And most of those artists probably didn't make a dime off their music. I bet the first contract for that one hit wonder CD is brutal with most of the terms and compensation slanted towards the studio. By the time the artists are already famous enough to command better rates the studio has moved on to the next rocker or famous star. For example, John Heder got paid only $1,000 for his star position in Napoleon Dynamite. But it worked out for him. Had he not gotten other offers he probably would have been horrendously famous but poor and working as a waiter in LA.

Showbiz is a bitch.

But half the people you mentioned are dead. I get what you're saying in terms of certain generation/genres seem to have greater longevity but look at say the rat pack--they pretty much all toured (individually, granted) until their deaths.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

    Sorry for the delay in responding: retail in the Christmas season will scramble your brain a bit, and I just got Animal Crossing this week too :)
    I don't want to have my first post come across as more snippy than it may have sounded, first off; that was never my bag at Plastic, and even less so here. It just seemed to me that you were highlighting a symptom, though, and not a cause, and the first thing that sprang to mind was to point out all the groups and performers who are currently running very long careers. Should have spent more time with the supporting argument, but I had Wikipedia open in another window doing research, and that was rather distracting.
    So what's "really" going on? To repeat, I have no idea either, but I do have what I think are good observations as to why these reunion tours are selling out, and often at ridiculously high ticket prices I might add. I'd approach it from the consumer end, though, and not the production side.
    First off would be my one of my old specters, Nostalgia. There seems to be a vast reserve of folks willing to sit down and watch or hear a culling of the pop culture from their younger years*, whenever that may be. The I Love The 80s series is a good example- I think they did each year three times(!) in all- but that's just the surface. PBS has always loved those retrospectives about an era or a moment, and sometimes it feels like less serious events like the Woodstock are presented in the same somber tones as heavy topics like WWII, or the Civil Rights marches. And Lawrence Welk has been feeding the nostalgic desire since 1951, speaking of PBS standard bearers. Whenever there's a huge market, you can expect there will be product to sate it sooner rather than later.
    At the other end, I wonder if cynicism about advertising has now become a standard right of passage for American teens, with a big helping hand from MTV, natch. When I think about the bands that receive a lot of hype from music/media companies, the biggest ones that pop up are all aimed at teens: Good Charlotte, Blink-182, Brittney Spears (the early years), and so on. Nothing new in music history, obviously, but what is different is that there's so few rock bands targeted at the next age group (21-30, let's say) who make it very far. Everclear tried, and failed rather dramatically, though it might have helped if they'd been a better band. Jet? Wolfmother, even? I can't even think of a rock style group plying the "party time" vibe that could even come close to what Frampton, say, had in the 70s. (The last band I can think of that even came close was Franz Ferdinand, but how "big" they are in music fame terms is unclear.) As far as the biggest popular trends go, this age group seems almost entirely represented by hip hop and rap artists-- Jay-Z and Snoop come to mind, and doubtless there's a lot more.
    On a guess, then, I'd have to say it's downloading that's driving the hype industry at this point. Teens and pre-teens have disposable incomes, so they're more likely to actually fork out $18 for a CD, and at the other end are the nostalgic, who will (apparently) gladly shell out upwards of $100 for concert tickets, and then buy a CD of that show later. In the middle? A vast wasteland (from and execs viewpoint) of folks who will just download the music for free if a group or performer starts to get some attention. (This is hyperbole, obviously, but I'm unsure how much it is so.) Why sink good cash into a group that won't see the best returns when it comes to sales? Whether or not this will continue is probably more of a technological than musical question, on a hunch, but someone more tuned in to the tech side of the music industry feel free to correct me.
    A long post, doubtless longer than it needed to be-- all apologies.

    *Bookmans buys CDs as well as books, and from what I've seen that people trade in to us, those "Best Of . . . " decade collections you see advertised on TV actually sell pretty well. Likewise single artist greatest hits, but that's less surprising-- a lot of bands are only as good as their hits, and savvy consumers will spend their money accordingly.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras