winged

caprizantgrammarian:

This is why more and more musicians and bands are actually pro-piracy, or at least neutral.

They make more money on T-shirt sales at concerts than they do on album sales at music stores.

MUCH more money if that music store is somewhere like iTunes, eMusic or Amazon, where labels are unlikely to see much money, much less the artists. Concerts are considered by the labels as a publicity expenditure, but the merch itself will almost always give back, especially when you buy it in person as opposed to online where they’re paying for space.

Royalties are the other major way of bringing in income, so next time you want to accuse a band of selling out because they’re on a commercial, please remember the average midsized band makes maybe a managerial retail salary and is contractually bound to keep spending their money.

There are exceptions to these rules, of course, depending on how good the lawyers are and how big the band is. Indie and small-label recording artists are much more strongly affected by this than majors (who may make more money off of touring, for example), but it still affects everybody.

In the best case scenario, a musician will have their songs for download-for-pay straight off their website. Butch Walker is a great example of this having happened before. And that way you’re paying the artist. But if you’re downloading their songs, and that makes you want to pick up more albums or even just go to all their shows, pick up merch, etc that you wouldn’t have had money to spend on had you bought all the albums? That’s BETTER FOR THEM long run.

(via nova-bright)