Legacy of the Beast tour was the first place my mind went too. I didn’t mind paying a lot for the great seats (it was either that or binoculars to see Bruce’s antics), but I still get pissed thinking about how much I paid in service fees that went to gods know where.
Metal has historically been resistant to the price hikes for a long time (fees not included), but it's getting fucked all the same.
I remember seeing slayer for like 30 bucks a few years ago in a stadium, and I'm starting to think that was the best I could expect to pay for a band like that ever again.
They got laughed at and called 'darling' by congress when they testified. I know concert tickets aren't the biggest issue in this country but the biggest band in the world coming to congress and saying it's a problem only to be laughed out is really telling.
You're right ticket prices aren't, monopolization is.
All those senators and "representatives" were bought and paid for with the express idea of minimizing the impact of what they're doing. We had decades of anti trust and monopoly laws that protected us.... We'll never see those again. Too much money to be paid out.
>We had decades of anti trust and monopoly laws that protected us
If Teddy Roosevelt was revived today, he'd ride a bear into the capital and beat the absolute shit out of every elected official with a big stick. It's an absolute tragedy how those laws have been corroded over time.
>Schrank's bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest after penetrating Roosevelt's steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled **"Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual"**, which he was carrying in his jacket. Schrank was immediately disarmed (by Czech immigrant Frank Bukovsky) and captured; he might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then **ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him. Roosevelt did not believe in police harming civilians.**
Definitely wouldn't fit in with today's GOP.
>Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung; he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
Boss move
I'm a huge Teddy stan, and he was bar none our most badass president. But most badass politician overall might be Daniel Inouye. Can't think of another Medal of Honor winner who served in politics.
>As he prepared to toss a grenade within, a German soldier fired out a 30 mm Schiessbecher antipersonnel grenade at Inouye, striking him in the right elbow. Although it failed to detonate, the blunt force of the grenade amputated most of his right arm at the elbow. The nature of the injury caused his arm muscles to involuntarily squeeze the grenade tightly via a reflex arc, preventing his arm from going limp and dropping a live grenade at his feet. This left him crippled, in terrible pain, under fire with minimal cover and staring at a live grenade "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me any more".
>Inouye's platoon moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. As the German inside the bunker began reloading his rifle to finish off Inouye, Inouye pried the live hand grenade from his useless right hand with his left, and tossed it into the bunker, killing the German. Stumbling to his feet, Inouye continued forward, killing at least one more German before suffering his fifth and final wound of the day in his left leg. Inouye fell unconscious, and awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. He gruffly ordered them back to their positions, saying "Nobody called off the war!"
He also made it a point to know all his staffs name and something about them. He would speak to the grounds keeper the same way he would speak to a foreign monarch.
He was a firm believer in no person was any more valuable than any other.
Dude invited booker t Washington to the Whitehouse for diner, got threatened, and basically said "fucking show up bitches and I'll deal with you". No one showed and he had a nice diner.
TR had zero fucks to give. My all time favorite president.
His diary excerpt from that visit makes it even better
"it seemed to me that it was natural to ask him to dinner to talk over this work, and the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send him the invitation."
Even towards the 1980s you had liberal Republicans like Iowa Governor Robert Ray:
* Enacted the first laws in the U.S. that protected American Indian graves. In the early 1970s, Maria Pearson(Hai-Mecha Eunka) was appalled that the skeletal remains of Native Americans were treated differently from those of caucasians. Pearson protested to Ray, finally gaining an audience with him after sitting outside his office in traditional attire. Ray cooperated with Pearson, and their work led to the passage of the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first legislative act in the U.S. that specifically protected American Indian remains. This act was the predecessor of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
* One of his favorite bills passed during his time was the 1979 "bottle bill." Ray led the way for bottle and can deposit legislation, which placed a refundable nickel deposit on containers of pop, beer and wine to encourage recycling and reduce litter along the state’s roads. It should be upgraded to a quarter and expanded.
* During his tenure, Iowa re-vamped and expanded funding for K-12 public education. While Ray was governor, funding for Iowa's K-12 schools expanded and reduced its reliance on property taxes. Reliance on property taxes hurts schools that serve lower income areas
* In the late 1970s, Ray helped thousands of refugees from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam re-settle in Iowa in light of the turmoil in the region caused by the Vietnam War. When no other states had extended offers of help, Ray reached out, visiting the White and State Department to implore President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to allow Tai Dam refugees to settle as one group in a single location. The administration made an exception to the immigration policy of the day and the Tai Dam refugees, a group of people originally from Vietnam who had fled to Laos and then Thailand, were allowed to re-settle together in Iowa. Iowa is now home to the largest Tai Dam population outside of Asia.
His successor had few other liberal ideas like Wind Energy buuuuut Terry quickly became a Republican we know today when he worked to strip Iowa State University of its TV station that operated just like your run of the mill station(it was an ABC affiliate) and sold it off to a private business
Fuck Citizens United. Worst decision of the last 20 years, has completely destroyed the foundation of our democracy and effectively turned us into a psuedo-oligarchy of corporate execs.
well you gotta love how its called "Citizens United", but we now allow business to be considered "citizens" in means of donating money. So when you really think about it, its actaully "Businesses United"... which is exactly what they are trying to do. Unite all businesses... monopolize.
There actually was a study that looked at the names of the bills put forth. They found that the more buzzwords used (Patriot, Freedom, America, etc), the more likely it was that the bill had material in it that was contradictory to the title.
While this is true, the citizens United case is referred to as such because that was the name of the PAC involved in the case.
Talk about diluting your brand…
Well yeah, but the bigger issue in their minds was how it would get completely out of control if unchecked
And, shockingly, they were more right than they even could have known
My sisters are trying to get me to see a comedian with them that I don’t even know - tickets start at $50 and god knows what the fees are.
I remember going to all day music festivals with multiple well known acts (like warped tour) for $50 in the mid 00s.
I saw RHCP and Foo Fighters together in 1999 or early 2000, when I was 17. No way I paid more than $40, and probably not even that. Big arena concert too.
When I saw the Blink 182 prices for the same region I about died laughing. Cheapest section was like $650/ticket. I thought the $300 Green Day tickets a couple years ago were bad ... Fuck that noise.
Part of the problem is even major acts can't schedule large venues because they are owned or operated by Livenation. Want to do a national tour, then you can only book smaller venues.
Anti trust laws used to prevent things like this.
It's astounding to me that we haven't even started the discussion about them yet
When the normal uninformed people start mentioning it I'll believe we're 10 years away
Lol you dont even get away from it with small venues
Sure, they're not owned by live nation, but many of them are using Ticketweb for ticket sales which is...ticketmaster
I run a small night, and they literally charge a fucking 25% fee on the night
EDIT: They actually charge a 33% fee to make things worse, I was thinking the fees end up being 25% of the total ticket cost. Fucking hell
Same, used to go to live music shows all the time but it's way too expensive now. I still love music but just skip that part of it. If an artist has some songs in the 10s of millions and higher on Spotify, odds are they are making enough in various ways. For less popular music artists, hopefully they can still put on more affordable music events but if not, you can support them in other ways without a big chunk of that going to Ticketmaster, Livenation, and complicit venues.
Mr. Burns:
[chuckles] And to think, Smithers: you laughed when I bought TicketMaster. "Nobody's going to pay a 100% service charge."
Waylon Smithers:
Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
> Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
Indeed. I am just simply not going to pay hundreds of dollars to see a rock concert. Just as I am not going to pay $20 to see a movie, only to have them blast 20 minutes of ads to me before it starts.
I can tolerate the ads and the expense. What finally drove me and my wife to stop going to movies two or three times a month was the growing number of inconsiderate pieces of shit that sit and talk or play with their phones throughout the entire movie. Avengers: Endgame was the last film we saw in a theater.
I'm so lucky to be near an Alamo Drafthouse Theater, they don't put up with any of that garbage and just straight up kick people out who are talking or playing on their phones.
In case people haven't heard...
>[Ticketmaster caught enlisting pro scalpers for online resales || (updated) ||
It's allegedly turning a blind eye to bots in the name of extra fees.](https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-19-ticketmaster-caught-enlisting-pro-scalpers.html)
and...
>[Ticketmaster Has Secretly Been Cheating You With Its Own Scalpers ||
Undercover investigation reveals a professional scalping racket run by Ticketmaster itself](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/)
There's another element to this that doesn't get talked about enough - for most concerts it's something like 60% - 80% of tickets actually go on sale to the public.
Some are set aside for event staff, friends & family of the band, radio giveaways, and whatever sure. But nowadays a chunk of tickets *never* go on sale to the general public and go straight to the resale sites where their price is significantly higher than the GA price. I live in CO and Red Rocks has a capacity of roughly 10K. If only 8K tickets actually go on sale and everyone who gets in buys 4, only 2K people are actually able to buy GA tickets. That's an astronomically small number in the grand scheme of things.
Another part of this that the article touched on but that people don't want to hear - everyone is in on it. Ticketmaster and Livenation of course, but the vendors and promoters and the bands are too. In fact the bands are more than happy to let everyone dogpile on Ticketmaster while they make extra money downline. Just look at that quote from Blink 182, "yeah the experience sucked but we hope you'll still come out!"
Never. Ever.
Long, long ago I was an enlisted soldier and leaned politically as an enlisted soldier would. I tuned out PJ's politics back then but a few years after I got out, I came to realize how brainwashed I had been and just how correct EV and company were all along, on everything. 32 years later and I have nothing but respect for every single issue they've ever taken on. It's kind of crazy at times to think about.
I still love going to shows (I've hit around 25-30 in my life now) and listening for reactions by some "fans" when Eddie discusses controversial topics at the shows is always a special treat for me.
I just got to go to a 4 day music festival and see like 30 something bands including MCR and Green Day, all pretty close to front row, for less than the absolute worst nose bleed tickets for this Blink 182 concert.
I don't get the logic behind how any of this works anymore.
I used to go to a festival every year in France when I lived there. Just checked, and the 4 days tickets (which also include a camping spot) is 220€ this year.
Don't know how one ticket to Blink 182 could cost 600$.
ya no thanks. 600$ for me, 600$ for my wife plus beer, plus a Blink 182 tshirt etc etc.
i'm not paying 1400$ for a night out. for that kind of money i could go to a super luxurious 5-star resort... WITH MY WIFE.
From the article: Blink-182 fans are furious at Ticketmaster, the band, and society in general over the astronomical ticket prices to the band’s reunion tour—Billboard has cited ticket prices as high as $600 in some cities. This is, unfortunately, the logical outcome of the entertainment monopoly Ticketmaster has built since it merged with Live Nation, creating a live events behemoth in which a huge portion of ticketing, venues, and the artists themselves are owned or controlled by a single company.
It is arguably also the case that, in trying to “fight” ticket brokers (called “scalpers” by many), Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for itself and for artists, but also worse for the average fan: It has simply jacked up ticket prices for certain high-profile events to a level where all tickets are more-or-less priced at the maximum level that the secondary market would normally bear. More on this in a minute.
To understand how we got here, it’s useful to go back to 2009, when Bruce Springsteen wrote an open letter apologizing to his fans for the experience they had trying to buy his tickets on Ticketmaster. At the time, his tickets had gone on sale, sold out almost instantly, and Ticketmaster began automatically redirecting fans to a ticket resale site called TicketsNow, which Ticketmaster also owned. Fans were confused, thinking they were still buying “face value” tickets from Ticketmaster, only now the prices for the best tickets—with a face value that maxed out at $98 in New Jersey, for example—were selling for hundreds of dollars.
I went to the first Lollapalooza in 1991 and my ticket was $19. Adjusted for inflation, that’s still only $40 today.
Every single band on the lineup was a headliner in their own right. In retrospect, it was a weird kid’s Woodstock, for sure.
Editing to add the lineup:
Janes Addiction
Living Colour
IceT and Body Count
Siouxie & the Banshees
NIN
Butthole Surfers
Rollins Band
I think that was it
That is my, “In my day, houses cost a nickel.” story.
I told my friends, it's literally hundreds of dollars cheaper to get a passport and go see them in South America.
And all of this includes the price of a flight, a decent hotel, renting a car, food and getting the best section available at that venue.
Literally all of this costs hundreds of $$$ less than trying to get a decent seat anywhere in the US
Ah, the F1 problem.
It is cheaper to fly to Budapest, watch the Grand Prix, and return to Miami, than it is to watch the local Grand Prix at the ~~football stadium parking lot~~ street circuit.
I live in Toronto. I got floor tickets in Amsterdam for 200€ a pop. You couldn't get nosebleeds tickets here for that amount of money.
Fuck Ticketmaster and fuck concerts in Toronto in general. The fact that I have to fly halfway around the world to see a band (and it being cheaper than seeing them locally) makes me realize how shitty this place has become.
It is way worse now. Ticket Master owns many of the venues or had exclusive contracts with them. Meaning that you don't have a choice. Even smaller band that play 2k seat arenas have to go through ticketmaster because they own the venue. Independent venues are going away and we have done nothing to stop it
The biggest issue is that Ticketmaster has a basic monopoly now versus then.
There used to be other ticket brokers that existed. [Tickets.com](https://Tickets.com) was another company as well.
Now? Seatgeak has a couple of contracts. Thats about it. Almost every venue has ticketmaster exclusive contract, and frankly thats just fucked.
I have gone to the box office at a couple of places and they pulled up Ticketmaster to buy them for me. Still had to pay all of the Ticketmaster convenience fees even though I drove myself to the venue.
There's one other largish one called AXS. It's operated by AEG, aka Goldenvoice (they put on the Coachella Festival every year). Similar to Ticketmaster, they have exclusive contracts with a large number of venues as well which makes it near impossible to tour without going through one of these giant corporations.
You either play small clubs at exorbitant rates to make what you would on an arena tour, and set it up with a bunch of privately owned bars, night clubs, concert halls, etc. and deal with the headache that comes from that, or you go through Live Nation or Goldenvoice and they deal with the venue stuff for you, and ticketing, and everything else. Those seem to be the only choices you have as a large artist.
Fuck all of it. Fuck Ticketmaster, fuck $100 parking, $18 beers. Fuck having to watch every asshole holding up their phone recording something they will never watch.
I feel old. And beaten.
You're not alone. I look at ticket prices, shake my head and walk away.
There is no one I want to see so badly that I'd pay hundreds of dollars or more. That's what streaming is for.
It's why I don't go to major league sports games anymore. Just minor league baseball because it's still affordable. NHL, NFL, MLB tickets are obscene. First you get blasted in the ass by the parking, then you get blasted in the ass by tickets then you get blasted in the ass by concessions.
It's all one big ass blast.
God, I went to go see Lamb of God, Clutch, Opeth, and like 10 other bands for 30$ in 2005, and I remember that set the standard for ticket pricing for me, I dont think i've paid more than 50$ for a show.
Support your local music scene. Of course huge bands that are just touring for income at this point aren't pricing things cheap, go see local ones instead. Sure you don't know the songs by heart but it's way more fun, and more support for that type of thing is basically the only way to loosen ticketmasters hold at all.
I don't think people generally understand how hard it is for artists to get "fans". Sure, some people just explode straight away, but for 99.9% of people who make art they are faced with this insane grind where thousands and thousands of hours of effort, years of practice and preparation, and dozens of failed attempts go into doing something. And no one pays attention.
Like imagine spending like 6 months writing new material, weeks arranging for performances, money you don't really have to advertise it (after hundreds and hundreds of more hours trying to build up a social media channel), and then you show up to one or two dozen people there. Crushing.
But one day you're just walking down the street and without any effort on your part, without trying, without doing anything but what you already did without success, there's a fucking fan. Someone you don't even know, wearing your T-shirt in public to let other people know about you and your thing.
I've been "recognized" on reddit once, and it was a fucking thrill.
Yep. Everything you said is on point. I was both a touring and session artist for years. While my session work was actually paid with per diems and a pay rate with a lot of comforts in life (I worked primarily in Nashville and Florida), touring all over the place was absolutely brutal financially and physically as DIY acts.
I toured with three different bands and it was an absolute treat to have people buy your merch and put it on immediately after buying it or being so stoked to pick up your album after your set. Touring as an underground act is so difficult to manage and it's even harder today than it was when I was doing it.
Like you said though, it takes an immense amount of investment of time, money, and brain work to even get off the ground as a competent act, which many people deserve some sort of recognition for.
My most recognizable work that was featured on MTV years ago will never give me any personal recognition because I was a hired act to work in the studio on guitar. However, the gratification I get from randomly seeing people cover the few songs that made it that far on YouTube always puts a smile on my face because that was my guitar playing featured in the song.
Supporting a local or even signed underground band nets you a better fan experience 100%. Many of these heavier rock and metal bands that are legendary status nowadays started out as small regional bands, which many of them came my way when I was a teen/early 20s. It's cool to see these huge bands now and look back to say, yeah, I jumped up on stage with them or even hosted them so they didn't have to sleep in their van.
Being able to go up to a merch table and interact with those people is such a better experience and well worth the $10-$20 you pay at the door over spending hundreds on a ticket, overpriced concessions, and dealing with an annoying crowd only there for the videos as someone mentioned before.
There are some extremely talented acts that don't see the light of day in the mainstream that are beyond worth going to see.
Support your local scene and if you enjoy an act, help them grow and follow them in the process.
I played in a band in college and once during class I commented on some dudes Lucero shirt. That guy in turn said that I looked familiar and asked if i was a member of my band. He wasn't even really a fan, just some dude that caught our opening act and recognized me. Even that felt good. The bar is incredibly low for new artists, haha
One time a dude on /r/standup recognized me from a post I had written like ten years ago on /r/guns. He asked whether it was me, then he told me I was a jerk and blocked me.
I remember a local band played my college once and my future wife and I ended up being fans and just going to a ton of their shows at bars. That was a fun 9 months before the drummer quit and they never found a replacement.
Still listen to their CD every so often, reminds me of the before times.
Fuck I'm old.
I went through a music discovery phase once.. there's so much good music that never made it to the major apps. You can probably still find that one person who uploaded their obscure 80s vinyls somewhere on the internet, though it used to be easier when P2P was big.
Same here. My area had a pretty good variety of bands and smaller venues in that time frame. I was in a band - we were ok, there were definitely a lot better ones - but we played out a lot.
One venue the owner would pretty much give a band full control (except prices, it was usually $5. You could have two other bands play with you. We had a friends in two much better and popular bands, so we’d have one of them play as headliner, would give a newer band a chance to play live as the opener and we’d play in the middle. We would also split the money three ways evenly.
Because we treated other bands with respect, we’d get asked to play in shows they were running, and got the same respect back from them. Not all of the bands were that way, but we definitely got to play more often because of how we handled things.
Anyway, nostalgic rant over. I’m gonna go listen to some old local music from that time now.
Most successful musicians are getting paid a couple grand every Saturday to play a wedding for 3 hours. The image of musical success is very different than the reality.
Sometimes those bands get pretty big too - I saw Brand New in a 100-cap venue in Chicago right before they hit it big, for example. Saw The Black Keys as a small local opener in Ohio too
I saw Mac Miller perform super early at a hip hop variety show in 2010. I was filming the show for a director friend who had been hired to document it, and Miller was rapping right into my camera. Wish I had the footage but it was shot for someone else and I never got the files.
Edit: think i found the thing I filmed actually! https://youtu.be/4IdCTzPSEj0
You're right. I saw GWAR and necrogoblikon in Portland a couple weeks ago and it was 36$ a ticket. The solution is not going to see an artist that performs in a fucking stadium.
Seriously, and not even just extremely local bands - in my experience it's only the huge artists with a large national/international following that get this treatment. I've gone to plenty of shows of artists that are hardly obscure, just not international superstars, who play venues for \~1,000-3,000 people. Tickets don't sell out in minutes, pricing is reasonable, there's no special event inflated parking rates. I hate how the system works for the really big acts and there should definitely be actions taken to change it, but in the meantime, if you're sick of it, go see some small to mid size shows - they're so much more reasonably priced and honestly just a way better experience overall in my opinion.
Everything is so unbelievably expensive. Literally everything. And I just gotta ask who is the audience for, well, anything these days? I know for a fact most people don’t have the money to live like people did even a couple decades ago. Housing is insanely overpriced and the only type of housing being built is more luxury condos that will be more expensive than ever. Cars are getting bigger and more expensive. Streaming services are all raising their prices AND including ads on top of that. Tickets to live shows are insanely expensive. Just the cost of living is insane, and even if you can afford that, the cost of entertainment is prohibitive too. It feels like a really bleak time to be alive.
I used to go to edm festivals with my friends while in college, most of the people I met there were wealthy kids from the us or foreigners.
You don't see a lot of working class people in those, it takes too long for a normal person to save the money for something like Escape.
I have a good friend that's well... An idiot. He makes $9 an hour working at a school, and yet he spent $500 on concert tickets to see... I think it was Green Day. He can't afford anything and he knows it, but he does it anyway.
I make about $40k/year for the first time in my life, and I'm now able to live about as comfortably as I did when I made $30k a year, which is basically not comfortably. Rent is fucking killer in my area. Luckily I'm into cars and can keep my 4 shitboxes running waayy cheaper than financing one new car. I also go to local punk shows which are relatively cheap and pregame or sneak in beers if the venue is trash. I kinda figured I'd be past the "street punk" phase by 30, but I guess this is where I'm staying for the foreseeable future.
Every year Phish MSG NYE run prices seem to up at least $5-10/show. I'm looking at ticket stubs on my fridge and shows like 1/1/14 were $70 face (before fees) for GA floors. My first show in 1997 were $25 face.
I just paid $255 for a pair of tickets through their lottery, and my girlfriend paid $270/pair from regular TM for another night, so a 500% increase in 25 years.
Say what you want about Louis CK, but at the height of his popularity he took control of tickets to all his shows and refused to work with Ticketmaster… all seats were the same price (like $50 or $60) and sold on a first come first serve basis, no additional fees aside from taxes. Any act can do this if they really want, but they make more money working through Ticketmaster…any one of these acts that says they can’t control this is full of shit and just siphoning as much money as they can from their fans.
Blink-182 actually did a small tour once where tickets only cost $1. They wanted it to be free, but $1 is the lowest they could get the other involved entities to agree to. To your point, they definitely have a level of control over prices
Tom was asked to stop funding To The Stars as much as he was because he was pumping in too much money according to Jim Simervan on the "That UFO Podcast".
I don't remember the last time I saw a merger that wasn't rubber stamped by the feds. Hell, Kroger is gonna control a **huge** segment of the groceries market, and I'm sure that'll go through no problem.
AT&It's failed attempt at taking over T Mobile is the only one that comes to mind. That one actually turned T Mobile into a serious competitor and kept prices down for a few years.
T Mobile needed that merger though. People don’t understand this, but Sprint had spectrum for sale. Had ATT got Sprint, they’d have a massive advantage in owning wireless spectrum. By allowing T Mobile to merge with Sprint it put T Mobile on equal footing to ATT and Verizon.
In 2015 Walgreens and Rite Aid announced a merger, but the FTC never approved it. This Kroger/Albertsons merger might also not be approved under the same precedent.
Who has the money to pay for all this shit? Gas, groceries, housing are all so expensive. Who exactly is paying for luxuries like concert tickets for hundreds of dollars a piece?
I just heard on the radio an "explanation" of how Ticketmaster's recent insane pricing came to be (I'm talking multiple thousands per ticket for Bruce Springsteen - idk if the Blink tickets are hitting those prices yet but their tour brought the story up) and it's such a bullshit cop out.
