
When Laurie Anderson did a concert in London, they wanted £35 per ticket, just over $50 at the time. I skipped it.
Two years later I saw Laurie Anderson in concert at Harvard. That was about $15.
I strongly suspect that the approx. $40 difference was the fault of the venue, the promoters, the ticket sales agency, and so on.
I skipped the last Peter Gabriel tour because the ticket prices were excessive. Shame, he's incredible live. Another concert I had tickets for was cancelled because they couldn't get enough people to pay the ticket price.
Ultimately, the same thing is happening here as with CDs: the price is being jacked up repeatedly, at well above the rate of inflation. Eventually nobody will be willing to pay it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Looks like the "Bowie Theory" impacts older artists like Bowie and Madonna - who attract an audience of similarly maturing and increasingly wealthy fans; maybe that's why artists can afford to charge more. Hell, "God" (the guitarist - not the diety), U2, Cliff Richard (!) and Jacko has been touring for ages and charging a considerable amount for tickets - well before "Bowie" cottoned on to the idea.
Let's get real - this is nothing to do with music downloads, and more to do with crappy old artists trying to milk the public for every last ounce of hard earned...
(PS - b*****cks to the extension to copyright that the likes of Cliff Richard are proposing - you made your money boyo - no please go and f*** off...)
I remember when Pink Floyd tickets cost $350 and this was the days of BBSes long before mp3 should appear.
Hmmmm, Championship boxing tickets costs $400 sometimes too! Must be all those pirates downloading the boxers albums before the fight! UHhhhh, YEAH!
Wasn't that one of the big arguments for Napster? That artists could recoup music sales losses by concert revenues?
That and they get more revenues from concerts anyway because the big bad RIAA card carrying recording studio and manager was lining their pockets with CD money and the artists get roughly a penny on a dollar for CD sales.
I'm not defending Madonna here. ($250 is a ripoff to see ANY music artist, let alone Madonna.) but wasn't rising costs of concerts expected by the Pirate community? After all it's what they were preaching.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Then why did they all sell out in half a day?
Summation 2
*But, even if it has "deteriorated" as implied by parent, who's to say what caused that? it's always assumed that the "content industries" are just responding to consumers' taste. Does that hold water? These are powerful industries, are we sure that they're strictly passive/re-active about their work?
I doubt it. If there's a deterioration in general cultural sophistication I'd look for the cause in the way, way higher profits to be made from stamping out generic boybands, madonna reincarnations/wannabes, etc. Combine this with limiting the diversity of art that people are generally exposed to, so that they think all mainstream music should sound like this. Combine this with marketing saturation -- to the point that a lot of people feel like they know Britney better than their next door neighbor.
All I'm saying is that the industries shape taste as well as react to it. Exactly how deliberately is tough to say.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
We have to remember that Rockonomics is a very young field and that we've only been able to collect rockonomical data for a relatively brief period. Why, remember it seems like only a few years ago that these rockonomists were saying that computer networks would be a boon to our society's rockonomic health.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The BBC's case would make more sense if they knew anything about how artists make their money. The truth is that music artists have always made more money from their concerts then from their record sales for the simple fact that for concerts artists get paid obscene amounts of money just to show up on top of all the money they gross from such things as merchandise sales. When it comes to record sales artists usually just get a set amount of money per album that is sold and quite often the total revenue they gross from this area is actually quite small, depending on the artist's contract with the record label.
Case in point Britney Spears and the Onyx Hotel Tour. Britney grossed hundreds of millions of dollars from this tour and actually set a record for highest merchandise revenue from a concert tour (no clue if this record still stands but its a pretty good guess that it does). Her album In The Zone which was being promoted by the Onys Hotel tour sold approximately 4-5 million copies to date, and say she was getting $3 per albumn sold (which is absolutely huge in the music industry but possible since she is such a pop icon) that amounts to $12 - 15 million in revenue. I could not find exact numbers for her gross tour revenue but I am certain it is at the very least $100 million. As you can see her album revenue is way smaller than this number, so basically this BBC guy is full of shit.
People who love fame and the spot light tend to be greedy and selfish. Music should be under GPL and free anyway!
http://www.havenofbliss.com/
I pay $5/month to listen to just about any song I want to at home and at work. (It costs 79cents each to keep the downloads forever.) I haven't bought CDs in years because of how cheaply I can enjoy music on my computer. Yahoo hardly makes a profit on this price, not to mention the artists I listen to. I am really tired of the piracy BS that is said to be the cause of declining artist revenues. Load of garbage.
When you need to 1) change your video (re: American Life) because you're scared of what people might say, you've lost your edge (as Madonna was always controversial before)
2) French kiss both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on live TV, you are in desperate need of publicity
3) Cause Guy Ritchie to go from making "classics" such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch., and arguably The Hire: Star to drivel such as Swept Away and Revolver, you're obviously a bad influence on the creative process.
She has decent album sales (compared to her last album) so she feels it's OK to overprice her tickets, and as long as idiots keep paying those high prices, she'll get away with it. Then again, how else will she pay for that $10 million Swarovski encrusted disco-fied crucifix?
...from Warren Buffett, not Jimmy Buffett.
The artists are free to charge whatever price the market will bear for tickets to their concerts. There is no way to copy the experience of a live performance. However, if they are going to charge $250, and use filesharing to justify it, then they should stop prosecuting filesharers altogether, and even make their music avialable for free dowload on their own websites.
Say a venue can fit 10,000 people. Many can. $50 ticket prices would bring in $500,000 of gross revenue per night. Lets just say for the sake of argument that this is a break even point, the artist and the producer doesn't make money. So they decide to charge $250. That's an extra $2,000,000/night in pure profit. ...someone needs a new Bugatti.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
You know, there is no comparison between listening to a song in your car, whether you bought it or downloaded it and auctually going to a live concert. The experience is what you pay for. Artists today think they are worth the $250 ticket and there are people stupid enough to pay it. It just like the movie theatre. When I moved to the town where I am at, the price of a movie ticket was $6.50 and $5.50 if you had your student ID with you). Now, its $10.00 and $9.50 if you have a student ID. One of the reasons I feel this is happening is the advancement in technology for movies. Movies aren't shot on a set anymore or out on location, they are shot in front of a green screen and have all the effects put in digitally. That is expensive and in order to make up that cost, they hike up the cost of the movie to the theatres and in turn the theatres rape us for money. Same with music. The fact that an audio CD still cost less than $20 is surprising to me. Whats even more disgusting is that anyone that can produce a CD somehow becomes very wealthy, and if you are a barely talented rapper that can string words together that sound catchy and rhyme to a certain extent, you are in the millions.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
...except for wages and salaries for the average person.
P.S. Anyone who will pay $250 to watch an over the hill Madonna gyrate to electronic dance music in a leotard deserves that visual & financial punishment.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The fanbase, it shrinks.
By half, in just eighteen months.
Spring thaw? Bad music?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
[Begin Pedantic Rant]
Numb3rs quote:
You'd think on a geek forum, we'd have less abuse of this word.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
The long-standing justification for music downloading is that artists should receive money through shows rather than album sales. How can you use this justification and not realize that the price of shows would go up? A musician's lifestyle is expensive, you know; that money's got to come from somewhere.
I don't think their definition of need matches mine. Does the artist 'need' to put food on the table, or does the artist 'need' to take a year off in Italy with a 15 person entourage?
I've always liked Mike Watt's (http://www.hootpage.com/) philosophy that, as a musician, he could devide his work life into two activities: flyers and shows. Any activity that was not playing live was an advertisement to get people to come see him play. CDs are just another way of advertising your show. Granted, they have numerous other benefits, but that is the main purpose.
It is my opinion that if you can't make a living from playing live, then maybe you aren't that good a musician, and you should think about a different career. As with any other job, you either learn to live on what you make, or you get another job. Not by any means is that to say you shouldn't keep playing as a hobby, but saying you can't make a living because people are 'stealing' your recorded music is a cop out. But hey, if people will pay $250 to see you play live, more power to you. However, I know I will most likely not be in the audience at that price.
First off, seeing as how hardly (less than 1%) of recorded music sales goes to the artist, a pure economist might think that if the market can bear it, then it is a valid price. Well, the prices of all goods and services have sharply increased because the cost of energy has increased sharply. I mean, it takes at LEAST 2 to 3 TIMES (if not more!) the amount of money to travel.
The next thing that will be blamed is that iTunes caused this price increase. As an aside, if a $13 cd costs roughly the same as a song on iTunes, where does all of the *extra* money go? I mean, if the price of a cd is wrapped up in transportation, storage, design, and packaging then I'd think the price would be much less.
Wait, that is what http://allofmp3.com/ is for.
-- "Mathematics is music for the mind, and Music is Mathematics for the Soul. - J.S. Bach"
why not generate ad revenue from their web site, while at the same time allowing customers to download songs legally for a fee? Just get away from the stupid business model, and go with the winner. Think about the 1 billion downloads that itunes has achieved, and recognize that people want to pay for music.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Oh noes, we can no longer manipulate the market the way we feel like! Now we actually need to make money in order to make money! You slimy p2p, give us our power to screw everyone over like we please back!
If you check for Madonna's tickets that are for sale on eBay, you'll find people willing to pay several hundred dollars apiece to see her in concert. Given that, I'm not surprised they're pricing tickets at $250 - Madonna and her label want a piece of that action, too.
Personally, I wouldn't pay to see her in concert, so it really doesn't bother me.
Cdr. Data
"Talented singers are a dime a dozen" and right you are.
A *true* artist creates the song, the music and sings it.
American Idol-type singers are glorified mouth pieces with puppet strings.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
If you really mean "(one of whom plays at directing movies)", she has 3 kids.
This is something that's bugged me about the music (and movie) industries for a while now.
Just because you were making a certain amount of money before, doesn't mean you're entitled to make the same amount in the future. Along the same lines, you can't expect your business model to permenantly exist in it's original form.
They're a bunch of cry-babies who are just not savy enough to see the social change and find smart ways to take advantage of it. Instead, they're attempting to graft what they already know on top of an incompatible market. Yeah, it may be working now, but it won't work forever.
Bowie hit it on the head in the article when he said "Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity". There are people who see that change and accept it, and there are people who see that change and try to prevent it. Either way, it's fairly undeniable that it's changing.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
P2P has created such a demand to see Modonna that she is able to sell her supply at $250 a ticket.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." --Unknown
She's in it for the money. Everyone knows this. She'd charge $1000/ticket if she thought people would pay it.
And Bowie? Madonna learned a lot of *her* moves from *him*. He was one of the first of the "image is everything" rock musicians. Though he at least used to be talented.
What I find amusing is that the vast majority of "artists" that bitch about illegal downloading and falling CD sales are artist that fucking suck, or are has-beens. Used to be that if you were hugely popular at some point, you could live off that FOREVER thanks to album sales. Not anymore.
You peeps do realize that Madonna and/or other artists don't set the prices. It's all supply and demand. If some no name group or less popular group has a concert is the same venue tickets might go for $40-$100, but when someone like Madonna, the Rolling Stones, etc has a concert and demand is MUCH higher and the venue know people are willing to pay it the prices get closer to the maximums set by law. I paid about $280 ish for (4) tix to see that bitch at MSG in NY, but o well... :)
Many artists underprice their tickets, (really) "So the fans can buy them". What actually happens is that some fans get the cheap tickets, the rest go to scalpers. This may be good for the artists, because sometimes the scalpers buy too many tickets, and can't unload then at a profit. This acts just like a futures market. It can stablize the market.
Still, this means that the artists were often leaving money on the table. Instead, they should price like airlines. Tickets are cheap months away, going up in price, then plummeting at the last moment after the concert has started. They'd use an on-line auction sort of selling. Your price would be determined by how selling was going right now, and how many tickets you wanted. Scalping would go away under this system. Artists could also pre-sell a concert and cancel it w/o too many hard feelings if there's not enough interest. Much better to find out the concert you have a ticket for is canceled two months out, rather than the day of the event. If they included a coupon for dollars off the next concert, not too many people would be upset.
If the artists want/need a certain amount of dyed-in-the-wool loyal fans there, they can use radio-station contests to sort the wheat from the chaff.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Madonna has been raking it in since her second album in 1985, so I doubt she remembers the days when she was too poor to buy shiny new boob-cones or underwear fancy enough to wear outside.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
...that this simply reflects that the bigger you are, the less important concerts are for you. It's not like she's going to be able to hold a concert for a very large part of her fanbase anyway, that's not what's driving sales. Madonna, the person, is a quite limited resource. If you're already a superstar, you're not going to work your butt off touring every town for some small profit. This is simply a skimming strategy - take the most willing to pay top dollars for the least amount of work. That's a pretty usual strategy where the demand exceeds the "supply" - deliver to the most profitable customers first. The rest is just an excuse to hike up the price for those select few.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The fact is that a cd costs ~$20, which the Artist sees about $0.05 of. Where as a Ticket that costs $250 and the artist sees 50+% of. Internet downloads help artists by spreading their music. I know that I wouldn't have found some bands that I listen to today if I hadn't have downloaded them. The concert prices are going up because the demand to go to shows is going up, The last Madonna show in PHX sold out in 4 minutes, setting a new record here. If internet downloads are bad, shouldn't concert prices be going down as a result of everyone being able to lister to her music?
