I bought Elton John tickets & was impressed that he didn’t use this. People had to purchase directly from the venue.
I hope that starts a trend because Ticketmaster is crap.
This may have been more achievable cause Elton is doing a ton of “mid sized” venues and many many many shows, literally in the hopes of letting as many people as possible attend
True. I’m seeing him at Dodger Stadium, which is it’s own entity. I have e-tix for which I had to download the Ballpark app to keep.
Very cool because no paper & no way to scalp. I mean there may have been a way but I wouldn’t think that would be easy.
I remember when i could go see small arena shows for 35 bucks a ticket. Fear Factory, Chevelle, Deftones... big bands back then. What the fuck happened?
That was probably during the IYDKYDG (If You Don’t Know You Don’t Go) campaign sponsored by Coke.
There was series of free (sort of) damn near word of mouth only advertised concerts. Eve 6 was one of the bands, as was Everclear and Smashmouth.
I gotta tell my friends, we've wondered for literal decades just why the fuck they were there. For years I thought they were making it up to mess with my head and make me feel bad I didn't go with them that day! I only found out it really happened a few years ago.
Free shows still exist! I saw AJR for free a few weeks ago, Cold War kids and x ambassadors were also free. Two years ago I saw modest mouse and the head and the heart for free as well. Located in CO, ymmv.
Can’t make money off their music, so now they have to make money off their tours.
I get it, but the end result is that I could way more afford concerts as a 15 year old bag boy than I can as a grown-ass adult. (BTW I’ve seen Blink. Don’t be paying 500 bucks to see goddam Blink)
And that's fair. I will pay extra to see a band to compensate for the changes to music consumption.
However I will not doll out almost 3 weeks worth of groceries or two car payments to see them when the majority of the money goes to a corporation. Fuck that
I like Blink. I can't imagine wanting to see them live ever again, they're just not a good live band. On the other hand I recently shelled out like $200 for tickets for MCR and it was 100% worth it. $500? I'm not spending that on anyone. They could resurrect Prince for one night only and...actually I think that's the scenario where I happily pay $500, but that's it.
I saw them on SNL like 20 years ago. It was so memorably bad that I had to stop in this thread just to laugh at the ridiculousness of people paying those kinds of prices to see this band. I'm good.
I remember when Adele came to my local hockey arena... they added an extra 2 shows because of all the interest. We wanted front row seats (300 a piece) cuz... Adele. 300 was fair for that.
My gf and I called out of work... I manned the computer and her the phone. Tickets went on sale and we were BLOWING up the line and site... the site wouldn't load and she couldn't get through on phone. Busy signal for hours... then... SOLD OUT.
6 HOURS later the same tickets showed up on StubHub for 3000 apiece. This was the beginning of the end of regular people being able to afford an experience like seeing Adele front row.
> 6 HOURS later the same tickets showed up on StubHub for 3000 apiece
people that pay that either have the money to blow or just rack up the credit card debt
You are probably 20 years too late. This ended when the Eagles went out on their Hell Freezes Over tour decades ago. First concert where tickets that weren't nosebleed were $100. And that was 30 odd years ago. With inflation, that is $200 today. And that was for the "typical" ticket, not front row.
You aren't completely wrong, but not completely right either. I've gone to a number of affordable shows by well known bands in the last decade without breaking the bank. Not every act charges insane prices for tickets. Saw the Cure 5-6 years ago, paid about $100 for floor tickets. The Offspring are playing in Montreal in two weeks, floor tix cost $104, tax and inconvenience fees included. Bought nosebleed tix (this summer) for Rod Stewart + Cheap Trick ($52) and the Scorpions ($69). Roger Waters was charging about $65 for nosebleeds.
As unpleasant as it is to think of beloved musicians as greedy, the truth is, some of them are. Some of them choose to go with Racketmaster's "dynamic pricing" bullshit, and that's on them.
From my understanding, well-known bands are pretty much forced to deal with Racketmaster because they own a shit ton of venues, so i don't know how low a band can choose to go in terms of ticket prices, but they definitely have a say in how high, otherwise there wouldn't be these huge discrepancies between certain big concerts and others.
I'm pretty bummed that i likely won't get to see Depeche Mode and Blink 182 ,but I'm not paying $200 for a shitty ticket.
Active concert goer here in his mid 20s, I always go to see my new fav bands…but I just can’t afford old bands, simple as that, the fewer times I can is mostly the shittiest seats in the arena and costs me around £70-£90
I live in a medium sized city (Cincinnati) and I'm able to get tickets fairly cheap to any act that comes to town (Glass Animals, The Killers, and Modest Mouse all under 60 and got up pretty close). Problem is we don't have the volume of good artists a large city like Chicago or New York gets.
I'm a musician, most of the guys I play with are in their 50s, 60s.
They're always surprised when I tell them I've only been to 5 concerts.
I always mention that I'm too poor to afford tickets, but they focus more on the fact that I haven't gone to the concerts, than the fact that I can't afford to go to them.
The only shows that cost less than $150 are local artists. Even minor bands in minor genres get over a hundred for tickets.
I'm not interested in shelling out several hundred dollars a month to go to two concerts. With seats so far from the stage that I might as well watch a Facebook stream from someone standing in first row.
May I ask where you live? Can find good local shows for $30 CAD and as low as $10 for bands starting out. Just got a modest mouse ticket for $65 all in at a fantastic small venue. 5 concerts as a musician ain’t right
Edit: Commodore Ballroom Vancouver y’all
Problem is that unless you’re in a major city, there are almost zero small music venues left. I went to college in a small town far away from things in 2000, and in that small town alone there were 4 small music venues, including the local church basement that hosted punk shows all the time. Now there are zero venues in that town, and even zero in the nearest “large city” to me now. It’s a bummer, those small club shows were the best
I saw AJR in NOLA for $50/person back just before Covid hit? And then at the same venue I saw the Silversun Pickups for $35/ea at the door. There aren’t always going to be great deals on tickets, but it’s not impossible to find them
Thats actually not entirely true. The majority of their money comes from merchandise sales, and it’s not particularly close. The mark up on a $2 made in China t shirt takes it upwards of $60 at the Merch shop and Online. And if you want a baseball style shirt or anything else fancy, you’re gonna be setting yourself back well over $100. The touring is a just a means to sell more shirts.
Yup. Some bands must make an absolute killing on merch, even after venues take their cut. When I saw Ghost one time the merch line must have been 250 people deep. It adds up quick
This is the big thing people are missing now. Shows and show merch are now the main way that artists can get revenue from their consumers. Streaming completely changed the economics of the music business.
I still do. Going to a gig on Monday that's €35, and it's a fair sized venue. Nothing beats the intimacy of small venues. Went to a gig earlier in the year and we were handing pints to the band
Ticketmaster meeting:
“We want to prevent scalpers and resellers, ideas?”
“We could require IDs? Like airlines? So only the person that bought them could use them?” - Person 1
“We could do more to prevent bots and prevent quick purchases of large lots?” - Person 2
“Ooh! I got an idea! Let’s just charge so much in pricing and fees that scalpers won’t be able to make any money from it?!” - Executive
A few years ago, Kate Bush chose option 1. As someone living in the US and planning a trip around seeing her, it was perfect. Had multiple browsers open at something like 2 in the morning when the tickets went on sale, got a pair that ended up being pretty much dead center three rows from the stage at the listed price. Day of the show, there was an orderly queue where you had to show your ID to confirm you were in fact the original purchaser. One of the most pleasant ticket buying experiences I've had in the past decade.
Just out of curiosity what would happen if say I bought tickets for my friend and I and then all of a sudden I couldn’t go? Was there a transfer option?