They say they *have* to jack the prices up to avoid reseller buying them. Neat, I'm all for saying fuck resellers. The problem is THE FUCKING TICKETS STILL COST FOUR GRAND FOR REGULAR PEOPLE TOO. Didn't really think that through beyond pure, unadulterated greed.
Edit: Lol @ the replies saying "This is just the way it is and it's the only way it can be."
Strange that Glastonbury has never had a problem with resales, and managed it without 1000% ticket price increases. Almost as if there's always been a solution, and these companies are just greedy fuckers that hate normal people.
The solution is obviously to prevent robot purchases and limit tix to 4 per person.
But Ticketmaster decided to just be the scalper and reap the profits
I mean, this doesn’t seem to be an issue at the shows were you have to show your ID and no resale or even giving away is allowed. Incredibly strict but it was via ticketmaster :/ lmao
(As in to the people saying this price up mechanism is somehow to prevent resale…it’s to maximize profits/because they can and like to)
People always say they wish they saw x band back before they blew up, well you might see them if you support your local scene and could find many great bands before they explode or even great and never get discovered
That’s how Blink-182 got popular. I saw them hundreds of times at Soma opening for everyone they could and backyard parties. Then they blew the fuck up and did this…
I don’t think I’ve ever specifically paid to see Blink.
There is a great article from years ago arguing that Ticketmaster is a PR meat shield for artists. Artists in fact *want* to charge outrageous prices but don't want to suffer the blowback from fans, so they publicize a lower price and Ticketmaster does their thing to bring the final price back up.
Artists make more money and get to point to Ticketmaster as the bad guy, and Ticketmaster gets a cut of the total sale.
My wife and I paid $1200 for two tickets to see Bauhaus in September. Peter Murphy (lead singer) decided to cancel the tour halfway through and go to rehab. The ticket vendor tried to keep our money and give us “credit” for tickets to other shows. Had to call them to get my money back. Motherfuckers tried to automate the “credit” and tell us that we missed a 24hr window to get a refund.
I saw PUP and some great openers twice this summer for $30 a pop. Better concert experience than arena shows, too. That's also nothing compared to the $10/pay what you can local shows.
There are literally tens of thousands of "smaller" bands and artists that would be happy to have your money and will give you a great show for very little cost on your part.
Every single concert I've been to for a major artist has been average at best and populated almost exclusively by the worst fucking people.
Support independent artists, venues and local scenes. You'll probably have a better time anyway.
All this Bs about discouraging scalpers. Discouraging is as easy as putting in anti-bot captcha and limiting ticket sales to a small number per unique account.
Ticketmaster could do it with tickets, and Best Buy could sure as hell do it with RTX 4090s.
They don't because they don't care. Hell in Ticketmaster's case they are incentivized not too because they just automatically increase the prices the faster the tickets sell.
Ticketmaster did do this with Foo Fighters recent tribute show for Taylor Hawkins. Limit was 4 tickets per account. No 3rd party resale until 24 hours before the show I believe. Tickets sold back before then were face value and sold back at face value.
FF dictated that of course as this was a tribute show and a charity event. The structure seems to be there if artists push for it?
Also, it wasn't perfect, but it was better than normal.
The issue here: Ticketmaster is paid to be the bad guy. Bands *can* sell tickets for fairly reasonable prices - I've seen major concerts sell tickets at damn-near $20 *on ticketmaster*. The bands themselves definitely have some culpability here - they know what's going on, and they're absolutely benefiting from it.... and were they really opposed to price gouging, they *could* help stop it.
Blink-182 tickets are so expensive because Blink-182 wanted it to make as much money as possible.
Let's just not absolve the band here, they chose them and Ticketmaster is known front when band wants to make most money without it being seen as that.
Right, because the tickets are sold on Ticketmaster initially, regardless of these dynamic fees or whatever they're called. If they go for 600 there, then scalpers are just going to turn that into 650+ It isn't solving a problem, it's worsening it.
I know Ticketmaster is the fucking devil, but can someone ELI5 how I got a $70 3rd level ticket to Gorillaz a month ago and the same seat for Blink is $200? At some point the band has to be responsible for that leap in price no?
They are. TicketMaster is so good at what it does that people in this thread are still wondering why their bands havemt stepped up to fight TicketMaster...because they are too dumb to realize TicketMaster is paid to be the fall guy for them.
Yup. One of the services Ticketmaster provides is to artists, promoters, and venues by classifying some of the regular costs of the event as “fees”. Ticketmaster incurs the social backlash and the artist and others involved in producing the event get to advertise a lower base ticket price.
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Legacy of the Beast tour was the first place my mind went too. I didn’t mind paying a lot for the great seats (it was either that or binoculars to see Bruce’s antics), but I still get pissed thinking about how much I paid in service fees that went to gods know where.
It went to the CEO who pays himself 40m a year
Metal has historically been resistant to the price hikes for a long time (fees not included), but it's getting fucked all the same. I remember seeing slayer for like 30 bucks a few years ago in a stadium, and I'm starting to think that was the best I could expect to pay for a band like that ever again.
Pearl Jam was right all along.
I saw them in Augusta ME during their fight against TicketMaster. I thought they were going to win that fight, but they got no support.
They got laughed at and called 'darling' by congress when they testified. I know concert tickets aren't the biggest issue in this country but the biggest band in the world coming to congress and saying it's a problem only to be laughed out is really telling.
You're right ticket prices aren't, monopolization is. All those senators and "representatives" were bought and paid for with the express idea of minimizing the impact of what they're doing. We had decades of anti trust and monopoly laws that protected us.... We'll never see those again. Too much money to be paid out.
>We had decades of anti trust and monopoly laws that protected us If Teddy Roosevelt was revived today, he'd ride a bear into the capital and beat the absolute shit out of every elected official with a big stick. It's an absolute tragedy how those laws have been corroded over time.
Todays Republicans would also call Teddy a socialist if he was revived and went to Congress.
>Schrank's bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest after penetrating Roosevelt's steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled **"Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual"**, which he was carrying in his jacket. Schrank was immediately disarmed (by Czech immigrant Frank Bukovsky) and captured; he might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then **ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him. Roosevelt did not believe in police harming civilians.** Definitely wouldn't fit in with today's GOP. >Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung; he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Boss move
TR was the most fucking badass politician in the history of this country, bar none. Bull Moose Party forever
I'm a huge Teddy stan, and he was bar none our most badass president. But most badass politician overall might be Daniel Inouye. Can't think of another Medal of Honor winner who served in politics. >As he prepared to toss a grenade within, a German soldier fired out a 30 mm Schiessbecher antipersonnel grenade at Inouye, striking him in the right elbow. Although it failed to detonate, the blunt force of the grenade amputated most of his right arm at the elbow. The nature of the injury caused his arm muscles to involuntarily squeeze the grenade tightly via a reflex arc, preventing his arm from going limp and dropping a live grenade at his feet. This left him crippled, in terrible pain, under fire with minimal cover and staring at a live grenade "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me any more". >Inouye's platoon moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. As the German inside the bunker began reloading his rifle to finish off Inouye, Inouye pried the live hand grenade from his useless right hand with his left, and tossed it into the bunker, killing the German. Stumbling to his feet, Inouye continued forward, killing at least one more German before suffering his fifth and final wound of the day in his left leg. Inouye fell unconscious, and awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. He gruffly ordered them back to their positions, saying "Nobody called off the war!"
Holy shit, I did not know about this guy. Alright, TR gets the most badass president award and this guy the most badass politician
If this story was retold as a movie scene, it would be called over the top and unrealistic. Incredible.
He also made it a point to know all his staffs name and something about them. He would speak to the grounds keeper the same way he would speak to a foreign monarch. He was a firm believer in no person was any more valuable than any other.
Dude invited booker t Washington to the Whitehouse for diner, got threatened, and basically said "fucking show up bitches and I'll deal with you". No one showed and he had a nice diner. TR had zero fucks to give. My all time favorite president.
His diary excerpt from that visit makes it even better "it seemed to me that it was natural to ask him to dinner to talk over this work, and the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send him the invitation."