For as long as I've been of concert going age, I've never been able to afford to see my favorite top tier bands live. Chances are I never will. I'd love to see some of those guys live, but honestly it's not worth more than 30 bucks for a few hours of rock songs I've already heard a thousand times on my awesome home stereo.
Local clubs and battle of the band conveniently located at the softball complex down the street are about all the live performances I can afford to attend, and it has nothing to do with download habits of the American geek. 12 bucks parking, god knows for refreshments, and tickets $65+ that's a huge chunk out of my monthly spending cash (or "after bill"), all of it if I bring a date. Maybe I'm the minority, but I've also got to look ahead at gas prices and related rises in COL. I'm already buying a concert ticket at the pump every other week! (I try to walk as often as possible, but it's hard to do in the suburbs of Dallas.)
No, don't go blaming downloader's, you've just priced your self out of mainstream. Enough people seem to be able to afford it, so I guess more power to you. The rest of us will happily download from the iTunes and IRC's of the interworld and remain skeptical of your pricy spectacle.
-Buddy of DoQ
How long until an established artist/group decides to release all his new music free online and make money touring? I seem to remember Garth Brooks used to sell out stadiums (after adding days to meet demand)--an act like that could do well with this model.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
Uh... Then again maybe I shouldn't be typing that at work. :)
"artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts" Need to make more money? Madonna? Haha I find that hilarious!
Before the recording industry in order to earn a living as a musician, the artists needed to go out an play live.
Small venues, low ticket prices, a few nights a week.
Now it seems that the opposite occurs.
Once signed to a label it seems that a band releases an album, does a brief tour to promote, mass media marketing meaning that these tours are shorter and shorter.
They then sit back and wait for the money.
Think about it - how often do most big bands tour - once every 3 to 5 years maybe?
The records/cd's/mp3's should be the promotional material to get people interested in going to their performances.
That way we would have better music - after all, how many gigs have you gone to that a band sounded awful because they cant play without the benefits a studio brings.
Let us convert some of the theaters, cinemas and other large buildings into music venues and promote live music - a true performance worthy of reward, rather than soul-less recordings of multi-take playings of music
I guess I'll be downloading videos of all the concerts off P2P... and save the $250 towards the purchase of my new portable audio/video player. hah.
I know I've gone to see artists in person that I never would have heard of if not for P2P. Keb Mo, Susan Tedeschi and the Radiators all come to mind immediately. Great artists all, but they never get any airplay, being blues artists.
And according to my musician friends, artists sell albums to get people to go to the concerts, not the other way around. Live performances are where they really make their money.
High concert ticket prices are hardly news.
The Eagles broke $100 during their first "farewell" tour a whole bunch of years ago, long before iTunes and iPods.
It still boils down to the horrendous accounting of the record industry: In the "good old days" of cheap concerts, a live performance was a requirement of the label as a promotion for selling the reocrds, and the artists hoped to get a piece of that.
Currently, most artists never see a royalty beyond the first advance, and the concert tickets (and $10 stickers, $35 t-shirts, etc.) are their source of profit.
And face it: even at a stadium with three nights' peformances, you're only going to let, say 150,000 people see you, in a big city where there could be a million fans or so. Yeah, only the yuppies are getting in, but the bands don't care (See The Last DJ by Tom Petty).
You don't like it? Neither do I. Don't go to $100+ nostalgia shows in stadiums. Go to $12 shows by up-and-coming bands with energy at small clubs where nobody is more than 40 feet from the stage, or in a dingy converted '30's movie house turned mosh pit with a bigger artist workshopping his summer tour. You'll have a lot more fun (and probably walk out of the concert having paid $10-$18 for the artist's CD, with most of that cash going straight to them).
Design for Use, not Construction!
If you have an opinion, the odds are that you can find a PhD-authored paper supporting your opinion.
...and saw four bands for 2 pounds. Two of the bands were selling promotional EPs, which I bought. The total expenditure for the evening was 8 pounds - this strikes me as being good value for money.
However, since the money I spent clearly won't go anywhere near the pockets of any record industry executives, this presumably this makes me a bad music consumer. After all, if everybody chose to spend their money going to pubs to see local bands and buying their self-produced CDs, people like Madonna wouldn't make any money.
Therefore, I suggest that there should be some kind of licensing scheme whereby small bands must seek the record industry's approval before attempting to play shows in pubs. They would give the industry a cut of the takings to compensate for drawing potential audience members away from official gigs by big-name artists. In return, the industry would promise not to sue these small bands for loss of revenue.
I never understood why tickets are usually underpriced.
Often demand exceeds supply by far, and since prices are cheap there is a big incentive to purchase tickets just to resell them on the black market.
If these tickets were priced higher, or even sold in a sort of auction, all the profit of the black market resellers would instead go to the organisers.
So why are tickets sold apparently below market value? It cann't just be because of goodwil towards the fans, can it?
It is one thing when government beurocrats don't understand basic economic laws, but when BBC reporters and buisness people don't understand, there is something seriously wrong.
Market price is based on supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is orders of magnitude greater than demand, and so there is not a lot of economic incentive to pay for music when you can download it (and despite what record companies say, people WILL produce music without a financial incentive... music was invented before currency)... especialy when the music is desposable pop music like Madonna (more obscure music tends to have more dedicated fans who are less likely to download music).
However, a performance venue has a clear limit to supply. A performance venu might have a limit of say 1000 people, or maybe even 10,000 or bigger. There will always be WAY MORE people who want to see a concert that you can pack into a venue... so you can charge a lot more money. There is no way around thing... if you were to try the Soviet style system, and the government were to force concerts to be cheaper, they would still be limited by the size of the venue - all you would do is create shortages, huge lines, and a lot of unhappy people.
Remember all those people who said "Artists can depend on ticket and CD sales"? Well, they were right -- the artists can, and will. Tours which used to be subsidized by record sales won't be subsidized any more -- and the price of tickets will rise. Signings will follow the sports collectible model, and artists will sell signatures on albums for $50 a pop. Etc., etc., etc.
Remember the old saying "be careful what you ask for?" Well...be careful what you ask for.
They don't need to, they do so to keep up their excessive lifestyles. The same thing happens to any industry, where once a select few could charge a premium, after a while market pressure drives the profit margins down.
An average PC used to cost a few thousand, nowadays they cost a fraction.
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This is how the record industry, wait, music industry should be. The digital music is the advert to get you to go to the live gigs Where they make their money.
People complain endlessly about the lack of things for teenagers to do, and a gigging culture would benefit that endlessly.
This would have the benefit of solving most of our problems with "pop" today. You can't sing live? You can't make any money. On the plus side you can rapidly cut down on the people and skills you need to smooth you recorded sounds waves into something presentable, in your "adverts."
Music will not die. You can kill a record industry, but you cant kill a music industry. It's whether people except that maybe being a successful musician shouldn't mean that you earn more money than a brain surgeon.
The powerhouses try to tell us that if piracy kills them that will be the end of music full stop. And that would be a Bad Thing. But it wouldn't be the end, and a world with free music and constantly gigging artists, could even be better.
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I'm always astounded how the measure of success in the music industry is not profitability but obscene profitability.
FWIW, the Grateful Dead allowed and facilitated giving away their music for free, and made an estimated $50,000,000 a year doing so. Almost all on concert sales. It was a good model- giving away their music and allowing it to be traded for free eliminated piracy and the bootleg market.
Too bad that the music industry hasn't tumbled onto the truth of why CD sales are slipping: that the music they are selling sucks.
If you're allowed hike up ticket prices to compensate you for lost record sales then you've been compensated so you have to STFU about p2p.
Or maybe concerts started getting expensive long before Napster. Or maybe downloads generate interest in artists that help generate demand for concert tickets. If your fans aren't buying so many albums maybe they have money for tickets. More likely they just have more money for iPods.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
"Because you know if you play New Kids on the Block albums backwards they sound better. "Oh come on, Bill, they're the New Kids, don't pick on them, they're so good and they're so clean cut and they're such a good image for the children." Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking ROCKED! I don't care if they died in puddles of their own vomit! I want someone who plays from his fucking HEART!"
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This is greed, pure and simple.
"artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts"
Why? Do they not have enough money to buy food and shelter? I think someone confused need with want. They "want" more more, they do not "need" more money.
that I got a good laugh out of it.
Seriously-- scalpers were selling the tickets for these prices. I think that is what it is really about.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
She, and most significantly, the record executives, have become accustomed to very large paychecks for very little work. The world's changing, but they're determined to fight the rear-guard effort to preserve their cash flow.
Ford Motor company used to employ a VP of Electricity. This before the emergence of the current utility model. And trains had coal flingers well into the diesel age. Hell, the mining communities of central England want to preserve the "mining way of life" for their children. Nobody likes change, especially the shill who makes gobs of cash for doing next to nothing.
One $250 ticket to a Madonna show could get you...
- 13 Madonna CDs at around $20 a pop
- 10 band shirts from a record shop - 7 band shirts from the merch booth at their show - 5 concert tickets to nearly any other major label band's shows
- 30-50 tickets to concerts by local artists
Just as I would never buy 10 shirts at once, 13 CDs at once, and so forth, there's no way I can justify paying $250 for a one-time event, given the available alternatives. I don't care what the production's like. And there is no way to justify that kind of ticket price on P2P sharing. Get fucked.
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I can remember it being news when the Stones were getting $75-100 ($200+ for the best seats) for a concert when I was in high school, back in 90-91. Yes I'm sure overall the price of concert tickets have risen, but what hasn't? If they are outpacing inflation it's only because concert promoters have figured out that people are stupid enough to drop this kind of money for a concert.
oil prices are increasing because of P2P downloads.
who can tell?
I went to a mini-festival concert last year, there were 6 bands for $35. I'm going to another one in June for $36 (5 or 6 bands). One of the shows I wanted to see last month, but unfortunately missed was a whopping $17 per ticket (again, 5 or 6 bands).
It's not P2P, the bands in the shows I just mentioned are heavily pirated also. Some artists, especially ones that have been around a while and are relatively popular charge way more per ticket than unknown bands do. They seem to feel that if you like them, you'll shell out an entire paycheck just to go to the concert. This of course doesn't include the parking fee, $40 tshirt if you choose to buy one, and any refreshments you might want to have at the show...A small soda is like 7 bucks!
You can also tack on the Ticketmaster fees, of around 15-20 per ticket! So those expensive and also the not so expensive tickets just went up. My $36 ticket x 2 plus fees came out to be $102. Yes, I'm still going, I support the bands I like, I'll also shell out mega bucks for at least one tshirt...
It's funny, when I started going to concerts back in the mid 80s, the tickets were 10-15 dollars...
"bullshit, fud, stupid, greed, evil."
That pretty much covers it, does it? The idea that concerts were somehow being priced extra low in order to enhance CD sales is just plain retarded. Concert tickets are priced in order to maximize their profit, period, unless the artist gives a crap and actually has control over the ticket price (unlikely.)
People keep trying to compare making music to stuff like building houses or selling apples, but it's not. In the entire history of humanity, it never has been. If you're in the year 1200 and you walk by some peasant playing his lute in the streets, you either choose to throw money in his hat or you don't. Either way, you get to enjoy the music. Fast forward to 1980--you can choose to listen to the radio, make a copy of your friend's tape, or buy a tape yourself. Now you have the option of downloading it from the internet, too. Yeah, it's a little easier than recording tapes, but it still has its share of hassles and tradeoffs (such as lower sound quality.) And ultimately, the true fans will still choose to support their favored artists because it's the right thing to do. Music is an inherently emotional, inherently personal thing. It's arguably the purest, the least practical, the most abstract out of all of the art forms. If you're good enough and lucky enough to make money by making music, consider yourself blessed. Many of the greatest musicians in history lived and died in poverty (Mozart, black American musicians pre-1970s.) If you make money, you make it by the good will of your fans alone. No one who's successful will ever have their success taken away by illegal music downloads or tape recorders. Virtually every small time independant band I've seen has strongly encouraged illegal p2p as a method of promoting themselves. Why is that, I wonder? The difference is probably only noticable at the superstar level, and even then it's probably the difference between Metallica making $5 million and them making say, $3.8 million.
