Originally Posted by Capnm:
“put it this way, ask a proper musician how these days they make their money, its not in album sales but in touring, because the occasional one or two track downloaders here and there is depriving them of that little extra money to make a living.”
Actually, this is a key point that's being thrown around in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden at the moment. The IFPI lawyers are claiming that that is the case, but it's been shown that their own figures don't support that argument. On the other hand, research has shown that people who download music also tend to buy more music than people who don't.
Yes, CD sales are down, but this is due to many factors, not least the fact that the music industry is trying to smother digital technologies rather than embracing them. When they do embrace them, they do well. Look at how well iTunes is doing. For a full break-down of the factors affecting the music industry at the moment see
here.
It's worth noting, with relevance to independent artists, that people who do download tracks are also much, much more likely to pay for music if they know that the money is going directly to the artists, rather than being syphoned off by the record companies. A good example is Radiohead. They released an album exclusively over the internet. They let people download it and pay whatever they thought it was worth for it. They made more money than they did on their previous album.
And, as you say, live gigs are doing well at the moment. Research shows that downloading promotes live performances and, in doing so, actually benefits the industry as a whole. This is the same reason why, despite the same claims being made about the film industry, the film industry have actually just had their most profitable year of all time.
And I say all this not as a pirate, but as a working musician myself.
