My god why do you geeks hate musicians so much?

Much as you love to spread this lie, nobody here hates musicians. Many of us here are musicians. Techdirt wants them to actually be successful – and fighting against your fans won’t make you successful.

1) You tell us give you our music for free and make up for it at live shows

Giving people our music for free, and making up for it at live shows, is how performing musicians have always made money. Musicians don’t, and have never, made anything more than a sliver of their income from royalties. Nine out of ten musicians on a major label never make a single dime from artists royalties; they sign to a label because it provides promotion, which leads to things like endorsements, selling merch, or live performance revenues – and those are the ways musicians make money.

The difference is that now we can give away our music to fans for free, rather than give away our music to labels for free. And those fans will end up paying us more than a label ever would.

Plus, Techdirt has never said it is a requirement that you give away music for free. They have always advocated for crowdfunding models like Kickstarter or Sellaband, and have advocated for subscription models like Pandora or Spotify. It is not necessary that musicians give away their music; what’s necessary is that fans (potential and actual) are able to experience it in the way that they want. They are, after all, your customers.

2) You tell us we should charge a little as possible at live shows to be and be’fan friendly.’

First of all, that will net good will with the fans, which can be leveraged in other ways.

Second of all, cheaper tickets do not translate to less money. It translates to many, many more people who can afford to see your live shows. If the balance is right, the increase in concert goers will more than make up for the difference in price. And if those concert goers could afford to pay more for a ticket, then they have more money to spend on your merchandise – and artists usually get a greater cut of the merch than they do of the ticket money.

Lowering prices will often result in greater overall profits. That’s basic economics.