Seriously, who the fuck cares whether they're very rich vs. obscenely rich? Just shut up... Shut up you stupid, greedy, selfish, fucking sellouts... and stop suing 12-year-olds. Virtually every one of my friends "pirates" (I still can't figure out who invented this stupid term) music, yet without every one of them also buys CDs. In fact, I'm the only one who doesn't regularly buy CDs and that's because I refuse to buy RIAA CDs. (My most recent CD purchases were Black Sails on the Sunset, The Art of Drowning, and AFI by AFI (A Fire Inside). If you like grunge or punk or any other form of hard rock, you owe it to yourself to check them out. I'm not normally a huge punk fan, but these songs are complex, tempo-bending, hauntingly harmonizing, multi-part masterpieces. Their most recent album is pretty decent, but not nearly as good... plus they switched to a RIAA label. You can find all of their works, RIAA and non-RIAA, on Amazon.com)
Making a song is not like making a car. Treat your fans like 'consumers' and they're likely to treat you like just another soulless, manipulative, evil corporation. Music is a luxury, and it is already quite free on the radio (unlike TV, it's very easy to avoid the commercials if you live in a big city with lots of stations.) You should be fucking thankful I like your work enough to give you money, not trying to extort more out of me via the CD-R and blank tape 'tax' or suing me because I downloaded a few songs that I kinda/sorta like but not enough to spend $15+ for.
Anyone who is still a Madonna fan deserves to be fleeced!
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Either artists are getting virtually nothing for their CD sales (as we've been told on numerous occassions) and make most of their money from concerts -- OR they do get a cut and have been lying to us.
Because I don't trust RIAA as far as I can throw their fat asses, I'm going to believe that the artists are getting screwed on record sales. It is sad, however, that some artists are then taking to screwing their fans as a result. We're not talking about a little more, but a lot more money to see someone sing and perhaps dance.
I actually don't mind paying a little extra for a *significantly* better experience.
The artist is either greedy or desperate. Either way, it does not make them look good.
The falling number of pirates since the mid 1800's is the direct cause of rising ticket prices. Scientists have proven the correlation.
so the RIAA execs are bumping ticket prices since they're no longer associated w/ CD sales... that's fine... at least that is the *FIRST* example of the RIAA doing something that makes SENSE (argue it all you like, the situation was that they could lower prices because it was tied to CD sales... change the circumstances and get a different outcome... to keep the outcome the same they need to again change the circumstances... this time they choose higher ticket prices... assuming people are willing to pay, RIAA is happy that they maintain status quo)...
BUT...
who in the HECK decided that these individuals should have such lucrative incomes?...
let's take a look at the artists who *really* produced a lot... Elvis, U2, Beatles, etc.... name a band/group which has produced over 10-15 albums... THOSE are the individuals who deserve such insane incomes... why? because they are CONSISTENTLY good.
whoever decided that a rock star can be born with one good song is insane, and to try to make such money from those one-hit wonders is just as insane.
so what's the outcome? if RIAA left ticket prices as they were, the *good* artists would live luxuriously, since the constant sale of their many CDs (plus some touring) would maintain the lifestyle... likewise, the medeocre artists would live the same lives as everyone else... some may be more or less popular, sure... but who's to say that one good hit should recover someone's income for half their lives.
right now artists EXPECT such incomes... without such expectations, RIAA wouldn't be in the position of having to try to raise concert ticket sales to "compensate"... what they're really compensating is their over inflated incomes, the same as they've been doing for god knows how long.
It's not like every artist is charging hundreds of dollars for their concert tickets. It's just the "superstar" artists who have to do this to maintain their standard of living. For most artists, who don't get a large share of their album sales anyway, downloads increase the number of people attending their concerts and therefore, their total revenue increases just by having a larger fanbase.
For artists like Madonna and Bowie, whose shows always sell out no matter how many copies of the last album they sold, the revenue lost from downloads means they have to make up the shortfall somehow, and ticket prices are the mechanism they choose. The problem is that Bowie actually believes he should be paid millions of dollars to dance around on stage (does a 70+ year old really dance anymore though?)
Just like a union dockworker, he doesn't see that he is overpaid, he doesn't understand that no matter how good his cover of the Pixies' Cactus was (or wasn't in this case), he simply does not deserve another several million bucks to sing Let's Dance again and again and again.
What is happening here is that the artificial economies of a broadcast-based mass media are finally being brought back into line with more traditional market economic models. Prior to easy access to media, the media companies had "cornered the market" so to speak on their product and were capable of controlling its distribution in a way that really resembled price fixing. Now that said price fixing is technologically impossible to enforce, the market is self-correcting and the economics of music are being brought back down to earth such that these huge millionaire popstars are going to start becoming more and more of the exception rather than the rule.
Everything that is happening now was predictable. It is all changing according to centuries-old free market economic models. The problem is that this particular market took so long to self-correct that those who are in it now can't remember what a sane entertainment market looks like. The industry got so used to being overpaid that they don't see this change as a perfectly reasonable market correction. They see it as a threat.
I have never had the good luck to be able to see my very favorite rock band in concert. I have been a huge fan on them for about 20 years. However, I moved to New York a few months ago and next Thursday night I get to go see them play a concert in NYC.
:-)
The ticket cost me $13 online. The parking will probably cost more than that
I am very excited.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Mabye the $250 concert tickets aren't tied so much to file sharing, but to the elaborate stages, costume changes, etc. It's her image/business to put on big productions that cost a ton of money (which is passed on to the consumer). But that isn't a reflection on file sharing. She could easily do a show without so much of the hoopla and charge $50.
Madonna is also a megastar with longevity of success, a huge back catalog of hits, and possibly won't put on many more concerts. You can make your own supply/demand arguments based on that (and not P2P). It also helps to compare her with a band like U2, who also have past success, lots of hits, and put on a big-production show. They *somehow* charage a hell of a lot less ($60 when I saw them this past fall).
Personal Note: I'm going to see an indie artist tonight for 18 bucks. I assume it's going to be the singer, her band, and a couple of microphones. I istened to a couple songs thanks to P2P, bought two albums and am now going to the show (it's Kathleen Edwards, by the way).
Or would "blowing one's own head off" be more appropriate?
Hey, Nirvana never charged $250 for a ticket. Tool isn't even that much...
Of course, I'll always prefer a local show under $30 (under $20 is best) for bands with actual artistic integrity. I'd see Bowie for $20, but I wouldn't go see Madonna for free.
$0.02
in Detroit last year...best concert I've ever been to, well worth the money.
Seriously, you could not pay me $250 to see a Madonna concert and listen to her crap music. People who pay that to see her deserve to get fleeced.
Fine!
If madonna wants to slap a huge ar$e price on her concert tickets...then i wait for the official concert dvd to come out and p2p that off here silly behind as well!
P2P upping the price of concert tickets indeed! What a pathetic excuse. Robbing, no good, concert managers *mumble*
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being controlled by TicketMaster, Clear Channel, et al, maybe we should take a closer look at them. If prices are too high, it might be because they use the same business practices that other monoplistists employ. The solution here is more alternatives. It's important to remove TicketMaster's stranglehold on the business. It also seems that most of the high prices are for these old geezers whose fans don't know when to let go. It's the price they pay to have a little nostalgia. Nothing wrong with that.
What?
Concerts were overpriced for years before Napster came along. Anyone remember Pearl Jam going up against TicketBastard trying to get an $18 ticket to their fans?
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One of my rationales for participating in P2P is that bits aren't worth anything, so why should I pay for them?
I argue that if a musician wants to make money off their music they should come to my town and sing and dance in person.
I personally don't want to pay 250 dollars (or 2.5 dollars even) to see Madonna sing and dance, but at least she's charging for something that she is uniquely qualified to produce. In this sense she is justified in charging whatever she'd like.
-- i drop mine in braille so you blind cats can read me
It's great how the Music Industry (Suits, Artists, Companies) love to repeat this mantra that downloading music justifies whatever price increases they were already going to go ahead with. But it's very simple. Either the Industry accepts downloading in it's legal and illegal forms and adapts, or else they can kiss their profits goodbye. The internet is here to stay, as is the cheap, pervasive technology that makes 'pirating' music trivial.
Does this guy really think that Madonna will rape her public LESS if she has more CD profits? That she will consider NOT making maximum profits for giving a concert? Really, she will ask a thousand bucks for a ticket if she can get away with it. There is not really an alternative for a Madonna concert (at least not one that features Madonna), so she can ask what she can get away with. With CD's, of course, this is different: the higher the CD is priced, the more people will download its contents.
We are talking business here. No freaking charity, no loyalty. Money first, faith last.
Why Americans are so unhappy about their two greatest inventions - show business and entertainment industry???
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
It's bunk. The Eagles were charging 150 bucks a show long before P2P was even thought about. It's another case of a LAZY industry making excuses for substandard profits due to substandard product. People will buy crap if its all that is available.
...Please pick it up!
Love this quote: "According to an article at BBC News, $250 tickets for the latest Madonna tour are the fault of P2P file sharing."
So... What?! Limewire and eMule are scalping tickets online again! For shame!
To quote Jack Black: "Look, don't... I'll tell YOU what I want." This is simply a case of the rich getting richer. We all know Madonna has no shame, has had none since her career started. Although there were times she somehow managed to surprise us all. This is one of those times. What a way to shit on your fans and blame the situation on them at the same time!
Contrast this with Daryl Hall and John Oates (and I don't give a fuck if you hate their music - I like 'em and at least they play their own instruments, sing with harmony (sans Antares cheat machines), and write their own material). Are you a big H&O fan? Then by all means, join their club and get some of the most heavily discounted tickets available AND get first dibs at seating.
That's a GREAT idea for both the artist and the fans. They are always "dropping in" online and chatting with the fans and are clearly hard working musicians. Their shows have never failed to impress me and what's more, their attitude is more along the lines of: "We paid our dues but we'll rock your asses and have fun doing it." Yeah, they're getting up there, but they still give you a lot of show for the money - even if you pay full price. Which, incidentally is no where NEAR a Maddona or Stones ticket.
There are plenty of other, newer, great sounding artists out there too. No need to pay this sort of scratch to see a good show. Look, since Madonna's not really singing anyway, why not go to a strip club with a good pole dancer and request they play Madonna songs? I'm sure if you brought $100 with you and gave it to the girl she'd act like she was singing too!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I'm surprised ticket prices are as low as they are. Case in point: Jimmy Buffett's summer tour. The nanosecond they went on sale, I was using two phones and a computer, while my wife was using one phone and a computer to try to buy tickets. By the time one of us got through, lawn seats were gone and the pavilion was down to singles. The pavilion seat price? $125. And the whole concert was sold out in minutes. They could've probably doubled the price and still sold it out in minutes.
P2P has nothing to do with this - it's all about raising the price to meet demand and using P2P as a scapegoat to offset the bad press it brings.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
I agree. You cut out the record company middle man, maximize distribution - and supprise, the demand for concerts goes up driving up the price. This is really proof all along that the labels and the copyright system is not helping artists, and are really really not helping small artists who could never get their music out to enough people in the past. Evfen better, if people don't like the price of a Madonna concert, they now have the option of going to a less demanded artist.
People pay extra for "brand name" clothes, shoes, food, appliances, cars, phones and everything else because millions are spent to market these brands to us. Target (itself a well marketed corporation) has the top rated polo shirts on the market at 1/4 of the cost of a Polo brand polo shirt, yet Polo branded shirts still sell like hot cakes.
I think it's time we recognize how bloated these multi-national conglomerate whores have become and we outsource them. I'm sure rising Malaysian pop stars could put on an equally entertaining Madonna show for one-tenth the price. David Bowie could easily be replaced by some kid from the Ukraine for pennies on the dollar. Some costumes, plastic surgery and a high quality Kareoke machine would surely be enough to fool even the most die-hard fan of corporate pop music.
Or, folks could read their local paper and visit any number of indepedent, local clubs for nearly every genre that sub-$10 every night of the week. There's great music and entertainment to be had nearly everywhere, but folks are too blinded by the marketing and the merchandising.
Instead of complain about it, I urge everyone here to try out local and/or independent artists in whatever genre they enjoy. Quit letting multi-national conglomerates dominate your musical tastes. Pay attention to the well=paid men behind the curtain.
What happened is that artists saw what scalpers were charging for tickets and figured that that was the true demand for their act. Why should they charge $40 for a ticket, have them bought up by resellers, and have fans end up paying $150 when they can charge that much to begin with and keep the money?
Once that started, venues got greedy. They only wanted to book people who could afford the prices that the big names could. When's the last time your local shed had a band that charged $20? You can't afford to play the big venues unless you're charging $50 a pop.
there are less people interested in hearing her music. I don't know ANYYONE who would even bother downloading her latst music from P2P.
That's ok, she'll be a headlining Vegas act soon enough.
She's not less popular, her appeal is becoming more selective.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
There's a reason RIAA-sponsored music as a whole is going into the toilet -- the target demographic for popular music is going elsewhere because they don't find value in $30 cd's and $100+ concert tickets. After the Boomers get too old to remember how to get to the concert, I expect a simultaneous rennaisance of popular music coupled with the black-hole-like death throes of RIAA-style music.
