In all my years of managing artists, I never took a commission on a tour that the artist didn't also make money on. I've never known a manager to take a commission on a tour that is being supported by the label. As far as agents commissioning on all live shows, they do the work and they earn that 10%. It's a great service to the the artist and if they treat it like any other expense then it makes sense in the long haul. As your points relate to streaming, I tend to think that if someone has the opportunity to experience your music via a streaming service and that motivates them to buy a ticket to your show, that's a more immediate and direct line of potential income for an artist than if they simply purchased a CD or download of your album via iTunes or Amazon. Once they're at the show, there's the opportunity to engage with the artist (but emotionally, becoming a bigger, long term fan, and financially, in buying merch). It's hard to compare the past to the present, considering how quicky the ground shifts and changes, but I tend to look towards the future and for ways to make new money vs. lamenting the ways that no longer apply from the past...

As Artist Relations for NoiseTrade, I thought I'd chime in here...first off, thanks so much for this case study on Vinyl Thief. We loved working with Grayson on this campaign...and were equally happy with the results they got from it. I thought I'd note that since we ran this campaign for them, our list has continued to grow...we recently passed the half million mark on our email list (currently at 541,000 and growing weekly). We do two emailers a week, featuring two primary artists (which go for $600 each) and two secondary features ( which Vinyl thief took part in, running for $400 each). These features are curated and we're getting great responses from both artists and labels, to the point we're usually booked up 6-8 weeks out. The results of each campaign vary, but our primary features typically see an even greater response than what Vinyl Thief saw. I also manage Josh Rouse, and we did a campaign for him (a 25 song retrospective, still currently available at www.noisetrade.com/joshrouse) last summer, when the NoiseTrade email list was at approx. 260,000 strong (half of where it is now) and we saw over 10,000 downloads in the first day....and are now at 23,000 currently. We tripled his email list using NoiseTrade, which is one of the reasons I was so game to come aboard as their artist relations man on the ground, to help other artists, new and established, gain similar traction. If anyone is curious to find out more about NoiseTrade, feel free to hit me up at chris(at)noisetrade(dot)com. Thanks!