Saturday, November 12, 2011

Buy your music.

Here's one of many reasons you should buy your music.  The show we went to in Nashville, the tickets were $20 each.  The venue holds 1,000 people.  It was sold out, which is cool, but that's only $20,000 (assuming everyone in the place had paid for a ticket).  Ok, $20,000 - split between the openers and the headliner.  The venue isn't doing that shit for free.  They had to buy gas to drive there (or plane tickets and a cab), had to eat, pay for hotel rooms (especially that night since it was the last night of the tour and they had moved out of the bus).  Then there are roadies, crew members, accountants, attorneys, tour manager and god knows who else standing there with their hand out.  Sure, there was a merch table, but there were only 1,000 people - how much could they possibly buy??

So you wonder, how much could the headliner possibly have taken home?  There is not a percentage of $20,000 that is enough money to pay him for the magic he created that night, I'll tell you that.  And no one can (or should have to) play every night, 365 days a year.  These people deserve to spend time at home, they need time to create new music and to just chill. 

My point here is this, hearts and souls are poured into music.  The people who do it well (without auto-tune and lots of trickery) and who put a piece of themselves out there like that for us to take home with us and have forever deserve to get rich...or you know, at least make a lovely living...and that isn't going to happen if we're stealing the shit left and right like we're somehow entitled to it.  And besides, music is incredibly inexpensive, if you think about it.  An entire album on iTunes will only set you back $9.99.  Even an actual CD (with album art and all that) can be found for $12-$18.  And music isn't single-serving.  You own it.  You can listen to it, literally, hundreds of times, over and over for the rest of your life.  Music is forever.  What else can you pay so little for that will give you so much in return??  So show your favorite artists some appreciation and respect and pay them, just like you want to get paid for doing your job.

Ok, jumping down off my soap box now.

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