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Funny, just got Goldfrapp concert tickets for two for $30 -- inclusive of the fan-fleecing service charges. Goldfrapp had a radio edit of one of her new singles for free download from iTunes a while back (which is how I caught onto and bought a couple of her other tracks). Why is her concert (relatively) dirt cheap? Simple -- she's not a brand unto herself yet.
... I hate dancing."
Madonna doesn't need to be on tour. The fans that can afford it are paying to get her out of her navel-gazing billion-dollar self-importance to perform live. Same with David Bowie. Same with Sting. Same with U2. Same with Paul McCartney. Same with the Rolling Stones (though I don't think Keith Richards has actually performed live in the past 20 years... performed, yes, live, not so much).
Record promotion no relevance to "I'm old. I don't want to deal with hordes and throngs of freakish screaming fans and since I'm rich and well-established I shouldn't have to. Please raise the price of admission until we think the fans are either suitably subdued or worth having scream at us." Of course, blaming file sharing is far easier than admitting that you're tired of being screamed at by a couple thousand people every weekend for a couple of months solid to perform work that you've regretted ever writing for the past decade.
As David Bowie said in a VH1 interview, "People come up to me and say 'hey, *let's dance*'
Sucks being you.
Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for practices like that. It's the same business trick companies try when muscling their way into a market that's not entirely under their control yet.
Imagine company M, which is one of the biggest if not the biggest company dealing in, let's say, operating systems. Now, M decides it wants to muscle into, say, the antivirus market. How? By making their antivirus tool free or cheaper than any competitor that relies on the AV sales could go.
Market claimed. Move along.
Now, stars can't fill their halls anymore by selling their tickets at dumping prices because they know that people won't buy their overpriced hype crap on CD anymore? Cry me a RIAA.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This morning I bought 5th row center tickets to see Wayne Shorter.. They were $35. WS is one of the last living jazz greats and he is 73 years old. I recently paid $40 for front row Sonny Rollins, $40 for front row Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (that is 13 performers and a whole lotta gear), $60 for Elvis Costello, $40 Jethro Tull, etc..
The performers who charge over $100 aren't doing it for a love of the music or performing. They're doing it to make a buck. And while there is nothing wrong with that, blaming p2p (which the article doesn't really do) is just pathetic..
I see 10-15 shows a month and record every one of them for my personal collection. Schoeps baby.
The wisdom of Jerry Garcia does not apply to today's music market nor the greed of record company executives.
I have fond memories of buying Dead tickets for $20, those were the days!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not you're not.
... for a while.
She can charge $300 bucks because people are willing to pay it.
If they weren't, like in 30 years, she'd be retired or doing a lounge act off the strip in Vegas.
Its market forces.
What I object to is 'star making' like 'Sigue Sigue Sputnick'.
And if they price something low enough, they'll find enough people to make it pay
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Most musicians always earned their money by giving concerts and selling merchandise. The money from records usually directly went into the pockets of the music label managers to cover the production of records, the marketing, the investments, the ... you name it. Most musicians got nothing from sales of their record. (See Lesk's article for some figures.)
But the record labels usually did not get a share of the revenue from concerts.
Or, as the RIAA writes:
http://www.riaa.com/issues/laborcode/default.aspThe sky isn't falling.
But it has started...
What's new is that record labels offer contracts to newcomer musicians with clauses that guarantee them a large of revenues from concerts and merchandising. See, e.g., "EMI Takes a Stake in Band" (http://davidkusek.typepad.com/future_of_music/KOR NEMI.pdf).
Expect rising prices for merchandising articles as well.
Everybody knows that a basic rule of economics is that "stuff" costs what the market will bear. If people are willing to pay $250 for Madonna concert tickets then that is what they will charge, p2p sharing or not.
If, on the other hand, she ends up singing to an empty house -- well that too sends a message.
The market takes care of mistakes like this all on its own.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Pop/rock concerts have been relatively expensive for as long as I can remember. $40 in 1983 was a heck of a lot of money for me to fund from my paper route, especially when I could by an LP for $5.98. But it's not just rock concerts that are expensive: Cirque du Soleil will easily cost you $100+ per ticket, and my local symphony charges $65. Going to the theater to see a live performance is getting incredibly expensive, too. The big advantage that the likes of Madonna and U2 have is massive and numbing exposure on the radio or the President's iPod.
Just insert some credit-card like devices in the CD case... if you've bought one cd, that's 10% off the ticket price, 2CDs, 15%, etc... that way you get credit for being a fan and purchasing the CD... for someone like Madonna, someone buys the "deluxe boxed set", pays $200 for some shitty coaster CDs, and gets a 50% discount on the $250 ticket. Everyone wins (or at least they feel like they do). Cause few people go to concerts alone.. for the one discounted ticket there will be an additional one or two at full price.
Concerts are the only thing they can control, its hard to pirate a concert (not the music, the experience of seeing the artist live). At any rate this is probably better for the industry as the artists typically get much more from concerts than media, ideally the industry should just transition to free media and charge for concerts.
I think the reason they are bitching so much is they are not doing it by choice, technology is pulling them by the ear.
We are giving our music away for free under a creative commons license.
Someday soon we will charge for shows.
Check it out, http://www.fangbaby.com/blog
I have all of U2's old stuff including October, and I've never wanted to dictate U2's direction... and for that matter, the grandparent post never claimed to want to dictate Madonna's direction now.
All I want is the right to stop buying U2's crap, and the right to bellyache about how little I like them compared to what they used to be. I'm perfectly happy with that combination of options.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
As is often the case, as you point out, the law of unintended consequences kicks in and "the public" isn't served after all - the money just goes into different pockets.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Linear and geometric and volumetric (etc etc) ratios are still "proportionate to its size" but not exponential. Btw, that show sucks.
Bull Shit
P2P is just a convenient excuse. People will pay what the market will bear. So if Madonna has high ticket prices and people buy the tickets, then the prices will remain high. If noone buys the tickets, the price will naturally come down.
Besides, everyone knows, touring is where the artist makes the big bucks, not from record sales. The record company has traditionally pocketed the majority of proceeds from record sales.
This is an ignorant story by someone who doesn't even have any idea about the concert industry and the REAL problem, which is rampant scalping where %25-%50 of a venue is "pre-allocated" to scalping agencies and other people that have inside connections with Ticketmaster, the venue, or at worst hire a lot of people to stand in ticketmaster lines to get the best seats, only to re-sell them for at least triple face value.
Some creative and potentially smart but misguided tour management team got the idea a few years ago for Rolling Stones concerts, to charge scalper-level prices for all the tickets, in the same patterns that scalpers actually charge. Front row? $700+. 2nd - 5th rows? $500+, everything else that's in a "good" seat, double the crappy seats. Why let the scalpers make all the money (which in some cases could be up to half of the money that the band/tour actually hauls in) when you can just jack up your prices to "market level" and sell the venue accordingly?
It's a good plan from a financial sense, since all of the artists to adopt this plan (springsteen, stones, madonna to name a few) are on the top grossing artists list. They can sell less tickets, make more money, and when they do sell out, make a ton of money over what they would with normal flat-rate section based pricing. The bands with expensive concerts aren't hurting for money, they're only capitalizing on what they can make money on with almost no effort. People are somehow willing to pay outrageous amounts of money for prime seating at concerts, why let that money go to scalpers rather than the band?
Of course, it's unfortunate that this is their solution to scalping problems and other people getting rich off their efforts. Scalping is far too profitable for the venues and ticketmaster to want to stop, since they suck up a good chunk of inventory at a potentially undersold show and make even mediocre shows look more popular than they actually are. Artists need to step up and do something about it in a tangible way that doesn't directly affect the real music fans. Even fanclubs and special internet pre-sales are infested with scalpers, and the only way to get rid of them so far, has been to jack the prices up so high that they can't make a lot of profit off the tickets they can get. It's one thing to spend $1000 on 20 tickets you can flip for $5000 if you do well, and you can eat half the tickets if they don't sell since you're up 1500 if you sell half. It's another thing to spend $1000 on 2 tickets that you may not even be able to flip for $1500 since they're expensive already, and that deters scalpers at least slightly. (not entirely, you can find plenty of Madonna scalpers on your local craigslist I'm sure).
If anyone else has ideas on reducing the amount of scalpers out there, in a way that can get the maximum amount of tickets into the hands of real fans at face value, I'm sure you can make a lot of money.
But they're not.
It's going to the majority shareholders and CEO's of music companies.
Not to mention the artists who do write their own songs, mix their own audio, and still get bupkis when it comes to record contracts. (i.e. Vangelis, Pet Shop Boys, etc.)
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
This sounds absurd, but I ask it somewhat seriously. Why not just make less profit? If I had a business that was proftable I would be happy. If it become more profitable, that would be a bonus. But if it went back to lower levels of profitability, I wouldn't get bent out of shape. Kind of like when you're playing Civilization and the golden age ends. You move on. Only start worrying and ripping people off when you are in the red.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
AC had it right. Life is harsh. Sell your Madonna posters and move on.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Being a musician who makes his money thanks to offerring free music and then selling merch (and signed/ numbered CD's for collectors) I've got a lot of information at my disposal of how corporate commercial music works.
For example:
Tour Costs for an independent band with nothing but a crusty van and old equipment can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000. This includes travel costs, hotels, gas, legal fees, management fees, booking fees, etc.
This is just to travel around, you still have to pay to get your name out there, so advertisement costs can go anywhere from $500 to $5000 per city. Let's say you hit... 10 cities. That's $5000 to $50,000 right there.
Now, on top of this, you'd need an album to backup your tour with. Studio fees generally cost $500/ 3 minutes of music. That cost can go up with the length of a song. So, let's say you have a 60 minute long CD. $500 x 20 (3 minutes x 20 is 60 minutes for those of you not following allong) is $10,000.
Then you gotta drop down another $5000 - $50,000 for CD manufacturing costs. Then there's publishing and legal fees on top of that, so we're looking at another $5000 - $10,000.
Add all that up:
$35,000 to $620,000 for an indie band... Sure there's grants that can cover these expenses. However, if you want to scale that up, it can cost about 6.5 milion to just to get an album out with a tour internationally (The tour returns would cover that easily, album sales would just be a plus)...
Sure I hate Madonna and all her bullshit, but the increased prices aren't as unreasonable as people think (they're still a bit high, but she's a big name, so what do you expect?). There's a lot more behind the scenes than just money grubbing. Especially if you want to make a profit.
I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
In a way, I think P2P is partly responsible for the current rise in concert ticket prices, but not for the reason that seems to be being suggested. The lack of CD sales is not causing the price to rise to compensate for lost sales revenues. The price of concert tickets traditionally coincides with what people are willing to pay for them. As more people download music (legally or illegally), the artists' fan base increases (assuming the music doesn't suck, which is totally subjective). As the fan base increases, the demand for tickets to see them in concert increases. As supply remains constant and demand increases, prices go up. It's basic economics.
But then again, I could just be seeing this in a much too simplistic way.
Here's why I think people stopped buying CDs:
The problem goes all the way back to cassette tape days. People bought cassettes because they were well worth the money. Just about everyone had a dual cassette deck with high speed dubbing, but we still went out and bought an original copy most of the time.
Then came CDs. These cost a considerable bit more, but so did the CD players. If you could afford a CD player, the high price of CDs probably didn't phase you much. Not to mention, CDs were cool, well worth the extra money.
Then over time the newness of CDs started to wear off. CD player prices started dropping and everyone began to buy them. The problem is, while the CD player prices were dropping, the CDs started getting more and more expensive. An album that was worth the "cassette price" to someone isn't now worth the "CD price". But CDs have given birth to a higher expectation of sounds quality in our music recordings. There's no way we're going to go back to cassettes. So we download.
So why are prices of CDs so high anyway? The artists barely get any of the profit. Most of it goes to record companies. And why do we still need record companies anyway? There are no more records. Music doesn't even need to be saved onto physical media anymore. It can be transferred over the internet to an iPod, notebook computer, or now even your cell phone for heavens sake. Yes, record companies help promote bands, but the internet is getting better at that everyday too. Just look at MySpace.
The record industry has been living the rock star life too long and has lost touch with reality.
... for the DVD of the concert to come out and P2P that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you become an underground music fan you'll get concerts for 10bux max. And then you can talk to the band afterwards!
It should read 'Expensive Concerts = More Bootlegs'
These arguments are always so ridiculous. I know of NO ONE who isn't under the age of 18 who has $20 in their pocket (Or have they gotten up to $40 yet? I only buy Japanese CDs.) and spots an album they love/want, and go "Meh, I have it on my hard drive." NOT EVEN IF THEY HAVE IT IN LOSSLESS!
Most people like having THINGS. A CD is a thing. A hard drive is a thing. A dozen files on your hard drive are NOT a dozen additional things.
On the other hand, making concerts more expensive is stupid, because there's only SO much people are willing to pay to see someone perform in person. I mean, compound absurd prices with the hassles of getting there and all that, and who the hell _would_ but a bunch of insane diehards with the artist's name tatooed across their chests?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
One name, John Fogerty. Look up his troubles with the "recording industry" and associated blood suckers.
