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For years, the RIAA has claimed that illegal downloads and file sharing is killing music. Those claims look pretty damned stupid in the face of a 1,300% increase in legitimate album sales. What Live 8 proved beyond doubt is that if you write good songs and can actually play instruments rather than simply sampling a George Clinton bass line and droning on about hoes and other garden implements, people will slap their foreheads in amazement, exclaim "bugger me, that's really good," and nip down the shops to buy the album.
Internet auction site eBay said on Tuesday it had begun removing illegal DVD copies of the Live 8 poverty awareness pop concerts from its Web site, after the record industry complained.Ten concerts took place in all, from Tokyo in the east to near Toronto in the west, and more than a million people turned up to see the greatest line-up of rock stars ever assembled.While the concerts were free, British media said record company EMI paid millions of pounds for the rights to release the official DVD of the event, which Bob Geldof organized to put pressure on world leaders to do more to beat poverty.
According to the record retailer HMV, sales of Echoes, Pink Floyd’s greatest hits album, rocketed by 1,343% on the day after their Live 8 performance. The compilation continues to sell strongly in Ireland, and has remained in the 2FM Top 40 for a month. Pink Floyd are not the only act who profited from Geldof’s benevolent endeavours. HMV also recorded huge spikes in the sales of best-of compilations by all the big names on the bill, including The Who’s Then and Now (863%), Annie Lennox’s Greatest Hits (500%), Robbie Williams’s Greatest Hits (320%) and Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection (200%). Internet downloads of tracks by the featured artists jumped by more than 12%. As with Live Aid, Geldof’s first global musical extravaganza 20 years earlier, the Live 8 concerts provided an enormous commercial boost for the record industry. Music Week, the British trade journal, revealed that overall sales of albums throughout the UK and Ireland jumped by almost 10% in its immediate aftermath. A month later, the tills continue to play the music industry’s favourite tune. However, the so-called politics of the consciousness-raising event that Geldof promised would "tilt the world on its axis" have been all but forgotten.
