Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?

Tefal said:
Do digital downloads of a "single" track count as a single or something separate?

If they do that would account (partially) for both the decline in album sales and the increase in single sales. As people now simply buy a large number of "singles" rather than the whole album.
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A single. There is no longer a hard and fast divide between a single and a track from an album. The Rage single that got to number one was just a track from their album.
 
dmpoole said:
Just to throw something into the pot that tedmaul posted.
For many years it was fact that big bands didn't make money from touring and I can still remember headlines in a music rag saying 'Blue Oyster Cult - The only band to make money on a tour'.
T'was back in the 80s though.
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I guess some bands often have a job to cover costs, things like the tour bus and catering all add up. The promoter gets a cut also...

That said, I imagine many bands would make quite a bit of cash for things like festival appearances?
 
The answer is a definite no.

There is no point in arguing. Sod statistics and online articles. I know personally many artists on labels who are screwed because of file-sharing.
 
tedmaul said:
Well, how about the fact that the vast majority of the money made by live concerts is taken by a tiny handful of massive bands - e.g. U2 etc. So the stats are completely skewed to look like bands can just make their money from playing live.

In actual fact, it's only really bands that have been around for years (and usually ones who have benefited from massive record contracts in the past) that can actually make money doing this.

Most gigging bands struggle to cover their costs when they tour. So to suggest that we shouldn't worry about declining record sales, or the affect of piracy on those sales, because live music is making more money than in previous years is just a nonsense for the vast majority of musicians.
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This is correct. All of it.

drunkenmaster said:
They've got no one to blame, the record industy is essentially dying and aren't required in any way at all for music to continue being made and musicians making a living. Why anyones helping to support utterly idiotic greedy morons who have only themselves to blame I don't know.
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Here we go again. I'm sure you're talking from your vast amount of first-hand experience working within the industry and being a part of a label yourself.

In b4 Steve Albini.
 
Lysander said:
I know personally many artists on labels who are screwed because of file-sharing.
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What do you think a good solution to the current situation would be?

Let's face it's illegal downloading is not going anywhere, as soon as one torrent site goes down, many more will take it's place. :(

Maybe something as simple as giving fans a free t-shirt or something similar with an album purchase would give people more of a reason to download from iTunes instead of thepiratebay...
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I guess some bands often have a job to cover costs, things like the tour bus and catering all add up. The promoter gets a cut also...

That said, I imagine many bands would make quite a bit of cash for things like festival appearances?
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Up until he died, Peter Grant was still trying to count the amount of people from aerial photos who turned up at the Led Zeppelin concerts at Knebworth so he could cut his losses from the Promoter.

I suppose festivals are where bands can make money because all they have to do is turn up and play.
At their peak I heard that The Darkness were to get £500,000 from each Festival at V & Leeds :eek:
 
ElvisFan said:
Enlighten me will you?
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Lots of people got into Knebworth to see Led Zeppelin who didn't pay for tickets.
Peter Grant got hold of all the pictures taken from the helicopters above and commissioned people to 'count' how many were there compared to how many tickets were bought.
This in turn bankrupted the Promoter.

Just found this -
Peter Grant was a pioneer in the music industry for several significant reasons one of which was the gate money(live show receipts). Grant instituted 90% gate money for the band and 10% for the promoter. although Promoters in the music industry like legendary "Bill Graham" protested Grant's demand, all who promoted Led Zeppelin conceded to those terms and still made a tidy profit. This is only one of Peter Grant's revolutionary business models. Other significant changes Mr. grant implemented was comparing album receipts with units shipped from the record plant; he made unannounced visits and immediately demanded to see the statements from the record factories management ensuring that Led Zeppelin wasn't being ripped off. Grant also hired a "Nasa" contractor to take aerial photos of their very last show at Knebworth. The promoter offered to pay Grant and company receipts of 100,000 tickets. After the aerial photos were studied by Grant the promoter had to pay an additional 112,000 receipts
to his (promoters) displeasure. You see their were 212,000 people at Knebworth; the promoter wanted to pay a lot less than the gate money taken in. Peter Grant was absolutely as Revolutionary as the band he represented.

Also this from Google Books -
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...=onepage&q=peter grant knebworth nasa&f=false
 
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