Sig Hansen?
Madonna, like U2 can charge whatever they like for their tickets. Who cares really. I wouldn't go to see either of them if you paid me money to do so. The last good U2 CD was Joshua Tree and the last Madonna CD was - well whatever CD she might make sometime in the future that would be worth a damn cause there isn't one yet. Nope, the price of their tickets, of anyones tickets are there because they think the market will bear the price. It doesn't have anything to do with P2P or bittorrent or any of that. Those things bring record sales up and concert attendance up - not the other way around. So if you want to raise ticket prices to what those tickets sell for on Ebay then do so and don't whine and say file sharing made me do it if some folks balk at the price. Man up.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Really, what concert is worth $250?!?!?!?! Especially with all the crap you have to put up with to go to it - parking, crowds, rude people. The last concert I went to made me realize how much I hate a concert. The guy next to me (and sort of in line with my view of the stage) was standing up dancing around with his butt in my face and flinging his arms in the air almost hitting me a couple of times. I asked him if he was going to stand up the whole concert. He turned to me and said, "Probably!" Well, I have a whistle that is about 135dB (with my fingers in my mouth, not an actual "device") At the end of the next two songs (with gayguy still dancing around) when everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs, I whistled the very loudest I could. They guy then got up and moved, and I stopped whistling. the rest of the concert was much better. Still, having to resort to that made me regret going to concerts.
Even if you don't like old-school "jangly" U2, I think you owe it to yourself to give "The Joshua Tree" another listen. It's really quite a remarkable album by any standard, whether you care for any of the rest of the band's catalog or not.
I wore gray the tracks "One Tree Hill" and "Running to Stand Still" on my college roomate's vinyl copy of it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If people want to pay $250 to watch Madonna play at a stadium, that's their business. As for me, I'm gonna pay my $30 bucks to a small venue to see Ministry and my $15 to Ticketmaster for the convenience of ordering through them.
Why do people think executive salaries and not supply and demand are the cause of the high prices?
Increased demand mean high prices from which high salaries can be derived.
And you know what? Supply and demand works. People will use less gas. High prices are the market's way of saying "use less of this", more or less.
There are no shortages because of this mechanism.
That's a long way around the barn to say: look for supply and demand causes first. The other stuff second.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So, um, here's a question: at what point is a musician allowed to make money from their work? Nobody wants to buy their albums anymore; now they're "fleecing" you by charging exorbitant prices for their concerts?
I'll put it another way: screw anybody who writes an Open Source app and then wants to get paid for providing aftermarket support. I (didn't) buy the app, right? So you should come and set it up for me for free, wherever I am, and I'll pay you what I think it's worth. I hope you can afford your own plane ticket, by the way.
As both a developer and a musician, lemme clue some of you in on something: being a musician is not just doing a bunch of smack and lurching into a studio every so often. (Except for Pete Doherty.) In fact, I'd say it's a helluva lot more difficult to learn to write music well -- or even competently enough to be a pop musician -- than it does to write code well.
The notion that musicians are running around swimming in pools full of Dom Perignon and lighting their crack pipes with $100 bills, and therefore don't deserve your money, is idiotic and a product of lazy thinking. 99% of musicians make less than $1000 a month doing their jobs. Most of the other 1% make less than your average Perl programmer.
And I'm talking about famous musicians, by the way. Madonna is a millionaire, but she's been a highly successful musician for more than 20 years now. Anybody who spends 20 years marketing themselves, touring globally with a massive production setup, and consistently releasing successful product into the market ought to be a millionaire, or they're doing something very wrong. Same in music as any other type of IP work. Madonna is, in many ways, the Bill Gates of the music industry. (The merits of her music are another matter. So are the merits of Gates' software.)
I personally know a band who's opening for one of the biggest groups in the world these days, who were just on the Tonight Show, who are getting $250 per show opening for the aforementioned band. Split four ways, since there's four members.
So I fail to see how musicians are "fleecing" you by trying to hold on to the one place they can still make money, since you've clearly decided you don't want to pay them for anything else.
Oh, maybe a t-shirt at the gig that you don't want to pay to see.
Gee, thanks.
The important thing about this article is what does this mean for the "I'll illegally download the music, and the artists make money from the concerts and touring" argument?
What the fuck man. The guy is into the music and dancing and you shatter his eardrums with a whistle? Loosen up! Damn, smoke a joint before the concert or have a beer or two and you won't care, I promise.
NIN tickets are only $20. Keep the per-show price low, and I'll gladly buy both the CD and the concert ticket. They could even cross-promote - buy the ticket for $25, get $5 off the CD.
The real question is, what value does Madonna provide that makes her performance worth ten times as much as Trent Reznor's? (Let's not even get started on Madonna vs. Local H.)
I better get a blowjob too.
This is how the record industry, wait, music industry should be. The digital music is the advert to get you to go to the live gigs Where they make their money.
An extremely substantial percentage of people who listen to music do NOT go to live venues. I'm going to go way out on a limb and throw a completely fictitious guess out. I'll bet that less than 10 percent of the people who listen to music regularly will attend a concert or see a live band this year.
Most bands will never make it as a profitable venture. I'd like to know exactly how all of this digital music advertising is going to get the bands enough scratch to pay the bills generated by the rental of larger venues.
Really, the only way most bands will ever play a stadium or concert hall is by having financial backing from some wealthy third party. And if all you ever do is play bars, well... the life and scope of your band is limited.
I hate to say it, but the media companies do serve some good. For all their draconian actions, their structure allows bands with potential to try big and fail, funded by financially successful acts. Most music never makes a profit.
Most bands can't even afford the cost of professional recording. And despite what some guys with a $500 card and Cubase would have you believe, you need really good equipment and a talented recording engineer to make a really good demo. I've got $2500 in microphones in my little home studio.
I don't want to see music become free, unless the artists who made it choose it to be.
Mom, is that you?
In the old days, you didn't put on a concert to sell albums; you sold albums to advertise for your live act (remember stadium rock?). Most artists back in the day put on shows because they liked putting on shows, selling records on a label with nation-wide distribution let you gain an audience in places you never visited before, so that when you first went to Madison, WI or wherever you already would have a fan base. But now, for a certain segment of the music market (i.e., Top 40+Country) producing music has become a lucrative industry focused on selling albums because making money that way requires less work. So today's artists (and that includes Madonna) aren't just talentless, they're also lazy. Thank God for Indie music of all kinds, and the Internet.
Want to know why it's $250 for tickets? Because fools will pay $250 bucks for tickets. That concert will be sold out. It has nothing to do with cd sales, P2P, starving artists etc.
Supply and Demand folks. It ain't rocket science.
Why should scalpers get anything?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If I hadn't move my head out of the way a couple of times, I would have had a blooding nose from the a**hole flinging his arms around. It was not just that he was into the music and dancing. It was totally excessive. He also blocked my view of the stage, and his wiggling butt was about all I could see. Lighten up????!!!!??? I paid good money for the tickets and I was getting a BAD experience. Then when I asked nicely if he was going to stand up the whole concert and he is rude back to me, I was TOTALLY justified. Those I was with agreed with me and several people around me thanked me.
I went to the concert to enjoy the concert. I don't drink or smoke (anything), so maybe I'm not your idea of the concert goer, but right now, I can honestly say, "I don't care."
I preffer seeing the Good bands that I like and not spending more than $10
it still amazes me how people pay so much just to see a band that they hear on the radio 37 times a day.
The older the target audience is, the higher the ticket prices can be. That's why Paul McCartney and Rolling Stones can sell outrageously high priced tickets, and also why new acts that appeal to teenagers must charge lower prices.
Ironically, from what I understand, the artist has always made most of his/her money off concert sales and generally does not make much on record sales. It's the publisher who cashes in on the record sales. Therefore, while I do think P2P is hurting publishers' sales, I don't think it's damaging the artist that much...
It is impossible to duplicate a live experience - so artists should focus on making people want to go out and see a concert.
Supply and demand will dictate who gets the best seats. I just hope the process can be more transparent - if you don't know somebody who works for ticket master or the local venue, it is extremely difficult to get good seats at ANY price.
It seemed to me that CD sales went down during the recession. Then the record labels jerky moves just alienated fans. Now there are other means to get music (legally and illegally) and so CD sales will probably never rebound to where they were. Also, music is so disposable these days. Even the indie stuff is stale after a season. I think maybe there needs to be a new genre to shake everything up. A disruptive musical genre. I'll tell you what: American Idol has to be the solution!
if you're stuck on someone you can't have so bad that you'll willingly (if not happily) pay $500 for you and a friend (you have to bring a friend or there will be nobody to see how enraptured you are) then that's not your idol's fault
it's yours
spend 20% of that on an hour of a shrink's time and realize that these people don't know who you are and don't really care if you're there or not
[Ashley Simpson] Load up the CD's - We're going on tour!!!
TicketMaster's business practises and crappy system is as much the cause of outragous ticket pricing as the music industry. The system is so crap that you can't get tickets when they are released, but somehow the secondary market makers find access and sell it for crazy markups. It is the biggest scam going. Someone needs to do something about it.
TicketMaster is in violation of anti-trust laws, but nothing comes of it. They must be paying some K-street lobby firm a lotta cash to keep this racket going.
When I was running Casady and Greene, a now-deceased Mac software company, almost all our developers were getting 15 points. If we blew it and overpaid on the advance, it was our loss. Promo copies weren't charged against the developer - it was an advertising expense. Advertising expenses are part of the reason we took 85% of the pot. An ad ran anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000. Tradeshows cost us on the order of $100,000 and we had smallish booths.
Charging the developer for advertising, production, sales, post-sales expenses AND taking 85% would have been immoral. I guess that's why the music industry does it. When I left the company, it had grown from $15,000 in our first year to a couple of million in sales. The business model worked because we weren't greedy - we just wanted to produce something people wanted and make enough to stay in business.
"No, their has never been a time when 'all the popular bands wrote their own music and peformed it live"
Yes, there was.
Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Genesis (back before they sucked), Toto, Crosby/Still/Nash/Young...I could be typing for hours.
Just because you're an idiot, please don't share it with us.
a world with free music and constantly gigging artists, could even be better
define: gigging
spearing or impaling fish on any pronged or barbed instrument attached to the end of any rigid object. Please check regulations on gigging.
I'm not sure how fishing would help. Unless you mean the fans are the fish... Now I get it.
The price of tickets will rise until there starts to be empty seats in the shows. Period. You dont get to be as rich as Madonna or Paul McCartney by being nice or worring about what your fans have to spend to see you perform.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
I go to about one or two live music shows per week (mostly local bands) and a $5 cover is about right. Last night I splurged and saw a famous touring band, and even that was only $20. And guess who had more fun: me drunkenly banging my head within arm's reach of Exodus shouting "Last Act! Of Defiance!", or someone peering at Madonna through binoculars.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Just heard on the radio yesterday that Madonna's entrace will be quite dramatic. Apparently she will be lowered onto the stage nailed to a $10 million cross, made mostly of diamonds.
My first thought: Maybe this could explain the high ticket cost???
My second thought: Ooooh, how risque, Madonna. Offending Christians is so passe, and far too easy. If she really wanted to be offensive, she should walk on stage dressed as Muhammed. That would take some guts.
- jonathan.
Here's the article the guy was probably referring to. Maybe things have changed since then, maybe not.
The high ticket prices only apply to select artists. Particularly the big stars from some of the other decades.
Nothing against that, but if you want to relive your childhood don't be surprised if their pricing it as high as they can (I'm guessing its get what you can get while you can get it).
Meanwhile the contemporary musicians seem *mostly* to be playing at or around standard cost.
I think this dudder simple hasn't been out to see a new act in a while and can't believe the inflation since he last saw ZZ Top perform. You know, when they were still sort of new and stuff.
Quack, quack.
Some musicians use only electronic equipment to produce their sound, particularly in the electronica genre. I personally love this kind of music. The concerts often involve them doing their best to reproduce the sound they make in the studio, and with some of these bands using thousands of samples (see: Boards of Canada), their "concerts" pretty much involve pressing play on their computers.
I don't think it's right to demand that an artist MUST be able to perform well live to receive compensation. That's just elitist and limiting.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
"He bitched big time about paying over a hundred dollars a ticket for 2 tickets to see Paul McCartney, but he went anyway on McCartney's last US tour."
He could have gotten the sheet music from the "Band on the Run" album and gone to the local nursing home and paid guy there to sing the songs. It would've been about the same. And if he really missed Paul, he could have just stared at an old beatles picture.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I mean, if ther was no P2P, people wouldn't be able to conjure such outlandish theories!