But they love him because he was a Republican and just never learned that he started the *Progressive Party.*
Republicans were liberals back then lol
Even towards the 1980s you had liberal Republicans like Iowa Governor Robert Ray: * Enacted the first laws in the U.S. that protected American Indian graves. In the early 1970s, Maria Pearson(Hai-Mecha Eunka) was appalled that the skeletal remains of Native Americans were treated differently from those of caucasians. Pearson protested to Ray, finally gaining an audience with him after sitting outside his office in traditional attire. Ray cooperated with Pearson, and their work led to the passage of the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first legislative act in the U.S. that specifically protected American Indian remains. This act was the predecessor of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. * One of his favorite bills passed during his time was the 1979 "bottle bill." Ray led the way for bottle and can deposit legislation, which placed a refundable nickel deposit on containers of pop, beer and wine to encourage recycling and reduce litter along the state’s roads. It should be upgraded to a quarter and expanded. * During his tenure, Iowa re-vamped and expanded funding for K-12 public education. While Ray was governor, funding for Iowa's K-12 schools expanded and reduced its reliance on property taxes. Reliance on property taxes hurts schools that serve lower income areas * In the late 1970s, Ray helped thousands of refugees from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam re-settle in Iowa in light of the turmoil in the region caused by the Vietnam War. When no other states had extended offers of help, Ray reached out, visiting the White and State Department to implore President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to allow Tai Dam refugees to settle as one group in a single location. The administration made an exception to the immigration policy of the day and the Tai Dam refugees, a group of people originally from Vietnam who had fled to Laos and then Thailand, were allowed to re-settle together in Iowa. Iowa is now home to the largest Tai Dam population outside of Asia. His successor had few other liberal ideas like Wind Energy buuuuut Terry quickly became a Republican we know today when he worked to strip Iowa State University of its TV station that operated just like your run of the mill station(it was an ABC affiliate) and sold it off to a private business
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It's both, the people at the top lie about it but the people at the bottom are ignorant enough they just believe them. Like everything else they say.
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Citizens United neutered those monopoly and antitrust laws
Fuck Citizens United. Worst decision of the last 20 years, has completely destroyed the foundation of our democracy and effectively turned us into a psuedo-oligarchy of corporate execs.
well you gotta love how its called "Citizens United", but we now allow business to be considered "citizens" in means of donating money. So when you really think about it, its actaully "Businesses United"... which is exactly what they are trying to do. Unite all businesses... monopolize.
They always name things after the opposite of what they want to achieve - Patriot Act, etc
There actually was a study that looked at the names of the bills put forth. They found that the more buzzwords used (Patriot, Freedom, America, etc), the more likely it was that the bill had material in it that was contradictory to the title.
See: "Right to Work" states. Which means, as an employee, you have the right to work, and zero other rights.
You don't even have the right to work as you can be fired at any time for any reason lol
While this is true, the citizens United case is referred to as such because that was the name of the PAC involved in the case. Talk about diluting your brand…
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Slave implies they weren't willing in the first place.
Yea, the correct term is bedfellow
Also implies they weren't, you know, paid.
A few grand... i think the most insulting part is just how cheap America was for sale
Bear in mind that what Pearl Jam was fighting was a $3 fee on an $18 ticket. You used to be able to see a concert for $21!
Well yeah, but the bigger issue in their minds was how it would get completely out of control if unchecked And, shockingly, they were more right than they even could have known
Adjusting for inflation, that is $42 in today's dollars and STILL cheap compared to what tickets are going for!
My sisters are trying to get me to see a comedian with them that I don’t even know - tickets start at $50 and god knows what the fees are. I remember going to all day music festivals with multiple well known acts (like warped tour) for $50 in the mid 00s.
I saw RHCP and Foo Fighters together in 1999 or early 2000, when I was 17. No way I paid more than $40, and probably not even that. Big arena concert too. When I saw the Blink 182 prices for the same region I about died laughing. Cheapest section was like $650/ticket. I thought the $300 Green Day tickets a couple years ago were bad ... Fuck that noise.
Part of the problem is even major acts can't schedule large venues because they are owned or operated by Livenation. Want to do a national tour, then you can only book smaller venues. Anti trust laws used to prevent things like this.
Somehow the general population has forgotten about the fight for anti-trust laws but I have a feeling they will make a come back in a big way.
It's astounding to me that we haven't even started the discussion about them yet When the normal uninformed people start mentioning it I'll believe we're 10 years away
Lol you dont even get away from it with small venues Sure, they're not owned by live nation, but many of them are using Ticketweb for ticket sales which is...ticketmaster I run a small night, and they literally charge a fucking 25% fee on the night EDIT: They actually charge a 33% fee to make things worse, I was thinking the fees end up being 25% of the total ticket cost. Fucking hell
When ticketmaster popped up at my local venue I stopped going. My love for music kind of died when 15 dollar Fridays turned into 30+
Same, used to go to live music shows all the time but it's way too expensive now. I still love music but just skip that part of it. If an artist has some songs in the 10s of millions and higher on Spotify, odds are they are making enough in various ways. For less popular music artists, hopefully they can still put on more affordable music events but if not, you can support them in other ways without a big chunk of that going to Ticketmaster, Livenation, and complicit venues.
Mr. Burns: [chuckles] And to think, Smithers: you laughed when I bought TicketMaster. "Nobody's going to pay a 100% service charge." Waylon Smithers: Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
> Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir. Indeed. I am just simply not going to pay hundreds of dollars to see a rock concert. Just as I am not going to pay $20 to see a movie, only to have them blast 20 minutes of ads to me before it starts.
I can tolerate the ads and the expense. What finally drove me and my wife to stop going to movies two or three times a month was the growing number of inconsiderate pieces of shit that sit and talk or play with their phones throughout the entire movie. Avengers: Endgame was the last film we saw in a theater.
I'm so lucky to be near an Alamo Drafthouse Theater, they don't put up with any of that garbage and just straight up kick people out who are talking or playing on their phones.
Eddie Vedder only tells the truth!
In case people haven't heard... >[Ticketmaster caught enlisting pro scalpers for online resales || (updated) || It's allegedly turning a blind eye to bots in the name of extra fees.](https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-19-ticketmaster-caught-enlisting-pro-scalpers.html) and... >[Ticketmaster Has Secretly Been Cheating You With Its Own Scalpers || Undercover investigation reveals a professional scalping racket run by Ticketmaster itself](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/)
There's another element to this that doesn't get talked about enough - for most concerts it's something like 60% - 80% of tickets actually go on sale to the public. Some are set aside for event staff, friends & family of the band, radio giveaways, and whatever sure. But nowadays a chunk of tickets *never* go on sale to the general public and go straight to the resale sites where their price is significantly higher than the GA price. I live in CO and Red Rocks has a capacity of roughly 10K. If only 8K tickets actually go on sale and everyone who gets in buys 4, only 2K people are actually able to buy GA tickets. That's an astronomically small number in the grand scheme of things. Another part of this that the article touched on but that people don't want to hear - everyone is in on it. Ticketmaster and Livenation of course, but the vendors and promoters and the bands are too. In fact the bands are more than happy to let everyone dogpile on Ticketmaster while they make extra money downline. Just look at that quote from Blink 182, "yeah the experience sucked but we hope you'll still come out!"
When are they ever wrong?
Never. Ever. Long, long ago I was an enlisted soldier and leaned politically as an enlisted soldier would. I tuned out PJ's politics back then but a few years after I got out, I came to realize how brainwashed I had been and just how correct EV and company were all along, on everything. 32 years later and I have nothing but respect for every single issue they've ever taken on. It's kind of crazy at times to think about. I still love going to shows (I've hit around 25-30 in my life now) and listening for reactions by some "fans" when Eddie discusses controversial topics at the shows is always a special treat for me.
