Originally posted by axemansean
Here is a little math for you.
An artist makes $0.25 per song on a cd.
Each cd has on average 10 songs so its $2.50.
Take away the 10 months of touring and you'll realize that each cd sold means a lot to a musician. Think of it this way, what if you had to spend 10 months out of a year in a bus going from state to state and county to country away from your family just so they could have a bowl of dinner at the end of the day. You wouldn't survive a minute of it, MTv and VH1 makes the life of a musician seem very glorified but in the end its a battle to make ends meet.
merchandising
commercial deals
touring
videos
producing
movie/tv deals
...are all ways of spreading the name and making money. CD sales are actually a small portion of most bigger names that are having their music "stolen". And yes, while the smaller bands do make more of a portion of their total income of CD sales, they aren't the ones worried about the pirating, and most smaller and unknown bands incourage "illegal" sharing of the music they make in order to spread the word about them.