Almost...
"The real money is not in the CDs. It's in the gigs, the merchandising, the sponsorships."
He's almost on the money, but not quite.
If I spend all my money on CDs and whatnot, then I'm gonna end up horribly disappointed with more than half of them (ever downloaded an album, listened to it, and then thought "thank god i didn't pay for that"?), plus, I'm not going to be able to pay for the tickets to see the bands that I do feel are excellent, and would be worthwhile seeing live.
I know this has been said a million zillion times, but why make it all about the money? Fans want to see their favourite bands on stage, and rocking out. The atmophere is infintely better than being at home in your living room.
True, there won't be as much money in just gigging alone, but £10 for a new CD is way over the top anyway. I want to be able to listen to a band, if they're good, I'll go see them live, and maybe buy a T-shirt while I'm at the gig as well. I might even fork out for a CD, which I then want to rip to my PC, and listen to through there
As another point, who wants CDs anyway? I'd much rather have a harddisk full of my music, so I stick 10 albums on a playlist, hit randomise, and then leave it, and I've a full night of music with no pissing about changing CDs when it runs out. CDs take up too much room and get broken to easily too.
Also, none of my mates have PCs, but they want backups of their music, and the logical place to do it is my PC, as they're always at my house listening to it and chilling out. Is that illegal?