There are a lot of people for whom this is affordable. Plenty to fill the arenas, apparently. Maybe there are a few die-hards who suck it up and run up their credit cards, but the top 1%ers can shrug this off. It’s the bottom 50% for whom this is beyond their means. Fans in the middle have a decision to make.
That’s one of my biggest soap boxes these days. When people say “why should I care if some irresponsible person runs up a bill they can’t afford?” I feel compelled to point out that basic supply and demand dictates that prices are going to increase for the rest of us.
An example of this that blew up the market was the 2008 lending bubble. Low interest rates, and over lending to those that cant afford it, caused the housing market to increase. Then when the loans defaulted the banking system crashed.
College prices too. Before loans were a thing they had to charge what people could afford. Now what's the difference between 100k and 110k on a piece of paper.
For a piece of paper saying you know how to do something, yet still can't get a job in that field. I've always preferred technical schools over universities. A lot of them have job placement afterwards.
Also if they run up enough debt to the point where bank can’t collect, then it’s no longer their problem. They can declare bankruptcy and yeah it crippled them going forward but can’t correct the past anymore.
Just think though. The top 10% is 35 MILLION people. The top 10% of earners make $250,000 a year. They are exactly why shit is going up so much. Even though it’s only 10% that’s a metric fuck ton of people that make astronomical amounts of money
I'm at 200k and bonuses, but not 250k unless the year is really good. I'm not purchasing these tickets, also most of those people live in higher cost living areas.
I came up from section 8 housing.
Really probably looking a little higher at the top 1% wealth rather than the top 10%. I make money, but trust me I don't feel rich despite making more money now than my family combined.
I make almost that much, and I couldn’t convince myself to pay $500/each to see Metric and Stars this summer. Two of my favorite bands from my early 20s. I’m definitely not ponying up $1500 for Ariana Grande.
Could I afford that? Of course, and it’s silly to pretend I can’t. It’s just really hard to justify spending $2k+ to take a weekend trip to a nearby city and see a 3.5 hour concert.
ETA: I’m an idiot. I had a false memory about different tickets.
I literally just saw Metric 2 days ago in Phoenix for $60/tix. They were with Broken Social Scene which Emily is also in sometimes. It was one of the bigger venues here and the most expensive tix were in the $200. I know tix price vary but that seems like a big diff. I’m sorry u couldn’t see them the show was amazing, performing songs from new album was great and the old songs were incredible!
Oh. Wild. The tickets have gone down to $75. Am I crazy? There’s no way they went from $500 to $75. I must be smooshing it together with another concert at the same venue.
ETA: just looked. It was RAYE at the same venue that was that expensive. I looked at it on the same day and got my wires crossed. Guess maybe I am going to see Metric.
IT, the bonuses are based on how well our changes impact particular metrics across the company. I do work for an enterprise that is involved with Healthcare though.
You may have used our software, I don't write the software myself, I am part of a team that maintains the infrastructure across multiple datacenters that allows the software to run.
My friends from SE Asia sometimes fly for concerts like Taylor Swift, etc. Total of around 4k usd just for flight and concert tickets. No hotels and food budget yet.
No big deal since they inherited family businesses and continue to manage their assets to ensure they are profitable.
So even IF most Americans themselves can't afford it, lots of foreigners will fly to see big names. You aren't just competing with local moneyed people anymore.
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.There's also a negative side.” – Hunter Thompson.
No these are scalper prices, the vast majority of tickets went to real fans at face value which I’m sure was still expensive, probably ~$200 to get into the door and maybe ~400 for the floor, but these are the few thousand tickets that were scooped up by scalpers trying to flip tickets for as much as they can.
Its not them charging that alot of the times. Most of the time tickets are bought out almost immediatwly and third party sellers start upcharging the fuck out of em
Exactly. It adds to the ridiculousness because not everyone is a die hard fan, sometimes there’s just a good concert happening on a weekend you have free or while you’re out of town visiting somewhere else. But unless you went through the whole stupid process of waiting while you’re #75,000 in line when ticket sales open 9 months before you even know what you’re doing that day, you’re stuck buying someone else’s ticket. It really makes going to concerts as a casual fan almost impossible.
I just bought 2 3 day passes for an artist I like. It was a shit show, but I digress. Anyhoo, 6 tickets, two each night puts the per ticket price just over $121 with fees and taxes. This is a lot no doubt, but the same 3 day pass in the secondary market was selling between 1200-2100. For 1- 3 day pass. In other words 400-700 per ticket. No idea who da fuq is paying that, but if I didn’t score at time of sale I wouldn’t be going.
