Ideally, the artist wants you to come to their concerts. Even better, they want you to come to their concert, go to the merch table, and buy two of everything they have available for sale. In the traditional model, the vast majority of album revenue goes to the record label. The artist makes the most money from band merchandise sales (think KISS), followed closely by concerts.

If you truly want to support the artist, go to every single one of their concerts and buy three t-shirts.