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Comment by crocowhile | Hacker News Reader

I find table 6 in the paper to be quite astonishing. (uploaded here for those who don't want to download the paper: http://imgur.com/OU3Qk.png )

In average only about 15% of an artist income seems to derive directly from recordings. If this is a general rule for well established artists they should all release their music absolutely for free and invest their energies in concerts instead.

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It's also interesting that the outliers -- the artists who derive most of their income from recordings -- tend to be rappers. Eminem, Jay-Z, Linkin Park (A little bit of a stretch, but close enough for me), and Brian "Baby" Williams are the ones that jump out at me.

This would imply that, rationally, rappers should be more concerned about copyright, and people like Billy Joel and Neil Diamond shouldn't care one bit.

I'd guess that they can reach a lot of people through recordings that wouldn't go to their concerts, presumably because of how white people are scared of black males. Probably not as many people are scared of Billy Joel fans.

Maybe it's an issue of fear, but I doubt it; probably a combination of cultural stigma (thinking it is "weird" for a white person to go to a rap concert) and relative wealth of the target markets (concerts are much more expensive than albums, especially when you include travel costs).

Perhaps, but would releasing their music for free increase the demand for their concerts enough to make up for the loss in revenue? A million dollars, even if it makes up a relatively small percentage of profits, is still a million dollars.

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