I, however, blame bittorrent for the rise in gas prices. These two datasets are correlated. Therefore, correlation proves causation.o rrent usage data
t ml
http://measure.das2.its.tudelft.nl/~pouwelse/Bitt
http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.h
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
Artists are, generally, getting completely fucked by the organisers with tours. Currently it's a case of "Do tours to sell records"; this needs to change. P2P allows people to hear the songs beforehand; so tours can be done for profit. Cut out the bullshit networking middlemen and this has the potential to be a very very good thing for music in general.
I don't really give a shit about the kind of big name/major label artists, but this would really help smaller bands get a bigger fanbase quickly. Genre is irrelevant: all DIY ethic bands will benefit from this. Local events in my area normally charge between £3-£5 on entry, normally for a 5 band line up (currently, the local councils dumbfuck bylaws mean we have to end at 11pm; we could probably go on to 1am or later if we didn't have this). CD's are normally £4.
It's probably more expensive where you are; life is very cheap here. Even so, if I knew all the bands were good, and I had listened to their shit before hand, I'd be willing to pay up to £15 (maybe £20 if it was a real favourite of mine). Shirts would probably also sell well (i find that the percieved value of the shirt is far greater if it is of a well known band in the local community); so the prices of those could go up, maybe to £7-£9.
Consider that probably around 150-350 people turn up; you could be looking at £3750 a night gross profit (based on 250 people * £15). Considering that people currently make about £250 a night net profit (venue is ~£150). These numbers are probably pretty fudged, considering that every fucker and their mother taxes the door sales tin on their way out. Each of the 3 or 4 venues here currently do this 3, maybe 4 times a week (though, 1/2 it's the venue that organises it themselves - cider sales tend to sky rocket when shows are on).
I'd happy run a bittorrent tracker for every disc of every band in the county out of my attic; hell, I'd probably do it for free. It's easy to teach people to use Bram's client; we could just link off of our myspace.com/*. People are nice, and I doubt we'd have a problem with seeds.
I really wish the smaller, more localised bands would get their fucking act together and release all their stuff to everyone. A decent evangalisation program from fans and the band could really allow them to actually make a profit. We've been doing this out of pocket for too long.
Remember This Study?
//increases// the sales of their records.
By this logic, prices for concerts from indy unknowns should go down, because file sharing
More likely is that mega-fame begets mega-greed. Any excuse will do.
They can set their ticket prices as high as they want - so long as they stop whining about sharing. Put down the campaign donations, and step away from my Congresspeople! If superstars say they're supposedly compensating their losses from sharing with higher ticket prices, then they should stop lobbying legislators for more legal handouts.
"Oh, you remember that whole market obsolescence bit? We were just kidding, really! See, we can just raise concert prices! No problem!"
"That's not bad! Hey, would you mind if we repealed the DMCA, then?"
you know, the one where band members THEMSELVES (gasp !) write music & lyrics
So how can the band members, who are not songwriting specialists, verify that they haven't inadvertently misappropriated music that is already copyrighted? Even subconscious copying may be infringing: see Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton. Peter C. Lemire has something more to say about this.
in that case people go to concerts for a very low fee ($2)
Most of the venues that have such low ticket prices are required by law not to admit anybody under 21 years of age. How can independent bands reach the high-school and university-underclass audiences that are otherwise the major labels' captive audiences?
"artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts"
That's OK, because Ticketmaster was there to pick up the slack.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
So, if a concert is $100 a ticket and a CD is $30, how does that add up to a $250 ticket? Since when does a concert goer buy more than one of the latest CDs?
And... before you ask... I'm not willing to buy into the trickle down effect making that much difference here.
Loyalty is indeed a desirable character trait, as are trust and integrity -- but loyalty and trust are earned, not bought, and integrity comes from respecting the principle, not the money.
I am fiercely loyal to my family and friends, because I know and care about them, and I appreciate all the things they have done for me as well. If they're in need and I can help, then I do.
On the other hand, when I go to a car dealer for a test drive, we're talking about a commercial transaction. I like to support businesses that offer good service, so the fact that they take me for a test drive will make me more inclined to buy the car from them than another dealer if I decide I want one. However, if they then ask several thousand over the odds for it, I'll have no ethical problem with going to another dealer.
One could make a similar argument for my local store vs. an on-line retailer: if the prices are comparable, and I find something I want by browsing in the store and talking to their staff, then I'll generally buy it from the store to support them. On the other hand, when my local Borders whacked up their prices to nearly twice what Amazon charge in the run up to Christmas, I felt no sorrow at buying everything on-line, even if I first saw it in Borders.
And so it goes with recording artists. They make CDs or play a concert. If I like their music enough, I'll buy the CD or go to the concert, and I won't screw them by ripping the track off some random P2P network instead. But equally, if they put their prices up to a level I don't think is worth it, I'll do without the CD or the night out rather than feel some sort of obligation to pay over the odds.
It's a great truism that something is worth what someone's prepared to pay for it. Although money is a rather materialistic concept, it's also an objective measure of how much we value something in comparison to other things we might have or do instead. But there is a world of difference between expecting someone to pay for a product or service because you're asking a fair price and it's a mutually beneficial deal, and expecting that you can buy loyalty.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Now lets see how those "I do not want to give them money, they should give their music for free & get their money from concerts" people feel....
I mean it is not like those people were just using that as an excuse to remove any guilty feelings they migh have had over their immoral actions, and that they were all talk since they wouldn't actually pay for the concerts & goods anyway....
What about the artists that write their own music?
George Harrison tried writing his own music after the Lennon-McCartney band broke up. Harrison got sued and lost to the tune of $1.6 million in damages, and the finding of infringement was upheld on appeal.
Gee, I thought the $250 ticket price was the fault of the artists thinking their presence was worth $20,000 a night, combined with the music being so lame they need 200 support people and 4 million dollars worth of equipment to make the concert be a memorable experience.
They could replace all that money with some talent and still put on shows.
$250 isn't really that much when you consider you are getting an experience that will stand as a benchmark in your life. $250 really doesn't buy much real-world experience anymore. Thats like filling up my car 8 times.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
" artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts "
No. The correct statement would be "artists and their managers WANT to make more money from concerts".
That said, there is a nugget of truth in TFA. Digital technology essentially eliminates recorded music as a viable source of profit, meaning that musicians are forced to earn their living through live performances (and the RIAA bloodsuckers have to find an entirely new line of work for themselves). Today's high concert prices are partly a reflection of that change in economic reality -- and partly a reflection of the gullibility of relatively well-heeled fans of nostalgia acts. In the future, expect relatively high prices for established popular acts and relatively low prices for new or less-popular acts -- simple supply and demand economics without the distortion of concerts acting as loss-leaders for recorded media.
If you really have a compelling product,
Adolescent audiences' only exposure to new music is commercial FM radio and MTV Networks, and they are often forced to listen to commercial FM radio on the way to and from public school. How would an independent band let them know that it has a compelling product?
you'd be able to sell it over the Internet.
Adolescent customers cannot buy CDs over the Internet because they are not yet of legal age to use any payment method other than cash transactions in person. How would you sell your product to them?
Or do you want teens to be the four major record labels' captive audience?
Prince sells tickets at about $50 a pop. Each concert go'er receives a CD as part of the "experience". The result is that Prince has one of the best selling albums of the year (without selling a ton of albums), gets billboard placement, and puts on a hell-of-a good show.
Bowie's a god and all, but his live performances have always been less than stellar.
BBH
I just quit going to large concerts. Anytime I try to go to a concert in Columbus I can't fart without seeing a cop and immediately getting arrested. When I don't get arrested, if I'm not in on lawn I have to walk 5 miles to smoke a cigarette. One time this prompted me and a friend to drive to Virginia to see a concert, where it was a little better, though not by much. Apparently one used to be able to have fun at concerts...
Since the dawn of albums and concerts, there has always been people who blame high ticket prices on something. Be it, dubbing an LP to Tape or Tape to Tape, or you could even go into the other area of the world, go from Higher Movie Ticket Prices to VHS Copying and such. It's always been around, it's not really that it doesn't affect it at all, i'm sure it does in some form or another, but people will always goto theatres, always goto concerts, but you cannot say that because someone can download an album, that it is the sole reason for higher prices. I dunno, lame article, lame world... live it love it dump it and move on.
You claim that major record labels don't publish anything resembling classical music. But many labels thought of as "classical" labels are affiliated with one of the majors.
Also in the news: $10 Madonna lunchboxes are the fault of P2P file sharing. 'Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their merchandise, because top-of-mind advertising translated into higher record sales,' Professor Krueger argues. But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed, meaning that artists and their managers need to make more money from lunchboxes and feel less constrained in setting lunchbox prices.'
Chinese lunchbox manufacturer Shanadogon agrees: 'Surely, P2P file sharing is the greatest threat ever to hit the plastic lunchbox industry.'
Coming up next: how P2P file sharing caused the 1929 Wall Street Crash.
I've always wondered just exactly what God uses to kill all those kittens with
$ 250 to see a completely untalented mimer ? (untalented that is, apart from a talent for self promotion)
In contrast I'm about to go and see two absolute masters of their instruments, namely Wilko Johnson & Norman Watt-Roy, which will cost me a mere £ 10.
Fuck Madonna, what an old bag !
I think it's bull crap. I went to two Green Day shows, one last year and another the year before that. All of their tickets were under $50 (unless you were unlucky to be one of the few that got ripped off on ebay). They still made a whole bunch of money on their tour. I think it was something like $93 million. It's not the problem of P2P for higher ticket prices, it's greed. If artists actually played music because they liked doing it, instead of trying to get millions upon millions in return, there wouldn't be an issue. Green Day played three US tours and two world tours over the past two years. They could have made a lot more money had they charged more, but instead they kept the prices low and they got a lot of people out to their concerts. A lot of that money came back to them when they put a live DVD out. People knew the kind of show they put on, and went out and bought the DVD. It all worked out. They're still millionares, and millions of people got to see them. It's pathetic that an artist would charge so much for a ticket for people to see them. Just plain sad. Then these people have the nerve to complain about file sharing and it's lack of decency..blah blah.
If you really can't afford that, check out your smaller local clubs
Which, unfortunately, don't admit minors. Where should the 15- to 20-year-olds on summer break from high school or college go?
Isn't this a logical thing o do? Why should Madonnas ticket sell for the same price as "Bobo and the Jolly Orchestra"?
I'm just waiting for the rest of the media industry to do the same, set their prices based on the product. For example: A CD which costs $1M to produce shouldn't have the same price as CD's that cost's $50k.
I know that this isn't always true today but in most cases it is.
The argument from the "Information Wants to Be Free" nuts regarding IP is that a recording or text should be freely distributed, and that it is the value-add of performance that should cost. (OS's should be free, support should cost). Now, we download music like mad, they bands and their companies can't recoup from that, damned right they are going to charge extra for a concert. You see an act like David Bowie, The Moody Blues, or Fleetwood "The-Fat-Lady-Has-Sung-And-Her-Name-Is-Stevie" Mac, don't be upset that you will be hearing their older stuff. Or, do you "Information Wants to Be Free" nuts want free concerts as well?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It depends. Who ever talked to Madonna enough to be a loyal fan? By the time I heard of her she was big. She got there without me, and owes me nothing.
.1% of your fan-base and find out that they're 5% by the end, because the rest has shrunk. You still filled your concert hall, but you've slashed merchandice sales to do it. Congrats. You, and all the other cheap MBAs have boosted this year's profits with no concern for future earnings.
But some smaller bands who I've helped pack equipment, gone to crappy dives for shows when they were starting... There I'd say I might be a loyal fan, and that I'd expect something in return. "They" asked me to buy CDs, take a chance on their concerts, etc. It's only polite, and I only reward polite people, if possible.
Control over their creative works? No. Maybe I'd only like their old stuff, but if they can't come up with anything new in that style, I'd rather listen to the old stuff than water-down crap, so I'd prefer they go onto new stuff (even if I hate it).
But I'd expect a band that grew out of the help of not-rich fans to still offer shows in the range of those fans, at venues they can afford. Many bands do this sort of thing. Great Big Sea comes to mind, for playing cheap/free concerts in their home town.
Simple economics says self for as much as possible. But the second-order effects are the important ones to consider. Fans who are priced out of a concert are going to feel less interested in that performer. You might arrange a high-price function for the top
In my business, if my material costs go up, my profits decrease.
That's because demand for your business's product is more elastic than demand for the oil companies' products. When demand is more elastic, the buyer eats more of the increase in cost of production.
In the spirit of this thread, I'm continuing with the tinfoil: I bet the people who produce news programming *know that 99% of publically-funded culture is noncontroversial and well appreciated. I bet they also know that 99% of the stories they broadcast about publically-funded culture are about controversies and clashes.
I bet they also know that publically-funded culture is -- or rather, could be if well supported -- one of their *competitors.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"There will be a good deal of shaking out. There will be new modes of distributing music - more diversity and more competition. But technological innovations continually cause change, ever since Edison. The industry has to change and it is changing."
