No matter what you consider “real property”, intellectual property is still able to be protected under copyright.

True, but just like sports a good album in most cases with get recognition and if it doesn’t its probably not a good album. Even if its a underground form of music, sites will latch onto it and they will review it and say its good and people will go to the shows if the band is good. But if you play some off the wall type of music that will never be popular well you might as well play some off the wall sport that will never make you any money. It goes hand in hand. They are both talents and if you are great at what you do and you are doing something people like than you will succeed to a point. If you are not great at what you do than just have fun with it.

I think what I posted goes perfectly hand in hand. It takes alot of time and practice to be good at a sport to the point in which people will pay to watch you, the same way as it does with music.

It takes alot of talent to be great at a sport or music and some people no matter how much practive never will.

It costs money to make a cd and buy intruements and it costs money to buy sports equpitment and rent out fields and pay for leagues.

If you aren’t a superstar at sports people will come and watch the games for free. Don’t tell me people don’t get excitement out of sports that are free. There are plenty of people who attend highschool sports and don’t have to pay a dime and love it. There are plenty of hardcore people that go to every highschool football game and don’t have a kid on the team, probably as many people as go to a small concert.

Its one in the same if you ask me, you spend alot of time and effort and money to be good at a sport but if you aren’t great or you play some oddball sport people will come and watch you for free or won’t come at all. You spend alot of time and money in making a good cd but if its not great or doesn’t cater to what people want to hear nobody is gonna buy it.

Maybe a concert ticket has more value for them. And while a single cd may only be $15 I can tell you that when I was a teenager the only spare $15 I had would go into my gas tank! My family was broke and there are even more broke families today! And do you really expect the kids who download dozens of cd’s a week to pay for them all? Is it better for the bands to get that kind exposure or none at all? Is it ok to pirate cd’s from bands you don’t like but wrong from the bands you do?

I know what the law says but in a free society where we can supposedly help write the laws we live by the discussion of copyrights role in our lives needs to be re-addressed because each time copyright law changes, it’s been to the benefit of large media conglomerates and not the consumer/citizen.

I believe that you are a big fan if you say so, but even supportive fans like you are misinformed, mostly because giant corporate labels ripped off so many bands in the 70s and 80s. You are not alone.

If you are talking about bands with 360 deals, the label is making money on the merch and show guarantee (ticket sales) too!!! So buy a CD, go to the show, buy a shirt, the label is getting a cut at every angle.

The attitude that” bands make no money on CDs so who gives a fuck” has in large part led us to where we are today:

1) Much smaller advances ($$$) in contracts for bands and almost no tour support money for developing bands to cover expensive travel / visa-passport expenses.

2) booking agents look up soundscan sales, and use that as a way to gauge who to add to tours, and the promoter at your local venue uses that to help calculate a guarantee. Low sales make it hard for your favorite band to play your city. Of course they use other metrics, but if band X’s fans are too cheap to buy Cds/mp3s, how much will they spend at the venue?

The advances and tour support moneys are recouped by CD vinyl and digital sales, so until recouped, bands don’t get that royalty payment. But normally bands buy CDs from the label at about $6-9 each sort of like record stores do, so over and above the royalty, they can make a margin by selling to you at a show. Shirts cost about $6-8 depending on the design, set up costs, size of the run, shipping. Sadly, many venues charge 10%-30% on everything bands sell, even though the band/tour manager/merch person does all of the work.

Yes, bands live off of merch money on the road, but here is why:

They normally get a fairly small payment from the promoter/venue for actually preforming (typical bands covered on this web page get maybe $100-600 a night unless they are headlining a place that fits at least several hundreds), so they need extra money from sales just to make ends meet and fill the gas tank.

Because shirts typically sell at a higher price and higher quantities, since people just aren’t buying CDs at shows cause they pirated the music or they bought the CD/mp3 before seeing the show, that is why bands say that they live off of merch money from shirts on the road. Its not because selling CDs make them no money.

I agree with capital Nick. Music, like sports, is a hobby for most people. You simply can’t go into such a small professional field thinking you’re going to make it big. While I think there are far more opportunities to make some money playing music than sports, making a comfortable living is still a pipe-dream for most.

And I’ve read plenty of articles from older bands that are reuniting now that have gone out on big tours, were singed to labels, had it all blow up in their face and have to come back home and get a normal job but not regret a second. And this was all before NAPSTER! (Hell, without people downloading some of these bands back catalogs they may have never bothered reuniting at all). This is quite typical and really just how the world works so don’t come down on the realists here.