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.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.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.