Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Music Downloads = Expensive Concerts?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shaft-the-listener dept.

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?"

3 of 698 comments (clear)

  1. Brain dead BBS writer? by Godeke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:or... by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In Madonna's words:
    Hey Mr. DJ put a record on I wanna dance with my baby
    And when the music starts
    I never wanna stop, it's gonna drive me crazy

    Music, music
    Music makes the people come together
    Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel
    As long as the rebel has $250...
    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  3. Re:If Madonna prices it, they will buy... by carlislematthew · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I had the misfortune of going to see David Bowie a couple of years ago. I was, as you say, willing to pay to see his old hits. What actually happened was that he played 75-80% of his new stuff, and the rest was the good old stuff. At regular intervals in the show, the audience would chant "Major Tom! Major Tom!" (yes, I know that's not the name of the song) and he just ignored them. At one point, he even started the intro to tease the audience, and then moved on to something else! What an asshole!

    The argument I hear when I complain about this is that "he must get fed up of playing his old stuff". My response is: I don't give a fuck what he's "fed up of". 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.

    I also went to see Bjork one time... It was in Seattle, at "the pier". She wasn't allowed to run her fireworks because we were standing on wood over water, so she got all sulky and did a short show without an encore. Who doesn't do an encore?! So the whole audience stood there like idiots chanting "encore encore". 10 minutes passed... We all looked at each other and slowly walked out, annoyed.

    In short, fuck concerts, especially those of the old artists who don't enjoy them, don't care what the audience (the fucking CUSTOMER!) want, and are only doing it to finance their latest castle/porsche combo. Fuck 'em.