SO WHAT IF MUSIC JUST BECOMES FREE AND ARTISTS MAKE THEIR LIVING OFF OF TOURING AND MERCHANDISE?

Well therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you're considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.

The reason it is a case of "so what if the artists make their money from touring and merchandise" is because the music is still being made and the artists are still making money. Yes the music is the important part, what do you think they do on tour walk around and look pretty? No, they play music. Money is money and it doesn't matter where it comes from as long as it enables (and more so encourages) the artists to produce the music.

As for gold are you out of your mind? The reason it is so expensive is because there is a limited supply of it and a high demand. The price increases when demand increases and/or supply decreases and the price decreases when supply increases and/or demand decreases as with basically everything else that is sold. This even applies to concerts. There is a limited number of tickets that can be sold because of seats in the concert hall/space/whatever and the more popular the artist is (ie the higher the demand) the more they can charge for admission. Sure they can sell tickets for less just as you could sell gold for $1 per kilo but people can just as easily turn around and sell it at the price people are willing to pay - the market cost.

Prime example of this is actually where I live bananas usually cost something like $2/kg but there was a hurricane up north where most of the bananas are grown which wiped out most of the crops and the price shot up to $15/kg - the price went up until supply and demand equalized - ie basically there were as many people willing to pay $15 for a kilo of bananas as there were kilo's of bananas to be sold. If instead there were as many people who where willing to pay $100 as there were kilos of bananas then that would have been the price they sold at.

This is a quote from Gene Simmons of KISS; I thought it fisked itself - but Shaun seems to be doing a pretty good job.