That quote pretty much sums it up how stupid he really is. He claims that P2P destroyed artists profits from record sales but then says technology will create more "diversity" and "competition," which I translate into more profits. So which is it Mr. Wizard?
The real data shows that file sharing has not hurt record sales. The real data shows that output of new albums has declined over the past several years. The real data shows that CD prices have remained at roughly the same price as there were back in the 80s, i.e., high.
Thus, high prices, coupled with no new product would equal sagging profits for artists. Hell even his own research showed that artists latest albums are crap and not many people want to buy them but throw together a "greatest hits" concert and the lemmings will flock to it. If the artists would put out an album that PEOPLE WOULD BUY then they would not have to charge high prices for concerts.
I feel no sympathy for these artists. David Bowie has NOT put out an interesting album in a couple decades! The last interesting thing he did was a project called Tin Machine and they only released one good album. Besides, whatever happened to his Bowie Stock....
In Pascal and Maple, = is a comparison operator and := is an assignment operator. In the BASIC languages, = is a comparison operator in all contexts except LET contexts.
$250 ticket?! Think of the ticketmaster charges!
Just don't go to the concert! It's true, $250 per ticket is a rip-off! You could easily save the $250 for a new laptop computer, flatscreen monitor, ipod, and the list goes on. Don't waste it all at one place, on one night!!!
"To err is human, doing it again is downright stupidity!"
'Nuff said.
So wouldn't that mean then that the Artist, not RIAA makes more money?
I say good.
If music were free, and the artist were good, I'd gladly pay $250 for a ticket. To me, this is exactly how artists should make their money anyway.
Here in Vegas, Celine Dion sells out her show every night at $100-plus per ticket and would sell out every night at $150 per ticket.
This is just plain FUD from the record industry and their puppets, like Madonna.
Most musicians make money with concerts, because the share they have in record sales is awfully low. Everytime you buy a CD, you're not paying for the valuable work of the musician, most of the money goes directly inside the gaping throat of the record industry. We feed them loads of money and they create plastic, lab-made stars to fill the airwaves with.
In my dream world, real artists will start to sell or give away their music direcly in the Internet, and make money from shows. They're not making big money selling records, anyway, so what's the problem? This would be a great incentive to make shows more interesting and worthwhile going to. I personally think nothing beats a live show.
Plastic-made pop stars and record companies can just go fuck themselves and maybe we could start giving good artists more opportunities.
Artists actually make very little profit from record sales after the record company weasles get through with the accounting. Janis Ian says on her web site that she has never recieved an accounting statement from a record company where she didn't end up owing them money.
The way the artists make money is in concert tours. For that, they get a flat fee from the promoter.
Record sales are of interest only for the publicity and the chance that it will increase the concert attendence, meaning the promoter will pay them more.
It seems that this economics equation leaves out an important variable. That is the record companies and the distribution channels. Both take in enormous profits. Many people who stopped buying cd's in record stores were protesting these huge profits for little or no risk taking and also protesting the huge markups of record stores.
If big artists like Madonna would simply decide that they had more loyalty to thier fans then the record companies then all of this could be solved. How? Go direct and take the record companies and the record stores back out of the equation. Either ship cd's directly or allow music downloads from the artists website. Then break all ties with the record companies who are the ones who are gouging consumers.
After several years of concert-going it finally sunk in that that sound quality in my local arena was terrible and that most performances had turned into special effects demonstrations rather than focusing on the music. I've simply quit going. There are small, intimate concert spaces in my area with only 1500 seats. Occasionally some good performers come to these like Louis Black, Cyndi Lauper, and BB King. That's just perfect...it's worth the money for a personal experience. Sitting in the local hocky arena, in contrast, is an awful experience: sound distortion, bad views, ridiculously narrow seats, security body searches upon entry, insultingly high drink prices... Consumers need to savvy-up and reject these massive high-priced concerts as a bad value. If Madonna starts performing to half-filled arenas, she'll lower her prices. Damn, she's greedy!
oh yes, right... madonna is so poor - I actually pity her...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I took a look at top singles for 1982.
http://80sxchange.com/80s_charts/1982.htm
90% of these songs were written by the perfoming artist (at least these artists were known to write the vast majority of their music). Eliminate the covers and there are not very many perfomer-only songs on the list.
Please don't get into whether these songs were 'original.' It is beside the point.
...only the fans who DON'T pirate get fleeced!
Why would this be seen as bad? For centuries, the meat and potatoes of musicians had been live performance. Then recording had gotten to the point where getting one really big hit was like winning the lottery. Now musicians are having to go back in front of a live audience to make a living like their predecessors before them. However, unlike recording distribution they can see how much they're making when they're making it because they will actually be there to make it. So although the musicians will have to work harder, managers and record companies can't just walk off with their money anymore because the musicians have to be physically there to generate that money.
What we are seeing is the Artists will finally stop subsidizing ticket brokers. There really was no reason to charge 50 dollars for a face value ticket that the ticket brokers were going to sell for 500 dollars anyway. Why have a middleman at all. It is simple economics, I don't like paying the high dollars either but as long as someone is willing to spend it they will keep charging it.
"I stand by my own opinion that the majority of music file sharers are the same type of folks who used to sit by the radio with cassette-recorder and recorded music off the air. They were NEVER going to buy the premium product, unless they absolutely loved the music."
I bought somewhere between 50 and 100 CDs in 1999, maybe 20 in 2000, less than 10 in 2001, and 1 or 2 a year since then. Meanwhile I've pirated more albums than I want to admit publicly.
I flat out disagree with the claim that music piracy doesn't hurt CD sales. Of course it hurts CD sales, because plenty of normal or frequent buyers turned to piracy and never looked back. This is a GOOD THING.
I just looked up Madonna ticket prices on Ticketmaster. At several venues, prices started at $55 (but these appear to be sold out). I found a ticket available at $95.
That doesn't include the booking fee, but it's still a far cry from $250.
The implication (in the post more so than in the BBC article) that all Madonna tickets are $250 and up is very misleading. You can readily find much cheaper tickets if you are willing to go to a "lesser" venue and/or sit farther away.
And that's not much different than it's always been. The average price has grown, but not nearly as much as this post wants you to think. The best venues and seating have always been pricey.
Doesn't change the brunt of his argument. How do independent bands market to the 15- to 17-year-old captive audience? And what should an independent band whose members happened to have been born in the United States do to escape the restrictions imposed on independent bands in the United States?
I love the tendency people have of making a decision over which they have complete control, then blaming it unequivocally on someone else who had no influence over the decision aside from the fact that they dared to live in a way that was not in line with your wishes.
Like blaming the witch for "forcing you" to burn her alive.
After all, those Chinese kids at Tiananmen had it coming. It was their fault for mouthing off to the government. It's not like the tank drivers had any control over the literal physical movements of the tanks that ended up physically crushing people or anything.
It's not like a record label has any influence over it's own profit expectations. It's not like reducing expenses has ever worked for an industry that wasn't making as much money as it wanted. It's not like they can choose not to pay their top artists half a million for a single show. They don't decide how much they pay the people in their direct employ. Apparently the internet alone determines whether their hand makes the physical motions that create particular numbers on a check.
Hmm. Maybe some antipsychotic medications would be in order.
All Hail the Maggott Show
I am going to see Widespread Panic tomorrow night and I paid $38.50 per ticket for the honor. The tickets sold out in a couple days and it is a 2 night run (so you can not tell me that there is no interest). Within days of the concert I'll be able to freely download an audience recording of the show (via bittorrent), buy (for about $15) a soundboard copy of the show (http://wsp.livedownloads.com/), or listen to it freely online (http://www.panicstream.com/) in low bit rate mp3 format. If the show is really really good (which of course, I hope it is) in a few years, I'll be able to buy a studio remastered copy of the soundboard with some matrixed crowd/audience released on their own label, Widespread Records. ALL. ENTIRELY. LEGAL. and sanctioned by the band.
Wake up record companies, lawsuits and threats don't constitute a business model.
Saying that touring increases CD sales is fine, and I'll even give the article it's assumption that p2p has reduced those sales. My understanding is that artists make between 1 and 2 dollars for each CD. So, assuming that every ticket holder buys a CD (obviously a best case, never going to happen scenario), the artist would receive 2 bucks per ticket holder from CD sales from the tour. Now, assume that because of p2p or other reasons, not a single person seeing the tour buys a CD. The artist needs to recoup 2 dollars per person from ticket sales to remain even. Assuming the artist's take is 10% of the door (no venue is that bad), they need to increase ticket prices by 20 dollars to recoup that 2 dollar loss from ticket sales. So, in this near-worst case scenario, Madonna's ticket prices would already be an outrageous $230 dollars without the claim of p2p hurting CD sales. p2p is just an excuse to charge the highest price that people will pay.
The original purpose of the album was to promote the concerts. That changed some decades back. Perhaps the record industry has decided to go back to that model since MP3s force albums into being advertisements again.
Still, who in their right mind would pay so much for a ticket? I can't think of an artist where I'd pay more than $50 to see. But then, I can't think of a touring artist whose album I'd even be willing to download anymore (free or otherwise). Especially not some dried-up old hag.
I enjoy music, and I still buy the same amount of CDs that I bought 15 years ago: very few. I usually download new artists first to make sure I'm not getting ripped off, then I buy anything I intend to listen to again. There should be no entitlement in the music industry. Rather, those who succeed should be happy, and those who don't should blame their own lack of ability to create something people value.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
P2P Piracy numbers are estimates, but more accurately "guesses." They do not take into acount people who buy and take, rather than just take. Also, they include the inflated "profit" and not jsut the overhead. Not only that - they assume the song would have sold in the first place - where much of P2P content is old and out of date, not the latest catalog.
This whole situation makes me sick because fools in government believe this garbage.
Concert tickets are high because that is what the market is willing to pay.
The entertainment industries have to stop hiding the truth about their business: Movies and bands just suck lately. For abotu 15 years. Art has been replaced with pop. Pop doesnt last like art. Its disposible. All we notice are cute blonds with big boobs, we dont care what their name is and neither does the execs. Pretty soon the RIAA will be able to claim "Over 1 Billion Pop Bimbos Served Daily" Its their fault for turning this industry in to disposable crap. In 20 years we are not going to be listening to Madonna like we do Led Zepplin or the Beatles.
I just don't understand this qoute from the article: "He soon found out that rock concerts and American football games were subject to the same market forces."
why has football games followed the same rise in prices if the cause for rising concert prices are music downloads?
It's not like footballers create something that has value outside of the game itself or its result, quite unlike the musicians.
So why has the ticket prices for football kept pace with the music?
Probably because the price is whatever people are willing to pay, and has little or no corration to music downloads.
Things don't get more expensive because the seller needs to make more money, things get more expensive because the BUYERS are willing to PAY more. For example, I surelly will go fine with a higher salary, but unless i found someone WANTING to PAY me more money, I won't get too far just by asking more money because I want a new fancy sports car. If it's true that concerts are getting more expensive after the rise of P2P, the only thing that can be said about that is that P2P is good for artists, probably, because, as more and more people get to know them from shared songs, the more people is willing to see them live when they come to their city. Even that is only a theory, but at least it makes a lot more sense under economical theory that this laughable theory that concerts are getting more expensive because of those bad p2p folks.
Your ad could be here!
Did I claim that "piracy" didn't hurt sales?
No, I said that "file-sharing" didn't hurt sales.
To me, there's a difference (and no, I've never shared / used / downloaded any music, ever).
Piracy, as I define it, is done by large groups of individuals who get their bootlegged copies of the music, and start stamping out CDs of the latest albums to hawk on street-corners and other venues.
File-sharers, take music they've purchased, rip the content to their harddrives, and place said data up for grabs on the internet.
Now, could pirates grab said rippings and create CDs to sell? Yes.
Does joe blow who doesn't know if he likes song x, who then goes out and grabs it, downloads it, listens to it then decides he does like it, goes to iTunes or wherever and buys the song, single or album, constitute pirating? Not in this context. It's no different than listening to the song on the internet.
Now, if someone spends hours, days, weeks scouring the various file sharing networks, downloading every song they can find, so that they have it, and never purchases a legitimate copy of the works, that would count as copyright infringement as the RIAA chooses to define it - it's still not piracy - no one made any money off the sale of that copy. This usage of file-sharing services is wrong, and should be stopped.
The occasional usage to find something that is obscure, not sure if they like it, or possibly something that is no longer being produced, in my opinion, is a perfectly legitimate usage of these services.
Let's face it - if people download one or two songs here and there, it's not going to hurt sales anywhere. It's not really any different than someone recording a song off of the radio, or the satellite music service (which can be done in pure digital format). Granted - the RIAA wants to put a stop to that as well, but, for now, it's legal.
I've probably spent more on media in my lifetime, than many people spend on their homes, yet I don't find myself even remotely tempted to go out and download anything.
Anyway, I digress.
