Music Downloads = Expensive Concerts?

melonman writes "According to an article at BBC News, $250 tickets for the latest Madonna tour are the fault of P2P file sharing. 'Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales, Professor Krueger argues. But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed, meaning that artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts and feel less constrained in setting ticket prices.' And it seems David Bowie agrees. Is 'the fans always get fleeced' the rock industry's equivalent to Moore's Law?"

Madonna was quoted as saying..

[Rob T Firefly]

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" [mtv.com]

Re:If Madonna prices it, they will buy...

[coffeechica]

Not exactly a Madonna fan, but she sells out. Of course, she also doesn't do a lot of shows (4 or so in Germany on the new tour), so the demand is high enough to warrant insane ticket prices. I think her German shows sold out within half an hour or thereabouts. If she and her management want to earn more money, it would simply be a matter of increasing the amount of concerts.

I don't like Madonna, but I'm thrilled

[soft_guy]

I have never had the good luck to be able to see my very favorite rock band in concert. I have been a huge fan on them for about 20 years. However, I moved to New York a few months ago and next Thursday night I get to go see them play a concert in NYC.

The ticket cost me $13 online. The parking will probably cost more than that :-)

I am very excited.

Re:If Madonna prices it, they will buy...

[xenocide2]

Even in "infinite supply" situations like selling music downloads, the pricing doesn't derive from trying to sell for as little as possible. You still need to work out the demand elasticity, the difference is that you're expressly trying to maximize revenues rather than fill two thousand seats. The reason companies have to move prices lower, towards the cost of production, is that they have competition. The question I have is whether there are any serious substitutes for a Madonna download. Of course we know the answer is "Yes, allofMP3 does a fantastic job offering a substitute for iTunes / whatever she uses." But as long as copyright is observed I don't think there's a lot of direct substitutes for a given song, which is why the music industry wants flexible pricing. They want to be rewarded for dumping millions into promotions of a single band, for paying independent promoters to get their music heard on the radio, for the spot on Saturday Night live, for the other TV and radio ads that make their old ways work.

As far as the relationship between concerts and music sales, your theory is as good as the others I've heard. At the very least, I won't have to subjected to the notion that "any concert is far better than any recorded album" quite as often.

In what language?

[tepples]

In Pascal and Maple, = is a comparison operator and := is an assignment operator. In the BASIC languages, = is a comparison operator in all contexts except LET contexts.

Re:If Madonna prices it, they will buy...

[athmanb]

Especially because even if you'd sell your seats at $100/piece, they'd just get taken up by resellers and sold on the black market for 250 bux each.