Highly Unscientific Poll Suggests The “Bands Will Make Their Money Back On The Road” Hypothesis May Be Flawed

Sure, the Nintendo Wii’s Everybody Votes Channel, in which Wii users get to sound off on whether they do things like take vitamins (no) or think feeding pets from the table is OK (yes), may not be the most scientific of settings for a survey on peoples’ concertgoing habits. But given that the same populace is likely to have more than three television sets in their home, wouldn’t they be exactly the sort of hyperconsumers that the self-proclaimed tech elite loves to spout off about when they’re making their pie-in-the-sky proclamations on how musicians will make money in this new, hostile-to-buying-records environment? I’d think so. And I feel like this little bit of pseudo-science is also a fine excuse to link you all to a pretty great, if quite gloomy, essay by Rhodri Mardsen on the new nature of the business that I found over the weekend:

As we all know, net-savvy music fans can download a track they love, for free, by any major label act you care to mention in a couple of minutes flat – so why on earth should we expect them to actually give us money for our tunes? The ease of using BitTorrent, Limewire, Soulseek and all these networks is erasing any guilt complex that music fans might have had over enjoying music that they haven’t paid for. There’s nothing we can do about this, that’s just the way it is. Deep down, I probably still believe that rewarding musicians financially for managing to come up with something that isn’t complete shit is the right thing to do – but filesharing is compulsive, it’s a tool you can’t NOT use once you know about it. What I do find hilarious is when people attempt to morally justify it. They either claim that they’re “sticking it to the man” (as if most musicians are swanning around in limousines, when the vast majority are scraping a living by working part time in Halfords) or “it’s OK, bands can make money by touring, instead”. Which is like casually suggesting to the owner of an off licence, after he’s spotted you nicking a bottle of wine, that he can sell a few crisps to make up for it. And anyway, The Rolling Stones might well gross millions on a world tour, but nearly all bands lose money hand over fist while on the road. People might come out with stats about live music revenues being on a gradual incline, but believe me – having been in bands known and unknown, and done tour budgets for countless others – touring represents a black hole of disappearing cash for musicians. Sound engineers might get paid, promoters ensure that they get their cut, but precious little filters down to the musicians, unless they’re lucky enough to get tour support from the record company. Which is actually an advance. Which means that, er, it’s their money in the first place. But anyway, after you’ve pointed all this out, the filesharer just says “well, bollocks, I’m just going to do it anyway.” And this kind of logic is impossible to argue with.

There’s more at the link, and I’d reprint the whole thing if doing so wasn’t kind of a jerk move.

Please Buy My Record: The Futility Of Flogging Music [Music Think Tank]