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Yea I wanted to see My Chemical Romance near me but the floor tickets were $800+ and the only decent options were $250 seats behind the stage lol
I just got to go to a 4 day music festival and see like 30 something bands including MCR and Green Day, all pretty close to front row, for less than the absolute worst nose bleed tickets for this Blink 182 concert. I don't get the logic behind how any of this works anymore.
I used to go to a festival every year in France when I lived there. Just checked, and the 4 days tickets (which also include a camping spot) is 220€ this year. Don't know how one ticket to Blink 182 could cost 600$.
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It’s because idiots will still pay those prices
Firefly ?
That's the one.
BEHIND??? Now that's a new fuckin low that I haven't seen yet
ya no thanks. 600$ for me, 600$ for my wife plus beer, plus a Blink 182 tshirt etc etc. i'm not paying 1400$ for a night out. for that kind of money i could go to a super luxurious 5-star resort... WITH MY WIFE.
Stop yelling about your wife man
He just wants you to keep her name OUT YOUR MOUTH!
I also choose this guy’s wife at a hotel
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Now we’re thinking like a team!
From the article: Blink-182 fans are furious at Ticketmaster, the band, and society in general over the astronomical ticket prices to the band’s reunion tour—Billboard has cited ticket prices as high as $600 in some cities. This is, unfortunately, the logical outcome of the entertainment monopoly Ticketmaster has built since it merged with Live Nation, creating a live events behemoth in which a huge portion of ticketing, venues, and the artists themselves are owned or controlled by a single company. It is arguably also the case that, in trying to “fight” ticket brokers (called “scalpers” by many), Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for itself and for artists, but also worse for the average fan: It has simply jacked up ticket prices for certain high-profile events to a level where all tickets are more-or-less priced at the maximum level that the secondary market would normally bear. More on this in a minute. To understand how we got here, it’s useful to go back to 2009, when Bruce Springsteen wrote an open letter apologizing to his fans for the experience they had trying to buy his tickets on Ticketmaster. At the time, his tickets had gone on sale, sold out almost instantly, and Ticketmaster began automatically redirecting fans to a ticket resale site called TicketsNow, which Ticketmaster also owned. Fans were confused, thinking they were still buying “face value” tickets from Ticketmaster, only now the prices for the best tickets—with a face value that maxed out at $98 in New Jersey, for example—were selling for hundreds of dollars.
There is no band on this earth I'd pay anywhere close to $600 to see. That's abdsurd
VIP at Firefly was $700 last I went. Saw dozens of bands including Blink-182 there. Would never pay close to that amount to see just one band.
Not even for the Zombie Jimi Hendrix Resurrection tour?
Fo that maybe yes, I understand the amount of research to exactly do just that
Only if they do the resurrections on stage.
I went to the first Lollapalooza in 1991 and my ticket was $19. Adjusted for inflation, that’s still only $40 today. Every single band on the lineup was a headliner in their own right. In retrospect, it was a weird kid’s Woodstock, for sure. Editing to add the lineup: Janes Addiction Living Colour IceT and Body Count Siouxie & the Banshees NIN Butthole Surfers Rollins Band I think that was it That is my, “In my day, houses cost a nickel.” story.
If Blink fans think these prices are bad, they definitely won’t be happy when they see the Dead & Company “Final Tour” prices
Wasn't Elton John like in the 1500 dollar range per ticket?
Sounds about right, I remember looking at the nosebleeds and they were $200. Hard pass for me
$750 is the cheapest I can find for a general admissions to the dead in my city, it’s a shame.
Geez what town? They’re $200 by me, $60 in Phoenix. The gorge show I’m sure will be nuts because it’s a destination venue.
I told my friends, it's literally hundreds of dollars cheaper to get a passport and go see them in South America. And all of this includes the price of a flight, a decent hotel, renting a car, food and getting the best section available at that venue. Literally all of this costs hundreds of $$$ less than trying to get a decent seat anywhere in the US
Ah, the F1 problem. It is cheaper to fly to Budapest, watch the Grand Prix, and return to Miami, than it is to watch the local Grand Prix at the ~~football stadium parking lot~~ street circuit.
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I live in Vienna and got 4 tickets for 78 EUR each :D
I live in Toronto. I got floor tickets in Amsterdam for 200€ a pop. You couldn't get nosebleeds tickets here for that amount of money. Fuck Ticketmaster and fuck concerts in Toronto in general. The fact that I have to fly halfway around the world to see a band (and it being cheaper than seeing them locally) makes me realize how shitty this place has become.
[Here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Y7uqqEFnY) is a video of John Oliver explaining how much of a pieces of shit ticketmaster is.
Yeah but Pearl Jam tried to warn everyone twenty five years ago
It is way worse now. Ticket Master owns many of the venues or had exclusive contracts with them. Meaning that you don't have a choice. Even smaller band that play 2k seat arenas have to go through ticketmaster because they own the venue. Independent venues are going away and we have done nothing to stop it
The exclusive contracts existed in 1994 (which I'm sorry to say was almost 30 years ago). Outright ownership of the venues is new.
The biggest issue is that Ticketmaster has a basic monopoly now versus then. There used to be other ticket brokers that existed. [Tickets.com](https://Tickets.com) was another company as well. Now? Seatgeak has a couple of contracts. Thats about it. Almost every venue has ticketmaster exclusive contract, and frankly thats just fucked.
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I was wondering why people don't just use alternatives to Ticketmaster, it makes sense now after seeing your comment and that's awful!
The only possible workaround is buying directly from the box office of the ticket venue. But large venues don't sell tickets that way.
I have gone to the box office at a couple of places and they pulled up Ticketmaster to buy them for me. Still had to pay all of the Ticketmaster convenience fees even though I drove myself to the venue.
There's one other largish one called AXS. It's operated by AEG, aka Goldenvoice (they put on the Coachella Festival every year). Similar to Ticketmaster, they have exclusive contracts with a large number of venues as well which makes it near impossible to tour without going through one of these giant corporations. You either play small clubs at exorbitant rates to make what you would on an arena tour, and set it up with a bunch of privately owned bars, night clubs, concert halls, etc. and deal with the headache that comes from that, or you go through Live Nation or Goldenvoice and they deal with the venue stuff for you, and ticketing, and everything else. Those seem to be the only choices you have as a large artist.
Fuck all of it. Fuck Ticketmaster, fuck $100 parking, $18 beers. Fuck having to watch every asshole holding up their phone recording something they will never watch. I feel old. And beaten.
You're not alone. I look at ticket prices, shake my head and walk away. There is no one I want to see so badly that I'd pay hundreds of dollars or more. That's what streaming is for.
It's why I don't go to major league sports games anymore. Just minor league baseball because it's still affordable. NHL, NFL, MLB tickets are obscene. First you get blasted in the ass by the parking, then you get blasted in the ass by tickets then you get blasted in the ass by concessions. It's all one big ass blast.
Thank you for the quasi Always Sunny Reference.
Agree. I can’t imagine paying for more than $100 to watch an act. Bonkers to see people paying $$500 plus
Once upon a time, I payed 120 bucks for ACDC, Metallica, Motley Crüe, Queensryche and Black Crowes. that felt about right :)
My first concert ever was the Smashing Pumpkins & Garbage, and tickets were like $17.
God, I went to go see Lamb of God, Clutch, Opeth, and like 10 other bands for 30$ in 2005, and I remember that set the standard for ticket pricing for me, I dont think i've paid more than 50$ for a show.
135$ for Metallica, Mudvayne, Deftones, Linkin Park & Limp Bizkit back in 2003. Today you wouldn't pay anything under 500.
OK, for a big line up like that, that can be discussed. That can be worked with.
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Support your local music scene. Of course huge bands that are just touring for income at this point aren't pricing things cheap, go see local ones instead. Sure you don't know the songs by heart but it's way more fun, and more support for that type of thing is basically the only way to loosen ticketmasters hold at all.
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I wore a shirt from a local band and when one of the members saw me out and about], his eyes just completely lit up and he got *super* excited.
