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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?"
"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....