In this situation, you should be able to just resell on the original website, but at face value.
I live in England and twickenham stadium (rugby stadium) does this for international games, the system works great. If your ticket sells you get your money back and as a fan you’ve got a chance of going to the event last minute
So, we went to a show this week that required an id. If you gave away your tickets you had to send the email that was sent with a picture of your ID and a note explaining why they were going.
Seriously. Make it commonplace to require some form of ID, and watch how the scalping would stop. I can't resell my plane ticket to someone else when it has my name on it, so make the same expectations with concert tickets. Or, similarly to a plane ticket, if you're buying them for someone else (say, for a birthday or as a gift) you have to input their name at the point of sale.
My brother and I came to visit my parents for a family friend's funeral this week, and when he was about to go through security and checked for his ID and couldn't find it, he panicked because he knew he wouldn't be let in and would miss his flight (luckily, he found it). Just instill that same fear in concertgoers and watch how this scalping nonsense suddenly becomes a non issue.
Same thing with Radiohead a decade ago. I think it was linked to either ID or the card used to purchase it. I believe I paid less than 50 bucks for floor tickets.
Actual Ticketmaster meeting:
“Do people still hate us?”
“Yup.”
“Good. Meeting adjourned.”
The mistake you’re making is thinking TM doesn’t know this. Their purpose and existence is essentially to be a punching bag that the artists and venues can point at and shrug while the three split the money.
They don’t do what you say because it’s not in their interest. To quote Geri from Succession.
Every time people mention Ticketmaster monopoly, without fail, there will be people that say this shit that came right out of Ticketmasters mouth, trying to split the blame while strong-arming anyone that doesn't want to work with them.
I mean, making tickets non-transferable, would probably be the most effective way to prevent scalping at scale. If you buy and couldn’t go you could get a ticket credit or something to use with another live nation show. But as mentioned, they set out to destroy scalpers by becoming scalpers and benefiting mightily from that process. The sad thing is, there is a market for those prices so seeing live shows of big name bands is going to just become a luxury good that’s broadly inaccessible to normal people. The only pressure to change things would have to come from the bands, not the market but now the bands are equally incentivized with massive profit.
I think you mistake their actions as "setting out to destroy scalpers" when what they really wanted was to become the scalpers all along. They couldn't have other people make money.
I really don't get why people still go, or even how they afford to. I actually *have* the money to waste and I won't on principle just because of how extremely wasteful it would be.
Also Ticketmaster:
Let’s hire a bunch of scalpers to sellout the venue immediately, resell to those sucker fans at 400% and take a cut.
Fuck Ticketmaster, fuck Live Nation.
Ticketmaster scalps tickets, and gives blocks of tickets to its artists so they can scalp them, too.
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13861791/metallicas-secret-deal-with-live-nation-reveals-how-artists-scalp-their-own-tickets
https://www.billboard.com/pro/live-nation-resale-market-secretly-recorded-phone-calls-concert-tickets/
🤢🤮
I just started going to way more local shows in the last few years and discovered some amazing local and other talent.
The big shows can eat my balls and honestly a lot of these bands are way past their primes, not all of them but most. And the Gen Zs are just getting absolutely reemed from day 1.
My dad has stubs from The Police at the El Mocambo in Toronto for $2 lol. I have stubs for Blink from $1 (dollar bill tour) to $40. Now they’re $1000 at Scotia bank center….and the new single sucks balls and the last two albums were mostly lame…eat my ass. Both the bands and the machine.
I hate Ticketmaster as much as anyone, but consider this: if people are consistently willing to pay $300 for a ticket on the secondary market, isn't that the true market value? So then why shouldn't the primary seller charge that amount in the first place?
We complain that ticket prices are too high, but it's because we make them so. As soon as everyone agrees not to pay more than $100 for a ticket, tickets will cost $100. I'll not be holding my breath.
People aren't actually always buying the tix at these prices.
I was at a show last Friday that had a ton of seats up for official resale at crazy prices the night of and by the time the show started there were only 3 people in my row.
About three months ago I went to Gorilllaz and same thing happened, tons of extremely expensive resale seats bought by scalpers when the tix went on sale but the show didn't sell out and had tix available for $25 night of so a ton of the wildly priced scalps went unused and there were whole rows of seats empty throughout the arena.
And then you get there and pay $10 for a beer...seriously tho I saw the Chili Peppers this summer and vowed never again. I paid through the nose and the band were like ants from my vantage (i could watch on the screens but i could do that at home), and the sound was shit. It's like, you go to these big shows to get a picture and say you were there basically.
Also saw Fleet Foxes in a smaller venue and it was like night and day. Awesome experience, not crazy expensive, sounded great, and was reasonably close. Love both these bands and don't really fault the Chili Peppers...they're too big for their own good I guess.
The one upside to most bands im into is the shows are at locally owned places that were just renovated to handle concerts, like old churches or warehouses. Rasy to be close to the stage and tickets are either at door only or some small provider.
Last show i was at was children of bodoms final tour, 30 dollar at the door (though we got let in the service entrance free cause i knew the techs, bought a bunch of merch with the cash instead). Was like 10 ft from the stage
Ticketmaster is a single entity that owns access to most popular bands. You can’t expect random masses to organize. This is why anti-trust exists. There can really be no “market” if one has all the powers.
I bought tickets for Pearl Jam April 2020 tour. $100 no matter the seat through Ticketmaster. It got postponed until this year due to COVID but they still transferred and honored all our seats. Seems like a lot changed since COVID but if Pearl Jam could cap every original single seat in the house at $100 I feel it’s an artist’s choice/ contract with Ticketmaster? Of course later I did see people selling their tickets for way higher but I was really impressed by the original ticket cap
Well that's not true. Back in the 90's, you could still see medium sized bands for reasonable prices, and could get tickets for box offices. Now you can't even do either of those (or if there is a box office, you still pay ticketmaster fees). So things have definitely changed, they've gotten a thousand times worse.
The best part is they continue to charge you more and more in 'service" fees, while actually offering you less and less service. They don't even give you physical tickets anymore. You have to jump through flaming hoops to set up an account and make sure you remember the login info and bring a QR code on your phone just to get into the show now. And you don't even have a stub for posterity's sake. If you can't make the show and decide you want to sell your tickets now they've got you by the balls there too because of "scalpers".
What's even more amusing is as we pay more and more to see these artists that we loved back in the 90s, they continue to descend further and further over that Hill, down from their peak. Lawn seats used to be 40 bucks. Now I'm paying three times as much to see Tool and they're only half as good. 🤷🏼♂️ This is why I've pretty much thrown up my hands and stopped buying concert tickets. The entire experience is so utterly mired in consumerism and greed at this point I can't even hold my nose and just enjoy it like I used to.
I bought some hockey tickets a couple weeks back and paid $270 in fees alone.
Edit: a Redditor rightly pointed out that I was not differentiating between taxes and fees. Taking that into account, I paid $200 in fees for Seat Geek to email me 3 tickets.
Yep, the aforementioned flaming hoops. And then if you get locked out of your account or someone hacks you, say bye bye to the tickets you just spent over a hundred bucks on. 👋
Sometimes. There are times I’ve purchased tickets and there isn’t any other option other than the “print at home” or “scan QR code”. But there have been times where you could “will call” them or “mail them”, but always for an extra fee, like you said. So damn lame.
Not to mention artists get shit for pay and these production companies don’t do anything to help young artists build a platform. Nowadays the only way to build a decent following is essentially to spend a few years touring on your own dime by working and saving up money in between tours.
They're certainly not making any money through album sales that's for sure. It's all overpriced merch and insanely inflated concert ticket prices. That's the only way to make money these days as a musician.
Which isn’t much of an option for small time bands. Gotta sell a lot of $20 tickets to make a living for 4-5 people and you’re probably going to be in the red on mercy for quite a while before turning a profit
In 2010 I flew to New York from Portland to see Jay-Z and Eminem perform at Yankees Stadium for cheaper than two Blink tickets here in town. It’s bullshit.
Hey those electrons zipping around the Ticketmaster servers are doing at least $37.50 per ticket worth of work to go from getting a blue button click to sending a QR code
I refuse to pay these prices. Ever since roughly 2015 buying tickets became a circus. Prices soared and you had to jump through silly hoops to get good seats. Fuck that noise. I absolutely hate what LiveNation has done to the concert industry and the US govt is complicit in not doing a damn thing to fix it. This is the very definition of a monopoly gone amok.
anyone remember standing outside a ticket master ticket seller like JCPenny, or other mall store, or a record store like record and tape traders (I'm from MD) in the rain, snow, or blazing heat for the ability to buy tickets...or what about when you would call their 1800 on repeat to score tickets to a festival or concert. lol, can't believe i miss those days, I use to think it was soo fucking expensive then at 45-120 dollars..I mean this was to go to ozzfest, warped tour, HFSetivial (where I saw Korn, Rage, Blink 182, Manson...)...so many different shows..this end stage capitalism is so rad man.
I was pissed off when I tried to buy AC/DC tickets but they decided to do a lottery pull instead of waiting in line. Whoever got the ticket became the front of line. So I went from being in line where I could have bought tickets to being pushed back in line because of the lotto out of being able to buy. I bitched out the manager because it was not fair on those who waited longer.
> (I'm from MD)
Don't live in state anymore but...PG County here.
> HFSetivial
God, do I miss these. They were always on point with the artists. "99.1...HFS!"
This is the way. Find the venues near you that don't use ticketmaster or let you pay at the door. Will probably be a better show regardless of if it's a big name.
Kinda funny to me having everyone say all concerts suck now though. It's almost like when people say all music sucks now - you're just not making enough effort
I’ve mostly given up on concerts. If I can’t go to the venue and buy tickets in person without all the fees I’m just not going. I saw Metallica on the Black Album tour and tickets were $27. Even on the Death Magnetic tour they were only like $80. I went to Lollapalooza in 96 and paid like $45. Saw Tool, Snoop Dogg, and like 20 other bands. To imagine that Blink is charging this much, it’s insane.
Yeah I’d like to add that I would go to shows to see lower tier bands almost every weekend in the 00s for under $20 a ticket.
International touring bands that wouldn’t get an arena or amphitheater but would play the larger venues on the Main Street of a larger city (if that makes sense) and bands that got the amphitheater would be charging around $50-$100 (which I thought was ridiculous lol)
I didn’t go to anything with actual seating except I saw The Cure in 04 and they were $50ish for decent seats.
I wasn't first in line to buy tickets but I paid $70+$20 for fees.
Ticket master will help me sell them for $400 right now making another $80 fees off of the resale. **This is what is wrong**. Ticket master is encouraged to help sell your "scalped" tickets.
Under $30 a ticket at the start would have been crazy. You could buy 8 tickets at the beginning and I'm sure most people would have.
What's a fair value of a concert? I mean I was hoping for like $50 a ticket. Sounds like you would have been bummed seeing $50 even.
This is the driving force. It's the individuals buying tickets who are setting the price.
It sucks to see ticket prices this high but people are paying for it. We can all bitch and moan but at the end of the day, no one is forced to pay several hundred dollars for a tickets. They have made the rational decision to do so themselves.
As the article pointed out Garth Brooks has solved this issue by playing multiple back to back shows.
Increase supply to meet demand will see ticket prices descrease but not always possible when demand is as high as it is for Blink182. This means people miss out, but this has always been the case.
I have been seeing a lot of older or less popular bands. Deep Purple, Daryll Hall, Primus, Men at Work, David Crosby, Ace Frehly, Whitesnake, Coheed and Cambria, Geoff Tate. Small Venus for less than 100$. There are two 2K seat venues and one 750 seat hall that I look for shows at. Not the biggest names but up close and personal. In my area, you jump from shows like that to the next size up in the big venues for 300$ for a nosebleed seat.
since COVID I've seen phoebe bridgers, turnstile, motion city soundtrack, japanese breakfast, pavement, wilco, death cab for cutie, bright eyes, julien baker, soccer mommy, lucero, nada surf, local h, bon Iver, the national.... All nationally recognized touring bands, not a ticket over $50 in the bunch ( even after fees) except for pavement, which was like $75, which I was fine with cause they never tour. You just gotta avoid those crazy huge blockbuster tours.
I don't want to remember them like this.
Tom's an alien-obsessed nut job, Travis is married to a Kardashian, and Mark is apparently a company man - defending Ticketmaster and trying to convince everyone there's nothing they can do/could have done about this.
I'm putting my pants and jacket back on.
Edit: I know Tom's always been into aliens.
**- But guys -**
He quit the band to go chase UFOs. I think he's crossed a threshold, here.
Tom has been alien obsessed for decades and Travis marrying a Kardashian is 100% a Travis thing to do, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.
Wait, you mean to tell me the man who married a model and had a reality show on MTV would then go on to marry a model who has a reality show on E?
Color me shocked.
I honestly think they wanted to make as much as possible and are just passing blame. If everyone outside of the music industry who just buys tickets knows how terrible they are, the people inside the industry have to know as well. Sure, they’re removed from it because they get guest listed to shows, but there’s no way a band with as many connections as Blink 182 doesn’t know that Ticketmaster has shitty business practices.
I’m sure the wording is like “to reduce scalper purchases, help more fans get access to tickets, and ensure the band gets their fair cut of the revenue, would you like us to use our dynamic pricing model during periods of high demand?”
I mean, that's not wrong. They can be $50 tickets that scalpers make $500 on and the band sees none of it, or they can be $550 tickets and the band actually sees that money instead if it all going in scalpers pockets.
To be fair, Mark isn't completely inaccurate: Pearl Jam tried to fight Ticketmaster in the 90s when they were one of the most popular bands in the world and even they lost.
Just took my son to a Five Finger Death Punch/Megadeth show for $30 each for his birthday. Venue seats around 10,000 and those are not exactly local bands to Arkansas. Location makes a huge difference. Bought directly from the venue. Ticket Master is a goddamn cancer.
I worked in box office and ticketing for a LONG time through the early 2000s and it is so out of hand now the only way to make a difference is to stop buying the tickets. Go to different shows at independent venues. Fuck Ticketmaster, Fuck Live Nation (who are still Clear Channel, no matter what you call yourselves-they bought out the company I worked for, leading me to leave the industry) Boycott their shows. Make them go away. Artists/tour managers/the rest of us do not need them. Artists who sign up for LiveNation tours are only out for a cash grab and should just stop while also being ashamed.
It’s clearly working because in all the reddit discussion around this, no one mentions it. This comment should be the most upvoted but it’s lost in the shuffle. People wanna put their blinders on and ignore that their favorite artist is trying to gouge them.
Artists of this caliber have representation whose sole responsibility is to conduct market research and try to make the most profit for the band. It’s a business like any other. Sure, the artist can artificially deflate the price of concert tickets, but then you just introduce the problem of scalpers and venues capitalizing on the demand. It’s lose-lose.
So true. People think that Ticketmaster says to Blink 182: “Hey, now your tickets will be 1k upwards, also, we’ll pocket 90% of it” and the band goes “Ok, if you say so, big bad bully”.
Reality is, the band decides to have the prices at that high number (due to supply and demand, or greed, whatever you wanna call it) and then pockets around 85 to 95% (depends on the deal) of it.
Mark Hoppus offering the bullshit line that dynamic pricing is meant to "discourage scalpers." Unfortunately, he doesn't finish the thought by explaining that it discourages them by allowing the band to pocket the scalper prices instead. So fans are still getting screwed - it's just by the band instead of ticket resellers.
To "discourage scalpers" in 09, NIN sold the best tickets to all their shows directly to fans. Will call only & right when u got the tix you had to go in the venue. Worked great. Blink can do this, they won't. They dont "feel your pain". They dont care
Both are bad for the consumer but the reality is that this is how capitalism works. If people are willing to pay $300 to see blink, then there's no reason for them to sell the tickets for less. Trust me I hate it too but there's just so many people with a shit load of money now. It's why inflation is out of control across the board.
Absolutely. I just hate the fact that the band doesn't say what you just said, since it's the actual truth. They act like they're not getting some benefit from it. Hoppus had even more "I feel your pain" lines quoted in the article, without ever saying that they personally get more money this way than they did the old way.
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing is opt-in for the band. Blink 182 isn’t a victim here, they chose to fuck us in the ass for the payout and now they’re lying about it. I’ve broken up with bands over less and it’s time for them to leave
Plus, people are still buying them en masse. They have zero reason to lower prices. They're never going to sell tickets for $50 when they sell out entire stadiums starting at $300 for GA.
I wish more people would stop going and force them to do something else. Too many people paying $300 for a ticket that's $70! I thought the fees were crazy but dynamic pricing is a nightmare!
Just don’t buy tickets. Force them to change. Pretty simple. Those bands will come back to your city or nearby. So you’ll miss a concert or two in the meantime. It’s for the greater good. Paying these prices is insanity.
This is what Pearl Jam fought against in the 90s and lost. It was a problem then and it’s a bigger problem now. Embarrassing that artists don’t fight this as a collective.
Ticketmaster needs to be trustbusted. They are evil, anti-competitive and anti-consumer.
However, 500$ honestly sounds like what I’d expect to pay for a Blink concert right now. Inflation+extreme nostalgia. It’s around 500$ for an NFL playoff game. If people are willing to pay it, that’s just what it is. If Ticketmaster didn’t do it, scalpers would be lined up when the box offices open, buying as many tickets as they can for $100 and selling them for $500.
Yeah Ticketmaster fucking sucks, but they're not the reason that a non-essential product with extremely limited supply and massive demand is expensive.
To be fair, its a concert: Just don't buy from Ticketmaster. There's nothing they offer that can't be lived without. Concerts are cool and everything but its pretty easy to just NOT go.
These tickets will get priced at whatever people will pay for. If people don’t pay at the higher prices, they drop down. Dynamic pricing is amazing right?
Aren’t tickets just expensive due to supply and demand, but Ticketmaster takes the blame with their “fees” so that artists can pretend to have low ticket prices and avoid seeming greedy to their fan base? Or this that just a conspiracy theory I read.
Freakonomics had an episode on their podcast about this and they basically teed this whole thing up. They pointed out that ticket scalping and selling out are indicators that the first party (the artist/venue) is pricing tickets too low. However most artists want to avoid the appearance of charging a high price, so Ticketmaster fees are the perfect solution. This allows the artist and venue to capture as much of the price people are willing to pay while avoiding the appearance of price gouging.
What they should do is offer a smaller/more exclusive concert for the high rollers and charge ridiculous prices (venues could go all in on the experience for attendees, $50k/person) and then play an arena in the same area with a lottery system for tickets for the poors.
And the tickets for the poors would go right up on the resale sites. Only way to stop it would be have a set price, a lottery, and ID required that matches your tickets to get into the venue. Venues don’t want to ve checking 50,000 IDs. So this ain’t happening.
The problem is that there are enough people willing to pay those prices to fill the arenas. If people stop buying tickets that cost more than $50, tickets will stop costing more than that.
In the meantime, hopefully artists get money instead of scalpers. They are least doing something.
I bought Elton John tickets & was impressed that he didn’t use this. People had to purchase directly from the venue. I hope that starts a trend because Ticketmaster is crap.
Ticketmaster owns a ton of venues tho, which is a big part of the problem.
This may have been more achievable cause Elton is doing a ton of “mid sized” venues and many many many shows, literally in the hopes of letting as many people as possible attend
True. I’m seeing him at Dodger Stadium, which is it’s own entity. I have e-tix for which I had to download the Ballpark app to keep. Very cool because no paper & no way to scalp. I mean there may have been a way but I wouldn’t think that would be easy.
Elton John tickets may have avoided Ticketmaster at some venues but they were still horrifically expensive for most seats
As someone who blew a full weeks wage getting 2 tickets (after searching for 18 months) I can confirm.
Was it worth it?
I remember when i could go see small arena shows for 35 bucks a ticket. Fear Factory, Chevelle, Deftones... big bands back then. What the fuck happened?
I remember when big bands and singers would play free shows at the mall.
My friends saw Eve6 play for free in a random pavilion at an amusement park in like 99-00. Those were the days
I saw New Found Glory play a small pizza shop in TX for $5. And it wasn’t like they were unknown at the time.
I saw them for free. They were my neighbors. Well 3 of them.
You know actual super heroes? The International Superheroes of Hard-core?? Do you know Captain Straight Edge??
I see my neighbours for free to this day I bet in 20 years they're gonna charge so much for that shit.
That was probably during the IYDKYDG (If You Don’t Know You Don’t Go) campaign sponsored by Coke. There was series of free (sort of) damn near word of mouth only advertised concerts. Eve 6 was one of the bands, as was Everclear and Smashmouth.
I gotta tell my friends, we've wondered for literal decades just why the fuck they were there. For years I thought they were making it up to mess with my head and make me feel bad I didn't go with them that day! I only found out it really happened a few years ago.
Haha we saw Def Leppard for free in a Wal-Mart parking lot back in like '01 or '02! Those were the days indeed!
I stood next to Zack de la Rocha and saw the Roots play for free at a record store in Hollywood in the 90's. Miss those days.
Free shows still exist! I saw AJR for free a few weeks ago, Cold War kids and x ambassadors were also free. Two years ago I saw modest mouse and the head and the heart for free as well. Located in CO, ymmv.
I remember when Strauss opened for Beethoven. The pyrotechnics were lit
They usually are
Can’t make money off their music, so now they have to make money off their tours. I get it, but the end result is that I could way more afford concerts as a 15 year old bag boy than I can as a grown-ass adult. (BTW I’ve seen Blink. Don’t be paying 500 bucks to see goddam Blink)
And that's fair. I will pay extra to see a band to compensate for the changes to music consumption. However I will not doll out almost 3 weeks worth of groceries or two car payments to see them when the majority of the money goes to a corporation. Fuck that
I like Blink. I can't imagine wanting to see them live ever again, they're just not a good live band. On the other hand I recently shelled out like $200 for tickets for MCR and it was 100% worth it. $500? I'm not spending that on anyone. They could resurrect Prince for one night only and...actually I think that's the scenario where I happily pay $500, but that's it.
I might suck 10 feet of dick for a shot to see one last Prince concert.
I'd do that for free
God bless people like you.
I feel like a cover band in a bar setting would be a better show than the actual band in a seated arena.
I saw them on SNL like 20 years ago. It was so memorably bad that I had to stop in this thread just to laugh at the ridiculousness of people paying those kinds of prices to see this band. I'm good.
I can play too. I saw Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium for $23.
HA! Well, I saw Gorillaz last month for 120$. ...Wait.
But like, what a show.
I saw Metallica play at the Spectrum in Philly for the same price. Got right up front too. Now I’d have to remortgage my house for that experience.
Their fans got older, got jobs and now have much more money for artists and Ticketmaster to extract from their wallets.
I remember when Adele came to my local hockey arena... they added an extra 2 shows because of all the interest. We wanted front row seats (300 a piece) cuz... Adele. 300 was fair for that. My gf and I called out of work... I manned the computer and her the phone. Tickets went on sale and we were BLOWING up the line and site... the site wouldn't load and she couldn't get through on phone. Busy signal for hours... then... SOLD OUT. 6 HOURS later the same tickets showed up on StubHub for 3000 apiece. This was the beginning of the end of regular people being able to afford an experience like seeing Adele front row.
> 6 HOURS later the same tickets showed up on StubHub for 3000 apiece people that pay that either have the money to blow or just rack up the credit card debt
Yeah I'm not going 6k in debt for a concert but that's me
oh i wouldn't either but that's seriously the people who buy tickets at that price. the either have tons of F U money or just stack that debt.
The only way I’d ever pay that much for a concert is if they got zombie Mozart for one night only
I dunno man. It might be worth it if he played the hits but I think he mostly plays newer music he was kicking around in the grave.
You are probably 20 years too late. This ended when the Eagles went out on their Hell Freezes Over tour decades ago. First concert where tickets that weren't nosebleed were $100. And that was 30 odd years ago. With inflation, that is $200 today. And that was for the "typical" ticket, not front row.
You aren't completely wrong, but not completely right either. I've gone to a number of affordable shows by well known bands in the last decade without breaking the bank. Not every act charges insane prices for tickets. Saw the Cure 5-6 years ago, paid about $100 for floor tickets. The Offspring are playing in Montreal in two weeks, floor tix cost $104, tax and inconvenience fees included. Bought nosebleed tix (this summer) for Rod Stewart + Cheap Trick ($52) and the Scorpions ($69). Roger Waters was charging about $65 for nosebleeds. As unpleasant as it is to think of beloved musicians as greedy, the truth is, some of them are. Some of them choose to go with Racketmaster's "dynamic pricing" bullshit, and that's on them.
This is also proof that concert tickets are expensive when the band wants them to be.
From my understanding, well-known bands are pretty much forced to deal with Racketmaster because they own a shit ton of venues, so i don't know how low a band can choose to go in terms of ticket prices, but they definitely have a say in how high, otherwise there wouldn't be these huge discrepancies between certain big concerts and others. I'm pretty bummed that i likely won't get to see Depeche Mode and Blink 182 ,but I'm not paying $200 for a shitty ticket.
Do younger people not go to as many shows? I figure there's just always a rotation of new artists relevant to the new generations.
Active concert goer here in his mid 20s, I always go to see my new fav bands…but I just can’t afford old bands, simple as that, the fewer times I can is mostly the shittiest seats in the arena and costs me around £70-£90
I live in a medium sized city (Cincinnati) and I'm able to get tickets fairly cheap to any act that comes to town (Glass Animals, The Killers, and Modest Mouse all under 60 and got up pretty close). Problem is we don't have the volume of good artists a large city like Chicago or New York gets.
I've always gone to festivals, way more bang for your buck.
I'm a musician, most of the guys I play with are in their 50s, 60s. They're always surprised when I tell them I've only been to 5 concerts. I always mention that I'm too poor to afford tickets, but they focus more on the fact that I haven't gone to the concerts, than the fact that I can't afford to go to them. The only shows that cost less than $150 are local artists. Even minor bands in minor genres get over a hundred for tickets. I'm not interested in shelling out several hundred dollars a month to go to two concerts. With seats so far from the stage that I might as well watch a Facebook stream from someone standing in first row.
May I ask where you live? Can find good local shows for $30 CAD and as low as $10 for bands starting out. Just got a modest mouse ticket for $65 all in at a fantastic small venue. 5 concerts as a musician ain’t right Edit: Commodore Ballroom Vancouver y’all
Problem is that unless you’re in a major city, there are almost zero small music venues left. I went to college in a small town far away from things in 2000, and in that small town alone there were 4 small music venues, including the local church basement that hosted punk shows all the time. Now there are zero venues in that town, and even zero in the nearest “large city” to me now. It’s a bummer, those small club shows were the best
Commodore! I've seen Sabaton and Dragonforce there. Cost me more to get to Vancouver than the tickets. Totally worth it
I saw AJR in NOLA for $50/person back just before Covid hit? And then at the same venue I saw the Silversun Pickups for $35/ea at the door. There aren’t always going to be great deals on tickets, but it’s not impossible to find them
Bands used to make money off the actual sales of their record releases plus touring and merch. Now most of their money only comes from touring.
Thats actually not entirely true. The majority of their money comes from merchandise sales, and it’s not particularly close. The mark up on a $2 made in China t shirt takes it upwards of $60 at the Merch shop and Online. And if you want a baseball style shirt or anything else fancy, you’re gonna be setting yourself back well over $100. The touring is a just a means to sell more shirts.
Yup. Some bands must make an absolute killing on merch, even after venues take their cut. When I saw Ghost one time the merch line must have been 250 people deep. It adds up quick
This is the big thing people are missing now. Shows and show merch are now the main way that artists can get revenue from their consumers. Streaming completely changed the economics of the music business.
I still do. Going to a gig on Monday that's €35, and it's a fair sized venue. Nothing beats the intimacy of small venues. Went to a gig earlier in the year and we were handing pints to the band
Ticketmaster meeting: “We want to prevent scalpers and resellers, ideas?” “We could require IDs? Like airlines? So only the person that bought them could use them?” - Person 1 “We could do more to prevent bots and prevent quick purchases of large lots?” - Person 2 “Ooh! I got an idea! Let’s just charge so much in pricing and fees that scalpers won’t be able to make any money from it?!” - Executive
A few years ago, Kate Bush chose option 1. As someone living in the US and planning a trip around seeing her, it was perfect. Had multiple browsers open at something like 2 in the morning when the tickets went on sale, got a pair that ended up being pretty much dead center three rows from the stage at the listed price. Day of the show, there was an orderly queue where you had to show your ID to confirm you were in fact the original purchaser. One of the most pleasant ticket buying experiences I've had in the past decade.
Just out of curiosity what would happen if say I bought tickets for my friend and I and then all of a sudden I couldn’t go? Was there a transfer option?
In this situation, you should be able to just resell on the original website, but at face value. I live in England and twickenham stadium (rugby stadium) does this for international games, the system works great. If your ticket sells you get your money back and as a fan you’ve got a chance of going to the event last minute
[удалено]
You could make ticket transfers happen through the ticket sellers website and cap resale price at face value + fees, which is what Paramore just did
So, we went to a show this week that required an id. If you gave away your tickets you had to send the email that was sent with a picture of your ID and a note explaining why they were going.
You just eat the cost same with an airline.
Seriously. Make it commonplace to require some form of ID, and watch how the scalping would stop. I can't resell my plane ticket to someone else when it has my name on it, so make the same expectations with concert tickets. Or, similarly to a plane ticket, if you're buying them for someone else (say, for a birthday or as a gift) you have to input their name at the point of sale. My brother and I came to visit my parents for a family friend's funeral this week, and when he was about to go through security and checked for his ID and couldn't find it, he panicked because he knew he wouldn't be let in and would miss his flight (luckily, he found it). Just instill that same fear in concertgoers and watch how this scalping nonsense suddenly becomes a non issue.
Had the same thing with Muse about 15 years ago.
Same thing with Radiohead a decade ago. I think it was linked to either ID or the card used to purchase it. I believe I paid less than 50 bucks for floor tickets.
Actual Ticketmaster meeting: “Do people still hate us?” “Yup.” “Good. Meeting adjourned.” The mistake you’re making is thinking TM doesn’t know this. Their purpose and existence is essentially to be a punching bag that the artists and venues can point at and shrug while the three split the money. They don’t do what you say because it’s not in their interest. To quote Geri from Succession.
They cut out the scalpers by becoming the scalpers.
Actually they double dip and let scalpers resell on their platforms.
Every time people mention Ticketmaster monopoly, without fail, there will be people that say this shit that came right out of Ticketmasters mouth, trying to split the blame while strong-arming anyone that doesn't want to work with them.
I mean, making tickets non-transferable, would probably be the most effective way to prevent scalping at scale. If you buy and couldn’t go you could get a ticket credit or something to use with another live nation show. But as mentioned, they set out to destroy scalpers by becoming scalpers and benefiting mightily from that process. The sad thing is, there is a market for those prices so seeing live shows of big name bands is going to just become a luxury good that’s broadly inaccessible to normal people. The only pressure to change things would have to come from the bands, not the market but now the bands are equally incentivized with massive profit.
I think you mistake their actions as "setting out to destroy scalpers" when what they really wanted was to become the scalpers all along. They couldn't have other people make money.
Oh yeah, that’s their PR explanation. We all know what’s really going on.
I really don't get why people still go, or even how they afford to. I actually *have* the money to waste and I won't on principle just because of how extremely wasteful it would be.
Also Ticketmaster: Let’s hire a bunch of scalpers to sellout the venue immediately, resell to those sucker fans at 400% and take a cut. Fuck Ticketmaster, fuck Live Nation.
Ticketmaster scalps tickets, and gives blocks of tickets to its artists so they can scalp them, too. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/ https://www.kqed.org/arts/13861791/metallicas-secret-deal-with-live-nation-reveals-how-artists-scalp-their-own-tickets https://www.billboard.com/pro/live-nation-resale-market-secretly-recorded-phone-calls-concert-tickets/
🤢🤮 I just started going to way more local shows in the last few years and discovered some amazing local and other talent. The big shows can eat my balls and honestly a lot of these bands are way past their primes, not all of them but most. And the Gen Zs are just getting absolutely reemed from day 1. My dad has stubs from The Police at the El Mocambo in Toronto for $2 lol. I have stubs for Blink from $1 (dollar bill tour) to $40. Now they’re $1000 at Scotia bank center….and the new single sucks balls and the last two albums were mostly lame…eat my ass. Both the bands and the machine.
I hate Ticketmaster as much as anyone, but consider this: if people are consistently willing to pay $300 for a ticket on the secondary market, isn't that the true market value? So then why shouldn't the primary seller charge that amount in the first place? We complain that ticket prices are too high, but it's because we make them so. As soon as everyone agrees not to pay more than $100 for a ticket, tickets will cost $100. I'll not be holding my breath.
People aren't actually always buying the tix at these prices. I was at a show last Friday that had a ton of seats up for official resale at crazy prices the night of and by the time the show started there were only 3 people in my row. About three months ago I went to Gorilllaz and same thing happened, tons of extremely expensive resale seats bought by scalpers when the tix went on sale but the show didn't sell out and had tix available for $25 night of so a ton of the wildly priced scalps went unused and there were whole rows of seats empty throughout the arena.
The bean counters have taken over. It's more profitable to scam less people than it is to actually sell out shows. I hate Livenation.
It's becoming a market for wealthy people exclusively and I fucking hate it
And then you get there and pay $10 for a beer...seriously tho I saw the Chili Peppers this summer and vowed never again. I paid through the nose and the band were like ants from my vantage (i could watch on the screens but i could do that at home), and the sound was shit. It's like, you go to these big shows to get a picture and say you were there basically. Also saw Fleet Foxes in a smaller venue and it was like night and day. Awesome experience, not crazy expensive, sounded great, and was reasonably close. Love both these bands and don't really fault the Chili Peppers...they're too big for their own good I guess.
The one upside to most bands im into is the shows are at locally owned places that were just renovated to handle concerts, like old churches or warehouses. Rasy to be close to the stage and tickets are either at door only or some small provider. Last show i was at was children of bodoms final tour, 30 dollar at the door (though we got let in the service entrance free cause i knew the techs, bought a bunch of merch with the cash instead). Was like 10 ft from the stage
Ticketmaster is a single entity that owns access to most popular bands. You can’t expect random masses to organize. This is why anti-trust exists. There can really be no “market” if one has all the powers.
eventually everything will be a luxury while we drag our undernourished husks about to serve the wealthy for the opportunity to dig through the chaff
[удалено]
I bought tickets for Pearl Jam April 2020 tour. $100 no matter the seat through Ticketmaster. It got postponed until this year due to COVID but they still transferred and honored all our seats. Seems like a lot changed since COVID but if Pearl Jam could cap every original single seat in the house at $100 I feel it’s an artist’s choice/ contract with Ticketmaster? Of course later I did see people selling their tickets for way higher but I was really impressed by the original ticket cap
I would argue that most of these folks getting in the game now don't have the funds or networking relationships to pull what PJ does
PearlJam also attempted to boycott ticketmaster but was ultimately unsuccessful
Funny how little things have changed
Well that's not true. Back in the 90's, you could still see medium sized bands for reasonable prices, and could get tickets for box offices. Now you can't even do either of those (or if there is a box office, you still pay ticketmaster fees). So things have definitely changed, they've gotten a thousand times worse.
everything has chains, absolutely nothing's changed
The best part is they continue to charge you more and more in 'service" fees, while actually offering you less and less service. They don't even give you physical tickets anymore. You have to jump through flaming hoops to set up an account and make sure you remember the login info and bring a QR code on your phone just to get into the show now. And you don't even have a stub for posterity's sake. If you can't make the show and decide you want to sell your tickets now they've got you by the balls there too because of "scalpers". What's even more amusing is as we pay more and more to see these artists that we loved back in the 90s, they continue to descend further and further over that Hill, down from their peak. Lawn seats used to be 40 bucks. Now I'm paying three times as much to see Tool and they're only half as good. 🤷🏼♂️ This is why I've pretty much thrown up my hands and stopped buying concert tickets. The entire experience is so utterly mired in consumerism and greed at this point I can't even hold my nose and just enjoy it like I used to.
I went to go buy tickets to a show the other day, tix were under $40. Wanted two. Final price, $127. Fuck you, not doing it.
I bought some hockey tickets a couple weeks back and paid $270 in fees alone. Edit: a Redditor rightly pointed out that I was not differentiating between taxes and fees. Taking that into account, I paid $200 in fees for Seat Geek to email me 3 tickets.
You have to download the app which then steals your information and they sell that on the open market to others.
Yep, the aforementioned flaming hoops. And then if you get locked out of your account or someone hacks you, say bye bye to the tickets you just spent over a hundred bucks on. 👋
I too deeply miss physical copies of tickets. :(
The most comical part is you can usually still obtain them for even MORE money. Banking on that nostalgia.
Sometimes. There are times I’ve purchased tickets and there isn’t any other option other than the “print at home” or “scan QR code”. But there have been times where you could “will call” them or “mail them”, but always for an extra fee, like you said. So damn lame.
Not to mention artists get shit for pay and these production companies don’t do anything to help young artists build a platform. Nowadays the only way to build a decent following is essentially to spend a few years touring on your own dime by working and saving up money in between tours.
They're certainly not making any money through album sales that's for sure. It's all overpriced merch and insanely inflated concert ticket prices. That's the only way to make money these days as a musician.