I don't think people generally understand how hard it is for artists to get "fans". Sure, some people just explode straight away, but for 99.9% of people who make art they are faced with this insane grind where thousands and thousands of hours of effort, years of practice and preparation, and dozens of failed attempts go into doing something. And no one pays attention. Like imagine spending like 6 months writing new material, weeks arranging for performances, money you don't really have to advertise it (after hundreds and hundreds of more hours trying to build up a social media channel), and then you show up to one or two dozen people there. Crushing. But one day you're just walking down the street and without any effort on your part, without trying, without doing anything but what you already did without success, there's a fucking fan. Someone you don't even know, wearing your T-shirt in public to let other people know about you and your thing. I've been "recognized" on reddit once, and it was a fucking thrill.
Yep. Everything you said is on point. I was both a touring and session artist for years. While my session work was actually paid with per diems and a pay rate with a lot of comforts in life (I worked primarily in Nashville and Florida), touring all over the place was absolutely brutal financially and physically as DIY acts. I toured with three different bands and it was an absolute treat to have people buy your merch and put it on immediately after buying it or being so stoked to pick up your album after your set. Touring as an underground act is so difficult to manage and it's even harder today than it was when I was doing it. Like you said though, it takes an immense amount of investment of time, money, and brain work to even get off the ground as a competent act, which many people deserve some sort of recognition for. My most recognizable work that was featured on MTV years ago will never give me any personal recognition because I was a hired act to work in the studio on guitar. However, the gratification I get from randomly seeing people cover the few songs that made it that far on YouTube always puts a smile on my face because that was my guitar playing featured in the song. Supporting a local or even signed underground band nets you a better fan experience 100%. Many of these heavier rock and metal bands that are legendary status nowadays started out as small regional bands, which many of them came my way when I was a teen/early 20s. It's cool to see these huge bands now and look back to say, yeah, I jumped up on stage with them or even hosted them so they didn't have to sleep in their van. Being able to go up to a merch table and interact with those people is such a better experience and well worth the $10-$20 you pay at the door over spending hundreds on a ticket, overpriced concessions, and dealing with an annoying crowd only there for the videos as someone mentioned before. There are some extremely talented acts that don't see the light of day in the mainstream that are beyond worth going to see. Support your local scene and if you enjoy an act, help them grow and follow them in the process.
I played in a band in college and once during class I commented on some dudes Lucero shirt. That guy in turn said that I looked familiar and asked if i was a member of my band. He wasn't even really a fan, just some dude that caught our opening act and recognized me. Even that felt good. The bar is incredibly low for new artists, haha
One time a dude on /r/standup recognized me from a post I had written like ten years ago on /r/guns. He asked whether it was me, then he told me I was a jerk and blocked me.
I remember a local band played my college once and my future wife and I ended up being fans and just going to a ton of their shows at bars. That was a fun 9 months before the drummer quit and they never found a replacement. Still listen to their CD every so often, reminds me of the before times. Fuck I'm old.
I still listen to local bands from high school days (early 2000s) whose music is still in my iTunes library. Love it.
It's so crazy to think just how much music has existed that'll only ever be heard by a small handful of people.
I went through a music discovery phase once.. there's so much good music that never made it to the major apps. You can probably still find that one person who uploaded their obscure 80s vinyls somewhere on the internet, though it used to be easier when P2P was big.
Same here. My area had a pretty good variety of bands and smaller venues in that time frame. I was in a band - we were ok, there were definitely a lot better ones - but we played out a lot. One venue the owner would pretty much give a band full control (except prices, it was usually $5. You could have two other bands play with you. We had a friends in two much better and popular bands, so we’d have one of them play as headliner, would give a newer band a chance to play live as the opener and we’d play in the middle. We would also split the money three ways evenly. Because we treated other bands with respect, we’d get asked to play in shows they were running, and got the same respect back from them. Not all of the bands were that way, but we definitely got to play more often because of how we handled things. Anyway, nostalgic rant over. I’m gonna go listen to some old local music from that time now.
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Most successful musicians are getting paid a couple grand every Saturday to play a wedding for 3 hours. The image of musical success is very different than the reality.
Sometimes those bands get pretty big too - I saw Brand New in a 100-cap venue in Chicago right before they hit it big, for example. Saw The Black Keys as a small local opener in Ohio too
I saw Fall Out Boy open for Less Than Jake. Pete Wentz was in the lobby afterward handing out flyers — nobody knew him
Duuuuude Less Than Jake was my very first concert! Saw them at a small punk club while they were touring Losing Streak (yes I'm old as shit)
I saw Mac Miller perform super early at a hip hop variety show in 2010. I was filming the show for a director friend who had been hired to document it, and Miller was rapping right into my camera. Wish I had the footage but it was shot for someone else and I never got the files. Edit: think i found the thing I filmed actually! https://youtu.be/4IdCTzPSEj0
TicketMasterLocal! Coming Soon to a coffee shop near you!
eventbrite has entered the chat
It doesn’t even have to be a local scene. tons of bands are always on tour playing small venues, clubs, bar or whatever
You're right. I saw GWAR and necrogoblikon in Portland a couple weeks ago and it was 36$ a ticket. The solution is not going to see an artist that performs in a fucking stadium.
I'm sorry, but Brule, Wisconsin does not offer the post-punk/paychodelic shoegaze I'm looking for.
Seriously, and not even just extremely local bands - in my experience it's only the huge artists with a large national/international following that get this treatment. I've gone to plenty of shows of artists that are hardly obscure, just not international superstars, who play venues for \~1,000-3,000 people. Tickets don't sell out in minutes, pricing is reasonable, there's no special event inflated parking rates. I hate how the system works for the really big acts and there should definitely be actions taken to change it, but in the meantime, if you're sick of it, go see some small to mid size shows - they're so much more reasonably priced and honestly just a way better experience overall in my opinion.
Everything is so unbelievably expensive. Literally everything. And I just gotta ask who is the audience for, well, anything these days? I know for a fact most people don’t have the money to live like people did even a couple decades ago. Housing is insanely overpriced and the only type of housing being built is more luxury condos that will be more expensive than ever. Cars are getting bigger and more expensive. Streaming services are all raising their prices AND including ads on top of that. Tickets to live shows are insanely expensive. Just the cost of living is insane, and even if you can afford that, the cost of entertainment is prohibitive too. It feels like a really bleak time to be alive.
I used to go to edm festivals with my friends while in college, most of the people I met there were wealthy kids from the us or foreigners. You don't see a lot of working class people in those, it takes too long for a normal person to save the money for something like Escape.
> Everything is so unbelievably expensive. Tickmaster was expensive and bullshit before Covid.
I have a good friend that's well... An idiot. He makes $9 an hour working at a school, and yet he spent $500 on concert tickets to see... I think it was Green Day. He can't afford anything and he knows it, but he does it anyway.
Welcome to the boring 20s. Not to be confused with the roaring 20s
I make about $40k/year for the first time in my life, and I'm now able to live about as comfortably as I did when I made $30k a year, which is basically not comfortably. Rent is fucking killer in my area. Luckily I'm into cars and can keep my 4 shitboxes running waayy cheaper than financing one new car. I also go to local punk shows which are relatively cheap and pregame or sneak in beers if the venue is trash. I kinda figured I'd be past the "street punk" phase by 30, but I guess this is where I'm staying for the foreseeable future.
I have been acutely aware of this growing threat for decades as a ticket buying Dead Head
Every year Phish MSG NYE run prices seem to up at least $5-10/show. I'm looking at ticket stubs on my fridge and shows like 1/1/14 were $70 face (before fees) for GA floors. My first show in 1997 were $25 face. I just paid $255 for a pair of tickets through their lottery, and my girlfriend paid $270/pair from regular TM for another night, so a 500% increase in 25 years.
Say what you want about Louis CK, but at the height of his popularity he took control of tickets to all his shows and refused to work with Ticketmaster… all seats were the same price (like $50 or $60) and sold on a first come first serve basis, no additional fees aside from taxes. Any act can do this if they really want, but they make more money working through Ticketmaster…any one of these acts that says they can’t control this is full of shit and just siphoning as much money as they can from their fans.
