[asdff]

Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician. If they show up and you buy a ticket to their show, you've just given them maybe an order of magnitude more money than they would ever have gotten from you from record sales or streams alone. If you buy one of the $40 fruit of the loom shirts they are selling then that covers the costs for another dozen pirates.

Plus, what about used physical media? Do you think if I bought a used Beatles cd, I should be mailing a $20 bill to Paul McCartney? Am I stealing from Paul when I listen to that CD for free from the library? Or when I borrow my friends CD? Should the FBI come a knocking if my friend remixes it into a mixtape? Absolutely not. So it shouldn't be considered stealing when someone passes me a digital file that came from someone down the line buying the album.

[bzzzt]

> Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician.

Not since Covid. Lots of headliner-class bands have cancelled their tours the last few months.

[asdff]

It's not like the record company is giving them a greater cut to compensate. Plus I'm sure they are still selling merch