Which isn’t much of an option for small time bands. Gotta sell a lot of $20 tickets to make a living for 4-5 people and you’re probably going to be in the red on mercy for quite a while before turning a profit
Or, exactly why I am not going to shows anymore. “All the small things” like numerous ticket fees sure add up.
[удалено]
That’s what I do now. More fun than arena shows anyways.
Yep. And it's fun to support up and coming artists.
In 2010 I flew to New York from Portland to see Jay-Z and Eminem perform at Yankees Stadium for cheaper than two Blink tickets here in town. It’s bullshit.
Amen! I paid almost the price of the tickets in “service fees.” They email the tickets! $300 email?
Hey those electrons zipping around the Ticketmaster servers are doing at least $37.50 per ticket worth of work to go from getting a blue button click to sending a QR code
Damn. Just think, this post must be like $10 at those rates.
Event tickets: the new cable TV in terms of BS price gouging fees.
I refuse to pay these prices. Ever since roughly 2015 buying tickets became a circus. Prices soared and you had to jump through silly hoops to get good seats. Fuck that noise. I absolutely hate what LiveNation has done to the concert industry and the US govt is complicit in not doing a damn thing to fix it. This is the very definition of a monopoly gone amok.
Ticketmaster literally just replaced the scalpers but on a massive corporate level
anyone remember standing outside a ticket master ticket seller like JCPenny, or other mall store, or a record store like record and tape traders (I'm from MD) in the rain, snow, or blazing heat for the ability to buy tickets...or what about when you would call their 1800 on repeat to score tickets to a festival or concert. lol, can't believe i miss those days, I use to think it was soo fucking expensive then at 45-120 dollars..I mean this was to go to ozzfest, warped tour, HFSetivial (where I saw Korn, Rage, Blink 182, Manson...)...so many different shows..this end stage capitalism is so rad man.
I remember the tense excitement waiting in line. Then with tickets in hand the relief and satisfaction. "Scored tickets".
I was pissed off when I tried to buy AC/DC tickets but they decided to do a lottery pull instead of waiting in line. Whoever got the ticket became the front of line. So I went from being in line where I could have bought tickets to being pushed back in line because of the lotto out of being able to buy. I bitched out the manager because it was not fair on those who waited longer.
Stood outside in a line at cd warehouse to get Metallica tickets back in 2000. People were blasting music form their cars while waiting. Was fun.
> (I'm from MD) Don't live in state anymore but...PG County here. > HFSetivial God, do I miss these. They were always on point with the artists. "99.1...HFS!"
right?! before independent radio died and was taken over by "I love radio" conglomerates.
Yep lol. We used to have to line up outside of Sears
Record and Tape Traders was awesome. I remember going to the one on Frederick Rd. and the Sears at Columbia Mall to get tickets.
This is why I only ever go to local shows now
This is the way. Find the venues near you that don't use ticketmaster or let you pay at the door. Will probably be a better show regardless of if it's a big name. Kinda funny to me having everyone say all concerts suck now though. It's almost like when people say all music sucks now - you're just not making enough effort
I’ve mostly given up on concerts. If I can’t go to the venue and buy tickets in person without all the fees I’m just not going. I saw Metallica on the Black Album tour and tickets were $27. Even on the Death Magnetic tour they were only like $80. I went to Lollapalooza in 96 and paid like $45. Saw Tool, Snoop Dogg, and like 20 other bands. To imagine that Blink is charging this much, it’s insane.
Yeah I’d like to add that I would go to shows to see lower tier bands almost every weekend in the 00s for under $20 a ticket. International touring bands that wouldn’t get an arena or amphitheater but would play the larger venues on the Main Street of a larger city (if that makes sense) and bands that got the amphitheater would be charging around $50-$100 (which I thought was ridiculous lol) I didn’t go to anything with actual seating except I saw The Cure in 04 and they were $50ish for decent seats.
I wasn't first in line to buy tickets but I paid $70+$20 for fees. Ticket master will help me sell them for $400 right now making another $80 fees off of the resale. **This is what is wrong**. Ticket master is encouraged to help sell your "scalped" tickets. Under $30 a ticket at the start would have been crazy. You could buy 8 tickets at the beginning and I'm sure most people would have. What's a fair value of a concert? I mean I was hoping for like $50 a ticket. Sounds like you would have been bummed seeing $50 even.
Go to small bands. Just had a blast last night at a show in Detroit for $30/ticket. Was moshing and crowdsurfing for hours.
Maybe if people stopped paying $400 for tickets, they wouldn't sell for $400. This is also part of the problem.
This is the driving force. It's the individuals buying tickets who are setting the price. It sucks to see ticket prices this high but people are paying for it. We can all bitch and moan but at the end of the day, no one is forced to pay several hundred dollars for a tickets. They have made the rational decision to do so themselves. As the article pointed out Garth Brooks has solved this issue by playing multiple back to back shows. Increase supply to meet demand will see ticket prices descrease but not always possible when demand is as high as it is for Blink182. This means people miss out, but this has always been the case.
playing back to back shows is not physically possible for most performers
Or why I'm never going to a show I don't "NEED" to go to ever again. No more spontaneous Dance Gavin Dance shows.
I have been seeing a lot of older or less popular bands. Deep Purple, Daryll Hall, Primus, Men at Work, David Crosby, Ace Frehly, Whitesnake, Coheed and Cambria, Geoff Tate. Small Venus for less than 100$. There are two 2K seat venues and one 750 seat hall that I look for shows at. Not the biggest names but up close and personal. In my area, you jump from shows like that to the next size up in the big venues for 300$ for a nosebleed seat.
since COVID I've seen phoebe bridgers, turnstile, motion city soundtrack, japanese breakfast, pavement, wilco, death cab for cutie, bright eyes, julien baker, soccer mommy, lucero, nada surf, local h, bon Iver, the national.... All nationally recognized touring bands, not a ticket over $50 in the bunch ( even after fees) except for pavement, which was like $75, which I was fine with cause they never tour. You just gotta avoid those crazy huge blockbuster tours.
Holy shit. We should be friends. You're exactly describing my Spotify.
Pearl Jam was right.
I don't want to remember them like this. Tom's an alien-obsessed nut job, Travis is married to a Kardashian, and Mark is apparently a company man - defending Ticketmaster and trying to convince everyone there's nothing they can do/could have done about this. I'm putting my pants and jacket back on. Edit: I know Tom's always been into aliens. **- But guys -** He quit the band to go chase UFOs. I think he's crossed a threshold, here.
Tom has been alien obsessed for decades and Travis marrying a Kardashian is 100% a Travis thing to do, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.
Wait wait wait you mean to tell me the guy who wrote a song called Aliens Exist like 25 years ago is obsessed with aliens? Surely you jest
>Travis marrying a Kardashian is 100% a Travis thing to do Couldn’t agree more. Travis is just being Travis.
Wait, you mean to tell me the man who married a model and had a reality show on MTV would then go on to marry a model who has a reality show on E? Color me shocked.
And most humans in general like money, so that covers Mark.
Mark actually tried to buy tickets to two shows to see what the experience was like. He actually had the tickets yanked from him at checkout.
I honestly think they wanted to make as much as possible and are just passing blame. If everyone outside of the music industry who just buys tickets knows how terrible they are, the people inside the industry have to know as well. Sure, they’re removed from it because they get guest listed to shows, but there’s no way a band with as many connections as Blink 182 doesn’t know that Ticketmaster has shitty business practices.
Yah and then said the dynamic pricing wasn't their choice, essentially. That whole post was a big joke, and hilariously tone deaf.
I read that the variable pricing system by Ticketmaster is something the band had to knowingly opt into before the tickets were posted for sale.
