How Iron Maiden found its worst music pirates - then went and played for them
The gist of this article is that concerts bring in much, much more revenue for the band than in-store cd sales via (a percentage of) ticket sales and merchandising. Most of all, concerts expand the fan base leading to even more revenue.<p>Most of us have been saying this for years (and some in defense of the Napster model, for better or for worse), and it still seems like a no-brainer to me. As one poster here pointed out, if artists treat the music experience as a service instead of product (and, to expand on that, give the music away for free), I would be interested to see the impact.<p>Also note that Iron Maiden has never had a song on the radio and they pride themselves for it, so I don't necessarily buy the argument that artists need the conventional music business model to succeed.