My jaw dropped, I wouldnt pay 2000$ to see anyone personally thats just obnoxious and none of the artists not even Taylor Swift is worth those ticket prices
Any non-mainstream rock band in general. I go to punk, metal, alt, emo and hardcore shows regularly. The most expensive ticket I've bought this year was for Jimmy Eat World at Red Rocks. I spent $86 after taxes and fees.
Most of the shows I go to cost between $20-$50 bucks.
The most I ever paid for tickets to a concert was $260 per ticket (resale) to see U2 at Soldier Field during their Joshua Tree Tour on their opening night there. I missed tickets during the original sale and wanted my wife to experience the general admission floor tickets. I only justified it because I was able to cash in some points for a hotel and it was covered completely. Even then I felt like a crazy person spending $520 for two tickets to a concert. The only way I could ever justify spending $1,500 a ticket is if David Gilmour was coming on a tour and I knew it would be my first and last time to ever see him. That's it, that is the only artist alive that I would pay mortgage money for.
My wife and I make over 250k combined. We have a modest house with a very reaonble monthly payment. Our cars are both old and paid for. We have no debt and save modestly for retirement. Our two young kids are healthy and while expensive, no moreso than others.
I feel like we are exceedingly better off than 70 percent of the population in the US. I would never fucking dream of spending this kind of money for a concert. I'd rather buy a vacation for the family (which is now unaffordable due to fuel prices, thanks trump).
Who the fuck is keeping this market afloat, honestly? Even a moderately famous act is charging several hundred dollars per seat... It's insane.
Id probably pay $1000 to see queen live with Freddie Mercury. Someone call me if that happens. Otherwise these prices are insane. Im fine just not going to concerts anymore just on principal.
My sound system at home is great, I don't need drunken bo-fucks around me sloshing beers and holding up iPads, and I can pause things to go pee in peace.
I saw a cover band called the machine years ago, they did INCREDIBLE Pink Floyd covers. I know it's not the real thing but shit, I think tickets were twenty bucks lol.
We saw them a few times at the chance in Poughkeepsie. The sound there is incredible. There was also some 60 year old dude smoking a joint inside which my 17 year old brain could not believe lol. We wound up talking to him later and he gave us half a joint for the ride home. Core memories from 2006.
True story. BITD before the internet. Radio stations would give tickets away to the 15th caller. I won floor seats to PF Division Bell tour way back when. Without doubt, the best concert I've ever been to.
I saw them and sat front row in Miami for the 95 show. I was 18 and had been so so excited to see them because they were one of my favorite bands. I can't say how dissapointed I was, they came on, they played and they left. Zero crowd interaction. Nobody got picks, sticks or even sweated on. Front row!!! I still can't believe that show was one of the un-funnest shows of my life. I didn't have any previous show to compare it to (obviously) but I'd been to plenty of concerts by that time (my brothers best friend worked security for the Miami arena, Sunrise musical theatre, Bayside and several smaller venues and for the price of an oz of the sticky, we'd be ushered to the front or as close as possible to the front, those were the days!) and it's still disheartening to think how average that show was when it's one of your favorites bands and my expectations were shot to shit. I have to say, that experience aside, I would def pay $1000 to see them play their final show with Bonham in 1980. Oh lord won't you give me a Time Machine!
It’s great because what’s essentially happening is class stratification not just along lines of income, but along lines of how much fun you get to have. The 1% can go to as many of these shows as they want. The rest of us can’t afford to go to one.
Re-sellers cashing in. They have infected nearly everything nowadays. The simple solution is to stop paying these outrageous prices. But.. you know.. people gotta consume!
The American resale market is wild to me. Things like sports tickets are really tightly regulated here so you can’t just sell them on for massive profits.
It’s a total monopoly. If the govt had any balls they would use antitrust laws on Ticketmaster and break it up. You should not be 1) the ticket seller 2) the venue owner & 3) the ticket reseller.
They are the best example of why antitrust laws exist as there has ever been.
Did they not? Isn't that what Kid Rock was in the white house for?
Ticket Scalping Executive Action (March 2025): Kid Rock returned to the Oval Office to support an executive order targeting ticket scalping and unfair practices in the live concert and entertainment industry.
Biden also tried. President Joe Biden, used the FTC to target “junk fees,” or levies tacked on at the end of the purchase process that can mask the full price of things like concert tickets, hotel rooms and utility bills. The Justice Department also sued Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. It accused them of running an illegal monopoly over live events and asked a court to break up the system.
Ticketmaster bought livenation over a decade ago. I’d guess I’m responding to a bot but they did nothing because there was no legal recourse. Maybe that’s why now they list “All in pricing” instead of adding the fees at the end but what is the fucking difference?
This seems like such a simple thing to implement. Just make reselling a ticket for more than the MSRP illegal. Hell, even a 10% cap on mark up would be way better than what we have now.
