> Today's professional musicians have to tour constantly to be profitable enough to survive, not to mention constantly churning out new tracks to remain relevant.

I think this is just the nature of the beast, so to speak. Due to the large number of musicians, the very, very low cost of recording a track, and the global, nearly free distribution channel of the Internet, the value of a pre-recorded piece of music is practically $0.

However, going to a show, seeing a real performance, feeling the music, etc etc, is still worth $10 a ticket to me, even for music that isn't particularly good. You can't copy/paste that experience on to someone else's iPod.