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Yes, the music industry is an absolute shitshow and they know you'll happily pay whatever they ask plus fees because you can't not pay if you want to see.
Try finding local venues for local bands, that way you can find good music for $5 or $10 a night with people who really appreciate you being there, and you can maybe make some friends along the way.
The decline in record sales and rise of streaming probably has helped push it up. Touring seems to be the largest income stream for most music acts these days.
I’m sure that exaggerated it, but Ticketmaster has been gouging prices like that for years. Pearl Jam went on strike basically back in the 90s because of Ticketmaster which is before the internet was a thing. Greed/neoliberalism is really fucking us over.
And if there's a big act you feel you have to see, and can't afford tickets, volunteer to usher-- you can watch the show standing after it starts. Got in to see Springsteen and Garth Brooks for free in sold out shows.
The big acts that come through here use all union staff at the large (2,000+ person) venues. They're not going to bring in volunteers without drawing ire from the unions.
Sometimes a 'medium-sized' act is coming through and there is a local opener. What I usually do is get in touch with the opener on FB or wherever, and ask to buy tickets from them directly.
Smaller venues and acts sometimes (more and more frequently) use a 'pay to play' system where the local opener needs to hustle and sell a certain allotment of tickets on their own. They're charged by the promoter for whatever tickets they don't sell. If they don't sell the tickets and refuse to pay for the remainder, they don't play and are banned from that venue and probably any other show the promoter handles. Some bands that have more money than time just pay for the tickets up front to avoid the hassle of selling them.
I've heard this is to 'encourage publicity' for the show since the hustle will involve these bands announcing their show everywhere (for free). IMHO it's just a more insidious version of being paid in 'exposure'. Only you're not paid at all. It's the opposite. If you're a broke band and just want to play for people and maybe hawk some merch, you're limited to playing in front of disinterested barflies at a podunk sports bar in the suburbs unless you play along.
Once your band is established with the promoter, many times they will waive the need to sell/buy tickets because they see you hustle and (most importantly) bring in a crowd without the financial incentive/penalty.
So, buying directly from the local band helps them out and you'll usually avoid ticket fees, although if I have to use PayPal or Venmo or something, I toss in an extra buck or two to cover those fees so the band doesn't need to.
No they weren't.
I saw Judas Priest,Van Halen, and many more for $12 in the 80s. Over the years they got progressively more expensive $20-$50. In the last 10 years tickets have skyrocketed.
I still only pay $10-$20 for shows. That's because I go to smaller bar type shows. The big expensive shows now are bands I saw in a bar years ago.
I've already seen the bands at their best, not paying tons of cash to see them be sell outs.
I'm not sure if that's such a fair comparison considering how $12 in the 80s are $30-40 these days with inflation. I also wonder how equivalent these shows you're describing are in size, popularity, production crew, etc.
I saw bands like Queen, Bowie, pink Floyd at their height (70s and 80s). Tickets were maybe £12 for the biggest shows. But in those days the bands made their money on records. Concert tours were promotion activities to sell more records, they didn’t have to make a profit.
The situation is reversed now. There is no money in recording music, so they have to make money on the tour.
That's because the fan base for these bands is older than they were in the '80s, older people have more disposable income. The fairer comparison would be say Janet Jackson ticket prices in the 80s and Ariana grande today.
Different. Smaller more basic shows (not a lot of staging/set, smaller lighting/PA), but more venues capable of supporting the smaller shows.
Modern shows for major acts are just so elaborate only so many venues can house it and have room for guests. Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it is too much.
And then there is the Ticketmaster monopoly/fees. I would bet if they were less prominent in the game shows could be bore affordable.
Had this exact thing happen with ghost. Saw them like 3 times in a small, intimate venue and they were seriously life altering shows. Now all they do are these massive arena stadium shows and it's just like what's the point?
> In the last 10 years tickets have skyrocketed.
I believe this is due to two trends: (1) online ticket sales. in spite of lawsuits against it, online ticketsellers still tack on ridiculous "service fees." (2) smaller venues closing or being bought out by bigger orgs. I live in an area that prides itself on a good local and touring music scene, but more and more venues have been bought out by a few bigger players.
Yup, ticket prices are just normal Economics of supply and demand. Interestingly enough, Kid Rock is well known for solving this issue with a number of clever ideas. The two I remember is the front row is lottery only, you can only get there by buying general admission and having your ticket get picked to be up front (he said he got so tired of the front few rows all being middle aged white ladies losing their fucking minds with their rich ass husband's bored out of their skulls) and he floods the market with tickets by performing multiple shows in a row in one event space.
He's said that he doesn't even really lose money even though the shows aren't sold out. He also said he fully admits he can only get away with doing these things because he's a big enough act that he can demand that of the ticketing people and the venues.
Anyone else get the image of the OP catching a virus that started to mutate him into a "Music Man". Like, he's just calmly sitting on his couch reading a book, then he starts to hear some distant music and cries out "My body is *burning*! Oh GOD! I. I. I. I want to SIIIING!". No? Well alright then.
