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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.
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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.
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.
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.
"making music for the purpose of making music?"
Had to have existed in the first place for something to have happened to it.
$250 for ANY concert ticket (I don't give a damn if it's front row) is ridiculous. I seriously hope no one pays for this. I just don't understand how artists and record labels and agents are getting the idea that raising the prices of their respective products will combat piracy or ease the "negative effects" piracy is having on their sales (for now, let's just ignore all the publicity artists get from P2P). That's just completely counterintuitive in my mind. If they want their loving fans back, they should get their attention with reasonable prices. Nothing says "I appreciate my fans" better than lowering your concert ticket prices, just a smidge, so that everyone once and a while Average Joe can afford to enjoy your music.
I guess this is why I stopped buying record label music years ago. I've bought a few local band CDs, but I bought those in person from the band itself. Not just because I wanted to have their music handy, but because they rock, and they don't charge admission. They appreciate their fans enough that during intermissions, they'll get down off the stage and mingle. Now those are musicians.
In summary: to hell with Madonna.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
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...
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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?
"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
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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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
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.