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Comment by manmal | Hacker News Reader

Or better yet, go to a concert. Most artists could never live off CDs, but from $30 tickets they could.

Touring for your primary income is a brutal lifestyle, especially if you're not in your 20s and unattached to dependents.

I don't think it's reasonable to say "oh, if you want to make money with music, you should just spend 6 months of the year living in a van traveling the country".

I don't see why that's unreasonable. Plenty of jobs in other industries (consulting, sales, construction, trucking...) have a large travel component to them. You don't have to accept work with 50% travel, but if that's where most of the money is for what you want to do, then it should be on the table.

Even an author, typically far more introverted than a musician, has to seriously consider hitting the road to do book signings and interviews for any hope of success.

my startup idea that someone else should totally build:

Sell a soundboard recording of the show I went to for $25 on the spot as I leave. I went to the show so I now have an emotional connection to that particular performance. Will this get shared? Sure, but the majority of people downloading bootlegs own the artists' oeuvre anyway.

At least for Springsteen's current tour, this is almost the case (modulo a couple of days). I think livedownloads.com is the backing entity.

that's awesome, thanks for the link!

The fact that larger bands don't up sell a drone video of each show is just leaving cash on the table. I'd happily pay $30-$50 for a video recording of every show I attend.

Pearl Jam did it except for the venue I went to. I must say I was a bit peeved about that.

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