...And the reason to do this is to hope they change. The same reason you punish anyone, so they don't do it again.
Not really. I don't have any hopes of, for example, Geoff Tate changing his conduct because I don't buy his music anymore. But I find his behavior to be so distasteful that I don't enjoy his music. So, for the most part, I won't buy anything with his name on it. Yeah, I guess it "punishes" him in the sense that he doesn't get my money. But my intent isn't to get him to change. My intent is to not spend my hard earned money supporting a person whose antics I don't like because I don't want to associate myself with that, and I don't want to spend my money on something I don't enjoy.
But if Geoff Tate changed his attitude and released something that could be for your tastes, you still wouldn't buy it? Obviously, changing attitude is not an overnight thing, it would take a lot of time and a consistency of always saying and doing the right things. To continue this example, it almost seemed like Tate was becoming a bit more well liked with his performances in Avantasia but then kind of tore it apart with his latest project (forget the name), but if things didn't go off course again and he kept gaining positive momentum, you still wouldn't give him a shot?
It depends. It is a highly subjective thing. For me, I generally work like this: I don't necessarily "boycott" an artist just based on what they do or who they are (I mean, given the right circumstances, I
might, but it has to be pretty extreme, and that's more the exception than the rule). But if it gets to a point where it is very distasteful to me to the point where it taints my enjoyment of the music (or other product), then my thought process is more along the lines of having a personal
default position of not being interested. That isn't to say I
wouldn't give it a shot. But it is just
less likely that I will.
To go further with the Tate example, I'm not interested in what he does, as a rule. I'm not going to seek out anything he does where he is the primary person or a primary collaborator. That said, if something were to come out that really was highly critically acclaimed, my interest might be piqued to sample it and see if it was worth buying. But I would probably have to like it
a lot before wanting to add it to my collection--much moreso than an artist that I am more neutral about. But then if you take something like Avantasia, for example, that's different to me. I
am somewhat of a fan
of Avantasia. And I think Tobi is able to get something out of Tate to make his performances on the Avantasia stuff more palatable. So I have no qualms about buying an Avantasia album with Tate on it, for example, even though it is highly unlikely that I would give a Tate solo album the time of day. Again, I know it is highly subjective, and the lines I draw are extremely murky, but that is generally my approach.
It is similar with MP. More and more, I find myself my "default" position on him to be moving toward, "not interested no matter how good, because I just find him to be so distasteful that it's hard to enjoy the music." I'm not nearly as far down that road with him than I am with Tate. But as time goes on, I find myself just a little bit farther and farther down that road with each passing comment or other exercise of poor judgment of his. At the time he left DT, anything he was on was almost an automatic buy. I picked up A7X's album, even though I'm not a fan, just because he played on it. Now? Nope. Now, I'm much more skeptical. Some of that is simply the fact that I now see more of a track record of him playing on stuff that I don't find myself enjoying. And some of it is just him being a turn-off in general. But I guess I'm somewhere on the spectrum in between "I'll check it out and see if I enjoy it and then decide" and "My default is 'not interested' if his name is on it." I'm still much closer to the former. But the direction of movement is definitely toward the latter. And to give a tangible example of that, let's take SOA. I bought the first album on the day of release, and would have done so even if I hadn't heard it. I liked most of the music a lot. I've become so soured on Mike, and Derek, and JSS's childish stage banter that, although I had initially planned on buying the live release, I probably won't. And as far as their next studio album, I'm definitely now more hesitant and in "wait and see what I think after hearing a good chunk of it" than I would have been before. If I like it a lot, I'll get it because I like it enough to overlook what MP and Derek have said/done. But that is a much bigger hurdle than it was at, say, the time Psychotic Symphony was released.
That was probably much more of an explanation than you wanted. But I find the psychology of all of this to be pretty interesting, so there you go.