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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Recorded music's value has dropped very close to zero (even 99 cents seems too much depending on the song sometimes).

Live performances will always be the profit center. Recorded music is only good for promoting a band's concerts; you can't copy the live concert experience.

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Ask any musician during the pre-internet era and this would be their assessment:

Recorded music will always be the profit center. Live performances are only good for promoting a band's records; it's easier to sell 1,000,000 records than it is to sell tickets for 1,000,000 seats.

This seems like a detailed rebuttal of that idea:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

Which among other data, points to a detailed breakdown from Courtney Love (2000) about how the recording industry screws the musician:

http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

You know, an analysis that's a) 13 years out of date and b) from a notoriously dysfunctional individual might not be the best statistic to rely upon.

no, pre internet bands still got dicked on record sales and made their bank on live performances.

From the article referenced above;

" megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It's why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales."

Jaw-dropping...

yes.

But the record companies made a killing on the recorded album sales. It's not because touring is better than recorded sales, it's because they were being dicked by the labels.

Absolutely. Listen to old concert recordings, and even established acts like the Eagles and Led Zeppelin shamelessly plug their newest albums during concerts. The big story arc of "Spinal Tap" involved the problems with releasing "Smell the Glove", the promotion of which was the whole point of the tour.

The technical changes seem to be making musicians into traveling minstrels once again--not a good thing. Studio recordings are better 99.99 percent of the time.

Live performances are meetings between people, human interaction. This is irreplacable by recordings. What value does the recording truly offer? Its value is diluted by being "easy" to replace by recordings of other artists (that might go for cheaper).

Anecdotal I know, but I've only attended one or two concerts in my lifetime and prefer to buy albums instead because they're significantly cheaper, among other reasons.

It's hard for me to believe, but I still have albums that I bought fifteen or more years ago that I still listen to on a regular basis. That's more valuable to me than a concert experience.

My experience is nearly opposite. The last time I bought a CD was over 10 years ago, I attend concerts and music festivals often (1-2x monthly) and consider these experiences much more worth the price than buying albums I could easily listen to on Spotify for a fraction of the cost. I have wide and varied music tastes though and the cost of purchasing all the albums that have songs that I regularly listen to would be prohibitively expensive, even compared to going to concerts that regularly cost $50.

Live performances will always be the profit center.

I am tired of hearing this mantra repeated as fact. There are significant up-front costs to live performance that are not at all sure of being recouped. If you make some sort of niche music whose audience is highly dispersed, then you might not be able to get enough people together in one place to support a tour or more than one or two performances a year.

Have you ever worked in a band or as a producer or some similar role?

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