So... It's Design Over Music?

This is really interesting. I have said for several years that when the RIAA shut down Napster, they actually shut themselves down... but were just to Effing Stooopid to know it. I hate to see I was right. Personally buy very little music these days... Internet radio, XM, and the new HD Radio gives me most of what I need. And I love music. So the design of the shirt trumps the sale of the CD... dang. Read the whole thing.

Cover story: 'Off the record' by Robert Sandall | Prospect Magazine August 2007 issue 137: "There is a story doing the rounds in the US that says a lot about the state of the music business. It concerns a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at concerts. Selling CDs has, for many years, been a good way for an act to reclaim the margin that would otherwise have been snaffled by a retailer. But it made no sense to this band once they discovered that by selling CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts.

There are two points to note here. First, that a simple garment with a logo stamped across it, probably manufactured for pennies in a third-world sweatshop, now costs twice as much as an album of digitally pristine, highly wrought music recorded in a state of the art western studio. Second, most bands, however successful, now make their money from live work and the merchandising opportunities that go with it, rather than from recordings."