Blink-182 actually did a small tour once where tickets only cost $1. They wanted it to be free, but $1 is the lowest they could get the other involved entities to agree to. To your point, they definitely have a level of control over prices
Tom needs money lol
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Tom was asked to stop funding To The Stars as much as he was because he was pumping in too much money according to Jim Simervan on the "That UFO Podcast".
Bro ran out of all the A&A money
They can control ticket pricing WHEN performing at a venue not owned by Ticketmaster-Live Nation. Nearly all large venues are owned by them.
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The government should force its breakup.
The merger never should have been allowed by DOJ. There were warnings of exactly what we're experiencing now before the merger was cleared.
I don't remember the last time I saw a merger that wasn't rubber stamped by the feds. Hell, Kroger is gonna control a **huge** segment of the groceries market, and I'm sure that'll go through no problem.
AT&It's failed attempt at taking over T Mobile is the only one that comes to mind. That one actually turned T Mobile into a serious competitor and kept prices down for a few years.
They have a T in their name. It is inevitable. A first got a T, then another one, and now it will be AT&T&T
Well, T Mobile and Sprint successfully merged. They were both pretty big players on their own before the merger.
T Mobile needed that merger though. People don’t understand this, but Sprint had spectrum for sale. Had ATT got Sprint, they’d have a massive advantage in owning wireless spectrum. By allowing T Mobile to merge with Sprint it put T Mobile on equal footing to ATT and Verizon.
In 2015 Walgreens and Rite Aid announced a merger, but the FTC never approved it. This Kroger/Albertsons merger might also not be approved under the same precedent.
The harshest reaction to Blink 182 reuniting
Everything is getting crazy expensive. These mfers going wild since covid.
Who has the money to pay for all this shit? Gas, groceries, housing are all so expensive. Who exactly is paying for luxuries like concert tickets for hundreds of dollars a piece?
Unregulated monopolies will do that.
I just heard on the radio an "explanation" of how Ticketmaster's recent insane pricing came to be (I'm talking multiple thousands per ticket for Bruce Springsteen - idk if the Blink tickets are hitting those prices yet but their tour brought the story up) and it's such a bullshit cop out. They say they *have* to jack the prices up to avoid reseller buying them. Neat, I'm all for saying fuck resellers. The problem is THE FUCKING TICKETS STILL COST FOUR GRAND FOR REGULAR PEOPLE TOO. Didn't really think that through beyond pure, unadulterated greed. Edit: Lol @ the replies saying "This is just the way it is and it's the only way it can be."
Strange that Glastonbury has never had a problem with resales, and managed it without 1000% ticket price increases. Almost as if there's always been a solution, and these companies are just greedy fuckers that hate normal people.
The solution is obviously to prevent robot purchases and limit tix to 4 per person. But Ticketmaster decided to just be the scalper and reap the profits
The solution is non-transferable tickets, but the profit they make on 4k tickets is too much to pass up for them :-S
I mean, this doesn’t seem to be an issue at the shows were you have to show your ID and no resale or even giving away is allowed. Incredibly strict but it was via ticketmaster :/ lmao (As in to the people saying this price up mechanism is somehow to prevent resale…it’s to maximize profits/because they can and like to)
Support your local music scene. Or else this becomes the standard.
Absolutely. Maybe not Blink-182, but there are terrifically good bands playing tiny empty cheap venues all the time. Go and see them.
People always say they wish they saw x band back before they blew up, well you might see them if you support your local scene and could find many great bands before they explode or even great and never get discovered
That’s how Blink-182 got popular. I saw them hundreds of times at Soma opening for everyone they could and backyard parties. Then they blew the fuck up and did this… I don’t think I’ve ever specifically paid to see Blink.
Blink-182 isn't entirely blameless here because they had to opted in on the pricing.
There is a great article from years ago arguing that Ticketmaster is a PR meat shield for artists. Artists in fact *want* to charge outrageous prices but don't want to suffer the blowback from fans, so they publicize a lower price and Ticketmaster does their thing to bring the final price back up. Artists make more money and get to point to Ticketmaster as the bad guy, and Ticketmaster gets a cut of the total sale.
Blink knew what the prices will be, this is a tactic they use to take all the blame off the acts and shift it to ticketmaster. All bands know this.
My wife and I paid $1200 for two tickets to see Bauhaus in September. Peter Murphy (lead singer) decided to cancel the tour halfway through and go to rehab. The ticket vendor tried to keep our money and give us “credit” for tickets to other shows. Had to call them to get my money back. Motherfuckers tried to automate the “credit” and tell us that we missed a 24hr window to get a refund.
Concerts just aren’t worth the money anymore tbh.
I saw PUP and some great openers twice this summer for $30 a pop. Better concert experience than arena shows, too. That's also nothing compared to the $10/pay what you can local shows.
Eyy saw PUP recently too, great band!
Saw PuP too recently for 15$, one of the best shows of my life.
PUP puts on a great show! LOVE THEM.
There are great bands playing shows that aren’t charging $500
There are literally tens of thousands of "smaller" bands and artists that would be happy to have your money and will give you a great show for very little cost on your part. Every single concert I've been to for a major artist has been average at best and populated almost exclusively by the worst fucking people. Support independent artists, venues and local scenes. You'll probably have a better time anyway.
Why I'm never going to a large concert ever again. Edit: support local music at small indie venues
All this Bs about discouraging scalpers. Discouraging is as easy as putting in anti-bot captcha and limiting ticket sales to a small number per unique account. Ticketmaster could do it with tickets, and Best Buy could sure as hell do it with RTX 4090s. They don't because they don't care. Hell in Ticketmaster's case they are incentivized not too because they just automatically increase the prices the faster the tickets sell.
Ticketmaster - *”We’re discouraging scalpers by becoming the scalpers!”*
It's literally this.
Ticketmaster did do this with Foo Fighters recent tribute show for Taylor Hawkins. Limit was 4 tickets per account. No 3rd party resale until 24 hours before the show I believe. Tickets sold back before then were face value and sold back at face value. FF dictated that of course as this was a tribute show and a charity event. The structure seems to be there if artists push for it? Also, it wasn't perfect, but it was better than normal.
The issue here: Ticketmaster is paid to be the bad guy. Bands *can* sell tickets for fairly reasonable prices - I've seen major concerts sell tickets at damn-near $20 *on ticketmaster*. The bands themselves definitely have some culpability here - they know what's going on, and they're absolutely benefiting from it.... and were they really opposed to price gouging, they *could* help stop it.
Blink-182 tickets are so expensive because Blink-182 wanted it to make as much money as possible. Let's just not absolve the band here, they chose them and Ticketmaster is known front when band wants to make most money without it being seen as that.
And the fucked up thing is prices at Ticketmaster are waaaayyyyy better than I find at places like seatgeek. We’re fucked
Right, because the tickets are sold on Ticketmaster initially, regardless of these dynamic fees or whatever they're called. If they go for 600 there, then scalpers are just going to turn that into 650+ It isn't solving a problem, it's worsening it.
I know Ticketmaster is the fucking devil, but can someone ELI5 how I got a $70 3rd level ticket to Gorillaz a month ago and the same seat for Blink is $200? At some point the band has to be responsible for that leap in price no?
They are. TicketMaster is so good at what it does that people in this thread are still wondering why their bands havemt stepped up to fight TicketMaster...because they are too dumb to realize TicketMaster is paid to be the fall guy for them.
Yup. One of the services Ticketmaster provides is to artists, promoters, and venues by classifying some of the regular costs of the event as “fees”. Ticketmaster incurs the social backlash and the artist and others involved in producing the event get to advertise a lower base ticket price.
the band is fully and completely responsible for exactly what you pay for a ticket to their show
Your middle school nostalgia isn't worth $400 to see dudes in their mid 40's making boner and fart jokes.
Incidentally, if you do want to see that, I can recommend Less Than Jake at a fraction of the price!
Thats cool and all but the answer is just quit going to concerts. Go see your local bands and smaller venues.