It’s insanity. They don’t do anything except use bots or camp the presale and then they wait and profit a ton for zero effort. We need to outlaw it ASAP
Yeah its easy, you just gotta get EVERYBODY to agree to just not have any fun for 5 years and maybe theyll wake up. I mean it was easy gathering up enough voters to avoid fascism right?
This game was given away for me when I went to see Queen + Adam Lambert in 2023. When I purchased tickets, there was a disclaimer that said you are only allowed to resell the tickets for what you paid for them. Nothing more. They are ONLY artist I've seen that has done that, so I now understand that it's an option for an artist to enable for their shows. Dynamic pricing is also something an artist can enable/disable. I wish more artists would stand for their fans and not allow scalping and dynamic pricing. You want FANS to come to your show, not empty seats.
How do you afford that? I'm lucky enough to have bought just before the pandemic, but that's over double my mortgage payment, including taxes and insurance
Literally tens of thousand of people are willing to spend that much money to see an artist. Even if they don't actually have that much money to casually spend.
My fiancées friend who still lives with her parents at 30 and makes minimum wage spent over $1500 on swift tickets and over $1000 on travel and hotels financed the ticket. She’s been paying like $50 a month for the last year and some.
People like her having access to apps that will give almost anyone a loan are why ticket prices for big names will never go down. I honestly don’t doubt we’ve seen the peak for artists like grande and swift.
Sure some groups have cancelled shows because of a lack of demand but that just means they are in the $500 for floor seats group not $1k.
Yep. The cost of one of those tickets could organize an amazing show on a more intimate scale. If you have the money, buy a real experience with some friends and a no name artist.
Even then there is no one I would ever pay to see in even a small setting. I wouldn't pay that price even for a private show, The most I would pay to see Jesus Christ himself if he came back to earth is like MAYBE $150 tops. More than that, I will wait for the reunion show when I'm old.
These are scalped resale tickets, for the people asking. Her tour sold out months ago. I’m sure the prices for the original tickets were also overpriced, but I doubt that even the most expensive seat was originally more than the cheapest one in OP’s screenshot (seems to be $971, though there might be a $959 that’s cut off on the left side).
No one should be paying these prices. But like they said these tickets are from scalpers, on top of looking at concert tickets for a major artist a week before the concert, ON TOP of it being a holiday weekend. So lots of stuff raising the price.
I pray we one day take scalping seriously and ban it
And also support actually buying music (as opposed to streaming or piracy) which provides musicians with an alternative revenue stream such that they don't need to make most of their money from touring.
Or even supporting well known indie artists. I saw one of the best concerts I've ever seen last year from a band with 60k monthly spotify listeners, their biggest song has 5 million plays, and the ticket was $40 at a venue owned by LiveNation
This is resale/ secondary market. Venue/artist probably charged $100 for those higher level tickets. They arent getting most of this. Issue is demand is so high
Blame Ticketmaster, the collapse of the record sales market, and the legality of second markets (scalping).
When I was a high school student in the 80's, I could afford the most A list concerts for dating.
Dig this... Prince was playing the Capital Center in Landover MD for the Purple Rain tour. I had tickets for 3 of the 7 nights he performed. Each ticket was 17.50 for any seat in the house. All said and done, I bought 120 bucks of tickets for me and my girl to jam to the Purple One in this MFing prime for 3 nights in November 1984. I was a broke ass 18 year old.
That was considered 'expensive' back then... today about 50 bucks a ticket. Again... during the Purple Rain tour!!!
Man... the concerts I've seen in those days! It was a normal thing to do on a regular basis. I remember ditching highschool to show up when the tickets to the most popular artists went on sale to be sure I got close to the stage.
They sell out so fast to people who only intend to resell them for profit. This should be illegal. If you buy a ticket and can't attend the show, it should be refunded and put back on sale. This could be done easily. Artists should care more about not alienating their fans and keeping show somewhat affordable.
Cam confirm. Her September concert has general admission (the area closest to the stage) at 467$. Now, there are tickets for 1000+. Those are the seats closest to the stage. You can get plenty of seats for 600$ that aren't nosebleeds and very close to the stage.
Yep.
That is why the economy is being describe as K shapped. For the top 10%, things couldnt be better.
For everyone else, they're eating shit.
This is also why so many companies are chill with AI replacing labour. Most of the folks they employee, arent their consumers. So they dont care if there is mass unemployment.
I cannot think of a single artist that I'd be willing to pay more than $200 to go see. I spent over $100 to see the arctic monkeys and I thought that was pushing it. Tame Impala tickets were like $300 and as much as I love Kevin parker, it's absolutely not worth it. Idk how ppl are spending thousands to see a concert. For $1000 I better be on stage with them!
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u/Greenman8907 28d ago
Even more maddening that there are always people who will pay it and continue the cycle.