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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.
$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.
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.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
"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.
Actually no, (and maybe yes). Back when I used to go to concerts (15 years ago) all the big concerts sold out easily, often within the first minutes of going on sale. The tickets prices, if you could buy one at face value, were quite reasonable: maybe $40 tops. Even adjusted for inflation, that's nowhere near the face value of tickets today. However, unless you were one of the lucky few (or a crazy fan who camped out), it was challenging to get a ticket to a hot concert. (And as I said even the moderately hot concerts sold out fairly rapidly).
The rapid selling out of concerts is evidence that the tickets were actually priced far below what the market would bear. In further evidence of this, scalpers generally could sell tickets for costs 2x or greater the face value. Hence, why I said "maybe yes". The scalpers were actually the ones selling the tickets at whatever the market would bear.
As the article points out, the goal of touring used to be as much (or perhaps more) about promotion as money making. You needed to tour to support an album. I can remember many concert t-shirts with a "sold-out" logo accross them. I think it used to be important to the promoters that a concert sold-out, even if it meant a loss of ticket revenue.
I think that the concert promoters have since realized that they are better served by raising ticket prices to whatever the market will bear. Essentially they are grabbing for themselves that extra money that used to go to scalpers.
Gosh, in the good old days, the popular bands all wrote their own music and performed it live. You're either trolling, or one of these young whipper-snappers that doesn't know what real music is. Why should some jackass writer get revenue for life+70 years for spending 20 minutes writing some lyrics? I agree with you too - why should someone who does 20 takes in a studio followed by a lot of editing be given that same benefit for their "talent"? Same goes for studio musicians.
If someone claims to have talent, let them make a living performing. Oh right, that's what the article says is happening...
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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