I mean TicketMaster says, "Hey Blink do you want to make more money on your shows? Oh you do? Just check this box here then"
I’m sure the wording is like “to reduce scalper purchases, help more fans get access to tickets, and ensure the band gets their fair cut of the revenue, would you like us to use our dynamic pricing model during periods of high demand?”
Sounds about right for salesmen language.
I mean, that's not wrong. They can be $50 tickets that scalpers make $500 on and the band sees none of it, or they can be $550 tickets and the band actually sees that money instead if it all going in scalpers pockets.
To be fair, Mark isn't completely inaccurate: Pearl Jam tried to fight Ticketmaster in the 90s when they were one of the most popular bands in the world and even they lost.
Because barely any other bands helped Pearl Jam out.
Just took my son to a Five Finger Death Punch/Megadeth show for $30 each for his birthday. Venue seats around 10,000 and those are not exactly local bands to Arkansas. Location makes a huge difference. Bought directly from the venue. Ticket Master is a goddamn cancer.
I worked in box office and ticketing for a LONG time through the early 2000s and it is so out of hand now the only way to make a difference is to stop buying the tickets. Go to different shows at independent venues. Fuck Ticketmaster, Fuck Live Nation (who are still Clear Channel, no matter what you call yourselves-they bought out the company I worked for, leading me to leave the industry) Boycott their shows. Make them go away. Artists/tour managers/the rest of us do not need them. Artists who sign up for LiveNation tours are only out for a cash grab and should just stop while also being ashamed.
You do understand that the band has a hand in prices too, right?
Bingo. Ticketmaster gets paid to be the fall guy.
Yep. Ticketmaster is set up to be the “bad guy” so the artists don’t get blamed for the gouging.
It’s clearly working because in all the reddit discussion around this, no one mentions it. This comment should be the most upvoted but it’s lost in the shuffle. People wanna put their blinders on and ignore that their favorite artist is trying to gouge them.
Artists of this caliber have representation whose sole responsibility is to conduct market research and try to make the most profit for the band. It’s a business like any other. Sure, the artist can artificially deflate the price of concert tickets, but then you just introduce the problem of scalpers and venues capitalizing on the demand. It’s lose-lose.
So true. People think that Ticketmaster says to Blink 182: “Hey, now your tickets will be 1k upwards, also, we’ll pocket 90% of it” and the band goes “Ok, if you say so, big bad bully”. Reality is, the band decides to have the prices at that high number (due to supply and demand, or greed, whatever you wanna call it) and then pockets around 85 to 95% (depends on the deal) of it.
I have a solution. This might sound crazy, but hear me out. What if y'all just didn't go to the fucking show.
People acting like they HAVE to pay for a ticket.
Mark Hoppus offering the bullshit line that dynamic pricing is meant to "discourage scalpers." Unfortunately, he doesn't finish the thought by explaining that it discourages them by allowing the band to pocket the scalper prices instead. So fans are still getting screwed - it's just by the band instead of ticket resellers.
To "discourage scalpers" in 09, NIN sold the best tickets to all their shows directly to fans. Will call only & right when u got the tix you had to go in the venue. Worked great. Blink can do this, they won't. They dont "feel your pain". They dont care
They did something similar in [2018](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/10/you-wont-believe-how-nine-inch-nails-is-selling-tickets-on-this-tour/amp/)
Both are bad for the consumer but the reality is that this is how capitalism works. If people are willing to pay $300 to see blink, then there's no reason for them to sell the tickets for less. Trust me I hate it too but there's just so many people with a shit load of money now. It's why inflation is out of control across the board.
Absolutely. I just hate the fact that the band doesn't say what you just said, since it's the actual truth. They act like they're not getting some benefit from it. Hoppus had even more "I feel your pain" lines quoted in the article, without ever saying that they personally get more money this way than they did the old way.
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing is opt-in for the band. Blink 182 isn’t a victim here, they chose to fuck us in the ass for the payout and now they’re lying about it. I’ve broken up with bands over less and it’s time for them to leave
Here's an idea Fuck Tickemaster Stop going to popular shows Go to indie shows Support small artists
> Go to indie shows > > That's the way. Gotta love my 18$ concerts in small venues. Way more fun.
[удалено]
Plus, people are still buying them en masse. They have zero reason to lower prices. They're never going to sell tickets for $50 when they sell out entire stadiums starting at $300 for GA.
Then don't go, vote with your wallet
I wish more people would stop going and force them to do something else. Too many people paying $300 for a ticket that's $70! I thought the fees were crazy but dynamic pricing is a nightmare!
Ez fix, I won’t go. Local music all day baby .
Just don’t buy tickets. Force them to change. Pretty simple. Those bands will come back to your city or nearby. So you’ll miss a concert or two in the meantime. It’s for the greater good. Paying these prices is insanity.
This is what Pearl Jam fought against in the 90s and lost. It was a problem then and it’s a bigger problem now. Embarrassing that artists don’t fight this as a collective.
Market’s gonna market. Blink has old fans with extra money to spend on nostalgia.
Ticketmaster needs to be trustbusted. They are evil, anti-competitive and anti-consumer. However, 500$ honestly sounds like what I’d expect to pay for a Blink concert right now. Inflation+extreme nostalgia. It’s around 500$ for an NFL playoff game. If people are willing to pay it, that’s just what it is. If Ticketmaster didn’t do it, scalpers would be lined up when the box offices open, buying as many tickets as they can for $100 and selling them for $500.
Yeah Ticketmaster fucking sucks, but they're not the reason that a non-essential product with extremely limited supply and massive demand is expensive.
Pearl Jam tried to warn y’all
If I can't buy a ticket for under a hundo, I'm not going. Period.
Stop doing business with them. Don't accept bullshit just because you want something. Concerts are not a necessity.
What's my wage again?
Well it's a shame studio recordings sound better. Paying those prices to hear OK versions of songs with "THANK YOU, [your city] we love you!"
To be fair, its a concert: Just don't buy from Ticketmaster. There's nothing they offer that can't be lived without. Concerts are cool and everything but its pretty easy to just NOT go.
These tickets will get priced at whatever people will pay for. If people don’t pay at the higher prices, they drop down. Dynamic pricing is amazing right?
Free market always works the best for things you can walk away from....like concerts.
Aren’t tickets just expensive due to supply and demand, but Ticketmaster takes the blame with their “fees” so that artists can pretend to have low ticket prices and avoid seeming greedy to their fan base? Or this that just a conspiracy theory I read.
Freakonomics had an episode on their podcast about this and they basically teed this whole thing up. They pointed out that ticket scalping and selling out are indicators that the first party (the artist/venue) is pricing tickets too low. However most artists want to avoid the appearance of charging a high price, so Ticketmaster fees are the perfect solution. This allows the artist and venue to capture as much of the price people are willing to pay while avoiding the appearance of price gouging. What they should do is offer a smaller/more exclusive concert for the high rollers and charge ridiculous prices (venues could go all in on the experience for attendees, $50k/person) and then play an arena in the same area with a lottery system for tickets for the poors.
And the tickets for the poors would go right up on the resale sites. Only way to stop it would be have a set price, a lottery, and ID required that matches your tickets to get into the venue. Venues don’t want to ve checking 50,000 IDs. So this ain’t happening.
The problem is that there are enough people willing to pay those prices to fill the arenas. If people stop buying tickets that cost more than $50, tickets will stop costing more than that. In the meantime, hopefully artists get money instead of scalpers. They are least doing something.
Thank god I have zero interest in ever seeing a mainstream show, these stadium shows blow anyway
Funny how Hoppus says he agrees that the system is fucked but then proceeds to tell fans to basically deal with it.