My point I guess, was that I don't put file-sharing and pirating into the same column by default, because there are casual uses of file-sharing that do not, and will never, hurt sales. While piracy, defined as large scale copying and selling of media, does and will continue to hurt sales.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
madonna tickets are actually $354. the real outrage is ticketmaster's $15 "convenience charge." i suppose that's the result of p2p piracy as well.
For all the "Economics 101" rallying cries - Econ101 could paint you an accurate picture only if the concert industry existed in a vacuum as opposed to being part of the entire music industry. Last I checked, bands (smaller ones, particularly) didn't tour for a full year because they enjoy playing live 6 nights a week.
Why would they charge less then the market can bear? Concerts were a Loss Leader for CD sales. Simply put, I could sell a cheaper ticket to a college student that may have less money but more time to stand in a ticket line even if the concert will sell out. They don't have the CD yet (nor their friends who get good word of mouth), while the fan who's willing to pay $250 for a ticket probably does. But now I have no incentive (back to econ) to take that ticket loss since they or their friends won't buy the album, they'll just download it.
Look, I love Econ and I'll carry the banner that the music industry is greedy. The connection of p2p and concert industry prices may be a bigger whipping boy then actual fact. But shouts of "Econ 101" aren't a full answer to if there is a link or not.
Now somebody can explain this math. Since when prices to a concert where undercut? moreover, who cut the prices? The artist wants to cut the price of the tickets, I do not think so (they do not have any control), oh may be the managers and make less money (I do not think so), the major record companies? ha ha, no. This is a fraud to make sure we have strong laws against p2p and free downloads
It might just be personal preference but going to a huge venue to see a band or performer play just seems like a waste. And that's if you are incredibly lucky and can see around the fat sweaty arse standing in front of you (yes I am short). Now going to clubs is understandable. I think most people just go to the big venues for the "I was there in yesteryear" factor.
She lip-syncs in her concerts. So we pay $250 to hear her recording? That's a better return that CD sales.
I go to punk shows for something like $20. I buy the CDs, and get to meet many of the bands after the show when they come out to sign autographs, or, in some cases, hang out and have a beer with their fans.
They seem to do fine.
Where's the fleecing? Music is free. Performance is a paid service. Fans win, artists win. Artists win because they get much more of the consumer dollar when it goes into a performance than when it goes into a record company distribution and control scheme. Fans win because the high cost of top tier acts means that more new acts hit the road, and release their music on the networks to advertise their shows.
Best of all possible worlds, if you ask me. Vested interests always complain about disruptive change, but it's always good for the vast majority of participants, who are not at the top of the food chain.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Just as the freshest food is grown locally, the best music experience is found sitting at a small venue, 20 feet from the musicians and talking to them between sets. Who needs Madonna? Not me. But then, I'm connected to people so marketing-driven music doesn't do much for me anyhow.
Just as I'm not intrested in mega-production concerts, I'm not interested in stealing the music by any artist with a record at the top of the charts. There's too much great stuff on the net for legal, legitimate download for me to think I need to.
It's kind of like free software vs. the Windows world I guess. If I didn't know my options I might think I had to pay $100 for an OS, or rip off a copy.
And yet I share files and hurt sales.
I could not care less about 99.9% of the music available. But the fact that there is just absolutely loads of good music available in all genres and all prices and in undiscovered back catalogs suits me just fine.
The idea from FOSS people that somehow I should or should not pay this or that for a concert/show or this or that for a prerecorded version of music is just laughable and also annoying
So you do what you want, but realize that many many music fans are very content. But here's a little tip, if you are having trouble finding something you like, check out WFMU Broadcasting out of Newbridge NJ or Streaming Live on the Internet
I personally love Cherry Blossom Clinic with Terre T and if you were cool like me, you would too.
How come there aren't more sources of downloads? Madonna should get together with Apple on her own and find a way to offer iTunes cards at her concerts, and she should seriously consider dumping her record label and selling her tracks directly off of her website. The only reason I can think of that explains why she has not done this is her label must give her some amazing perks to keep her around. The same goes for any big-name artist, I'm just using Madonna as an example. There must be competition among labels for headlining acts, which translates into incredible kickbacks for the artists, and of course crappier music for the fans...
Not that Madonna fans, well, let's just say I'm not a Madonna fan and leave it at that.
I used to run a small indie label and knew enough artists and their relationship with their labels that I feel qualified to... agree with the above poster. The basic business model is that:
A) Artists make their money on the concerts, which in turn sell records.
B)The labels make their money on selling the records, which in turn act as advertisment for the touring band.
Hence, labels sponsor tours so the band gets new fans who want to buy the record, and the bands tour because that's how you make money. Of course there are exceptions to the rule like Madonna or the Stones, who are probably going to make more per CD and sell enough CDs to really make money from the album sales. But for the most part the money the bands get from record sales is minimal, and concerts are the way for them to make cash.
For an artist, the career would usually (assuming talent, skill, and desire to work at it of course) look something like this:
You start out small, you do small local shows, and sell a few records at the shows. Eventually you've put out a few small indie (or self-released) albums and gained a local or limited regional following, at which point you can then start to tour outside of your region, and maybe move to a larger indie label. The larger label won't necessarily pay you more, but will have more clout to get your record on the radio, and have some funds and resources to help you tour (which they want you to do so you get more fans and they can sell more records). This progression continues until you've got enough of a back catalog of records that people keep buying that you can reduce your touring somewhat, but have a fan base that will always come out to see you when you play in their region, and will always buy your new record.
If you get enough of a following a major label (or a major indie) will look to sign you and pay you a little more of an advance on your record sales. They will then have the clout to get you more and more airplay, and hence fans, and more organized touring financing (so maybe you start staying in nicer hotels instead of crashing at somebody's house in the town you're playing, play at larger venues instead of small bars and clubs, etc).
On average, throughout your career as a musician though, you're only going to be making about as much in a year on the record sales, as you do over the course of a handful of shows. The factors raise as you get more popular, but the record sales are a small percentage of your income as long as you're actively writing music, and performing it. The sales "lost" to P2P will amount to a smaller amount of cash in your pocket from CD sales, but will probably result in an increase in your ticket sales for your concerts (if you're good and develop fans from those songs downloaded of course).
Think of it this way (and I'm using round-ish figures here for the sake of arguement). Let's say you've got 10,000 fans who always buy one of your CDs and come to one show a year. On each CD you may make $0.50 (especially if you're on a major label, on an indie they may give more to the musicians, but on majors you're not going to get much more). On each concert ticket sold you'll get $5.
Now, let's say 500 of those fans stopped buying your CD because they can download it for free on P2P. You've lost $250 in income. But because it's on P2P you gain an extra 500 fans who won't buy your CD but will come see you when you play their town, you've gained $2500 in income.
THAT is why most small bands don't mind, and actually encourage, people sharing their music. The big names may make a bit more on their CD sales, but the real reason is probably that they're not looking for new fans really, they know most of their shows will sell out (and as somebody else pointed out, the market will obviously bare the price increase, hence tickets were probably under priced in the past). The other factor too is that so many of those "name" musicians are tied so closely to their record label (who DOES depend on those CD sales to make all of their profits) that the "artists" aren't going to rock the company boat.
wordtrip.com
Is it worth seeing an artist and paying thru the nose for the priviledge of seeing said artist?!? And they wonder why people download "free" music.
Out of curiosity: Is anyone on Slashdot planning to see the Madonna concert? Post anonymously if you like.
Obviously she sells a lot of tickets. But I'm completely mystified: Who is Madonna's fanbase? Are teenage girls willing to shell out this much money to see her show? Middle-aged gay men?
I suspect that most of the tickets are bought by musically clueless people who are buying them for someone else. Corporations buy them to give them away for meeting sales quotas. Old dads buy them for their daughters because they think that's what the kids are listening to.
I could be wrong. I just don't know--I've never been to a Madonna concert, and find it hard to imagine a circumstance under which anyone I know would buy tickets.
I wonder who paid this guy to publish such cockeyed theories.
The fact is that P2P opens knowledge to everyone. And this is a good thing. More people know more bands more easily, more people like more bands, and the fact is P2P creates more people willing to spend for a concert ticket. So basically, someone who illegally downloads a full album = -15$ in the artist's pockets, but P2P introduced the artist to 100 more people. 1/10 of those people will go to the show, so 10 x 50$ = +500$ in the artist's pockets. End of story.
"But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed [...]" I'd rather say "reversed" than "severed"
"I paid $60 to hear the stuff I like - his old stuff. David Bowie *knows* this and decided to play his new shit that's just awful."
see, the problem with your way of thinking is that what you actually want is to see 70's or 80's Bowie at stage, singing the same old songs, preferably with the very same entonation, clothes and popstar pose. Problem is: he's not that guy anymore. Artists mature and feel bored at the prospect of living from the past.
you're angry for shelling out $60 and not getting what you want? You'd be far better by just shelling some 5 bucks at a discount store for some of his old classics and getting a perfect performance of the old hits...
I don't feel like it...
While I do agree that the function of the record companies is diminishing, it hasn't been nulled.
Record companies do things that individual artists/bands cannot do. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars (think venture capital) in marketing the album. They also have publicists on staff to arrange media interviews. They also promote the work on the radio and other places and provide tour support.
So while yes most small and independent artists can freely give their music away on MySpace, or P2P or on their own websites or whatever, those seeking to grow and expand their fanbase usually cannot. While they might not make anything directly on the sale of their albums, the labels give them to opportunity to get a national fan base and have a large entity invest in their art.
Things have changed greately in the last 10 years. Their propritary distribution method has become secondary. And the way people find new music has also changed as well; it used to be radio. There are a lot of things a well funded and well organized band can do on their own these days. However, a record label can often times be very beneficial.
Libertas in infinitum
Helped author one of the only studies suggesting that minimum wage laws are somehow *good* for the economy, against all economic common-sense and various observations of the effects of price-controls on any given market. That particular study, however, turned out to be unusual in how poorly it was performed.
Alan Krueger may have improved his economics since 1992 (when that infamous study was generated, then published 2 years later) -- 14 years is a lot of time for improvement. And I didn't see anything in this article I found unsound (except for my personal opinion that there isn't any creativity in pop music to begin with, which, it's assumed by Krueger won't be going away anytime soon), but there may be more to his findings than meets the eye. "Trust, but verify" as Ronald Reagan would've said...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
You need a time period for the rolling stones? or beatles? or kinks?
Do you realize how clueless that makes you about popular music of the 20th century?
Really. You're not allowed to participate in this debate. Go home.
Concerts sell tickets?
... who here has spent $50 to go to a concert to decide whether or not to buy a CD for $20?
"artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales"
So
Seriously: I'd like to know. I have some business ventures I'd like to participate in with you.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
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Stop pirate radio stealing music...
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Cassette sales harm Musicians...
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Tax on cassette sales...
The truth was greater exposure brought about an enormous boom - in talent, revenue and music. But musicians toured because it was the only way to make money, due to the way the music industry ripped the musicians off. The big difference here is that enthusiasts promoted and geniune and talented musicians grew in stature - and the overall size of the market grewThere were few "ready made" vehicles - and yes I actually enjoyed the Monkees, though we all knew what they were, but the competition was such they had to be good, even if manufactured
Come on guys we know how it works!
if "Faith" could be proved with facts - would it still be faith? So why does "Faith" try to present beliefs as fact? -
I remember refusing to pay $10 to see the Rolling Stones during their 1972 tour (back when they were entertaining, not embarassing) becuase it was just too much money. Most shows were $6 or $7 (Allmans, Santana, Neil Young). I think the first time I paid more than $10 for a ticket was when Bob Dylan came out of retirement in 1973. Now I stay home becuase no entertainer is worth what they now ask. Let market forces work.
I hadn't seen that Albini article, but the one I'm referring to is definitely more recent and has different details. I have no idea how to find the link, unfortunately -- assuming it's still online in the New York Times archive.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Michael Jackson was charging > $100 for his shows 20 years ago. To claim this has anything to do with P2P is ridiculous. Oh, sorry I forgot. Back then "home taping [was] killing music".
I see loads of great local bands at the pub down the road, and it doesn't cost me $250. What's more, none of them even have a contract with a record company.
I think a much more interesting statistical correlation is:
Clearly, it's record sales, not "piracy" that's driving up ticket costs. If you have a favourite band that works for an RIAA member, help them become more accessible to their fans by not buying their next album.
Anyway, Madonna's a cabaret performer, not a musician. I expect these ridiculous prices are not significantly different to the ridiculous prices you'd pay for front-row seats to the Lion King.
Matthew
Well i saw bowie in italy a few years ago,i gave him 60euros which is fucking cheap to be bowie (i mean is full of shitty bands that ask double and they arent a piece of music history like bowie).well, he played smt like 8new songs and then ziggy, space odyssy,starman,changes,lets dance, etc etc.2hours of concert.was worth at least 100euros(if i think i spent 50 to see fucking wanker lou reed in venice, who didnt play at all, he just had some idiot orchestra making one sound per minute..so boring!)