Aye, unfortunately downloading definitely doesn't help that situation either; there are a lot of folks that, anymore, just download their albums through blogs and so on rather than purchasing a thing which, undoubtedly, has a huge negative effect on the artist, label, tour promoters, etc. - it's an unfortunate domino effect that, once again, really screws the artist as, in economic terms, the "value" of their art goes down because of the easy access the public has to it, despite the artist's wishes otherwise.
That is indeed interesting though, with The Crash; I mean, I'm sure some of the people in the audience already had their albums, thus not needing to buy more but, then again, there were probably a fair amount of folks there that have their discography digitally and illegally which, of course, doesn't help The Crash out much, outside of the strong audience presence at the festival.
Unfortunately in North America, there are not that many good festivals, however, once in a while there will be some odd pairings; there is one festival that tours here pretty much every year, called The Summer Slaughter Tour, and, this year, Ensiferum was on it, which was a total surprise to me since the tour always is focused around brutal death metal like Origin, Suffocation and a slew of new bands that have yet to make their mark so to speak but, I don't know, I was quite surprised to see them on there, haha. At any rate, the American market is very futile and amorphic, since people jump from one thing or another so quickly it becomes a rather sorry affair to observe thus, for bands that stick to their guns and don't pay attention to what's hip at the time, they often get left behind the dust of the trend-riders that die nearly as quick as they were conceived but, without a doubt, integrity goes far beyond such dismal circumstances.
