I'm asking if you don't think BitTorrent drives concert/merch sales. And because we both know it does, why we shouldn't consider it a force of consumer acquisition?
Revenue By Channel:
Merch/Tix Recordings
Torrent Yes No
Radio Yes Yes
A very popular meme: "but musicians make most of their money from concerts anyways". No; after recoup and automatic per-sales royalties, label financing provided musicians with a solid middle-class income. Also: most midlist- and- below artists make very little money touring; the popular conception of how lucrative touring is is queered by cognitive bias from hugely and anomalously successful major acts.
What you just posted is completely fallacious. You've just redefined what "consumer acquisition" is based on a narrow exclusion you've arbitrarily chosen, especially when it is blatantly obvious what point the original article was trying to make. And you talk down merchandising profits as if that has any impact on your argument.
Do you not recognize the train of logic that has led this far down a thread?
I don't understand. Both BitTorrent and the Radio drove an equivalent amount of concert/merch revenue. But BitTorrent saps recording revenue. Therefore: BitTorrent is worse for artists than the radio.
How does "but BitTorrent still drives merch revenue" even logically address that point?
Perhaps, but whether one promotional medium is more profitable for artists is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Filesharing is an exploding cultural trend, and in that sense it is the new radio, not in the sense that the industry should like it or it should be economically efficient.
