One other thing...
"The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry."
Name a successful touring artist that has not had a successful, label based, recording career.
"The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry."
Name a successful touring artist that has not had a successful, label based, recording career.
1) What other options you had in the past sharing and selling your music than joining a record company?
2) If you're successful artist, why wouldn't you have a label? Labels would pay millions upfront and help you with everything. It's easy money, like an exit, even it hurts you in the long run. Probably most artists are not interested in building a business.
We usually forget that artists actually get their fame without labels, but labels are pretty good and quick luring these potential artists in. Who knows what would happen if so many artists didn't take their exists.
I would say that many DJ:s are quite successful and touring artists, even they don't usually have labels behind them. Ofc they are not mainstream. You really cannot be the next Rolling Stones, since internet and other options has been around just for few years. You have to remember that copyrights and labels history is aswell relatively short.
In Finland, Poets of the Fall are still independent, and got their fame over internet and/from there playing a title song in Max Payne. I think Jonathan Coulton has build his music over internet and got featured in Portal.
You're looking at it the wrong way, in the current world popular bands get signed to labels so pretty much all major touring bands will be signed to a major label. It doesn't however mean that an absence on labels will kill touring since the labels for the most part aren't into touring. It's another set of companies that handle that.
Labels create band demand. Concert promoters do not. I promise you this is causation and not correlation. People go see shows because they have the record and know the band. I am sure you have never gone (willingly) to see a show from a band whose music you didnt already have and/or or know pretty well. The band marketing (the label) created the market environment for you to know and like their music. People do not go see artists because they saw some add in a local paper advertising an artist. It doesnt happen. Promoters only provide awareness so that if you are a fan you will know that this band you like is in town.
I have actually gone to lots of concerts where I had no clue who the band was as have many people I know. Most cities have a pretty active live music scene with lots of people who will go to just about any show they can, and those people start spreading the news.
Also getting rid of the labels removes nothing at all except for mass commercial cd distribution. Even then I doubt the online music stores would disappear since a lot of people will pay for the convenience.
I am not sure how, other than expressing that, that I can explain this. This is not really a judgment issue but about explaining the dynamics of an existing market. If you would prefer to believe that I don't know what I am talking about that is fine. But at minimum I would suggest, if you are really interested in how artists today become successful that you do a little independent (and therefore not tainted by my bias) investigation from people that are really in the biz. The funny part is that there really is nothing to argue about here. No one in music will tell you that concert promoters create demand for artists. It feels a little surreal to even be arguing the point.