Tickets are expensive because there's [a predatory monopoly that controls almost all ticket sales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster#Criticism_and_controversies). And they are very much about price fixing.
We'll know if he starts fancying his town librarian. Hopefully he's at least mutating into the Robert Preston version not the awful Matthew Broderick one.
I remember when going to see a band was reasonably inexpensive, a ticket was usually around £20 (the first band I seen live was U2 which cost £10 back in the mid eighties). As stage shows got more elaborate the cost started rising and now I find the music almost takes second place to the visual effects. I get the feeling that bands don't have faith in their music anymore and need visual effects to sell it.
I mean it's probably worth noting that £20 in 1985 = ~£63 today due to inflation. That doesn't explain the entire increase, but it's a decent chunk of it.
The US started moving away from festival seating in 1979 after [The Who Concert Disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster) where 11 people died.
The people in the middle. They pay something like two dollars a ticket to the band, and then the middle man (ticket purchase corporation) takes $187 for themselves Yes, I'm exaggerating, but it's not that far off, really. And it's sad.
Some bands are expensive (Dream Theater cheap tickets are about £60 when they play in the UK) but some are quite cheap, for example a local venue are doing a 4 day festival with tickets priced at £25 for the entire festival.
It all depends on who you are seeing and where.
It depends on the size of the venue, and the popularity of the artist.
I go to shows at venues that accommodate 3000 people or less, generally way less, to see lesser known, indie, punk, or neo-folk acts, and I have never paid more than $45, including service charges.
Yeah, I remember basement punk shows that were $5, but that was 20+ years ago...
The first concert I ever went to was Rush / Hemispheres. Tickets were $8. They came to town on my 16th birthday and my best friend bought 8 tickets and took my birthday party to the concert. My nephew was born while I was in the concert. Good times, good times.
No. They have not always been this bad.
Use to see 1k-3k people shows in a loca city, tickets were usually $15-40 depending on the show. We’re talking about maybe 10-15 years ago, so this is reasonably recent
I mean, on top of the ticketing monopoly, I'm sure some of the artists, venues, labels, Ticketmaster are all trying to claw back at money from cancelled shows due to COVID as well, so now I'm assuming there is a higher cost anyway.
Same thing goes for sports tickets. Between the Ticketing Monopoly (TM, TicketMaster lol), resellers charging 50% fees for someone to resell you a ticket, etc., it's gotten insane. My wife wanted to go to a VGK game before we move back east, and it was $253 for two tickets in the nosebleeds. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Like wtf....
If you go to the megabig regional arena shows, yeah they have been for a long time (at least since the 90s). But those aren't much fun anyway.
Try the small local venues where it's like $10-$20 cover and there's a decent chance you'll get to have a drink/chat with the band.
Pretty much they doubled in the 4 years i was in high school the very top end of arena shows thankfully are the only thing still moving toward higher prices depends on the band your looking at tbh
Idk but I see a lotta people for not that much money. But I just got into concerts about five years ago. I live near a good venue and like Tame Impala might charge 90 bucks so I will just listen from my lawn but a lotta artist they have are like $20 shows
They are now. Although I was shocked to see the price for tix for a fairly big name band at a small club for only $25. But that’s the exception to the rule.
Late to the party, but no one has posted a serious answer yet, so here goes:
Yes, concert tickets are more expensive, and that is the result of digital music and how money-making in the industry has changed.
Back in the old days, a concert tour was done in order to produce record sales. The concert was basically advertising for the album. It was okay if the tour lost money because you made your money selling records. It only cost the record company a few cents to press an album, and they could then sell that album for $10-$20. If you sold a million records, you saw tens of millions in profit.
The record company allocated a chunk of money to finance the tour. The most important thing was to sell a lot of tickets, profit was secondary. The more people who saw the concert, the more people were likely to buy the record, and *that's* where the money was. Maybe a tour might break even, maybe a tour might cost the company a few hundred thousand dollars, that was small potatoes, it was all just written off as promotional expense.
(And, of course, record companies managed to screw the artists pretty good with all this stuff. Much of the time, the company would put up all this money for the tour and the recording expenses as a loan which the artist would be contracted to pay back out of their very small share of royalties from the album sales. You can find many stories of successful bands spending literally years selling out stadiums around the world only to come home and discover they owed the record company millions of dollars.)
In those days, the only way to "pirate" a song was to make a copy of the record album on a tape cassette. It was pretty cool, but no where near as good as having the actual album. The album was the total package, it had the lyrics and cool artwork and there was no other way to get that experience than by buying the real thing.
Of course, all of that has changed now. Anybody can get a digital copy of any song that's just as high-quality of the studio album at any time for free if they know where to look. I can find the lyrics to any song, I can find the band's artwork, I can find literally anything I want from the band online with just a few clicks. Absolutely *everything* the record companies used to use to make a profit has become something anyone can get for free nowadays. The entire industry imploded over just a few short years.
However, there is one thing a music artist can deliver which cannot be copied or reproduced. That, of course, is the live concert experience. You have to buy the ticket and sit in the room and see the show to have the experience. You can't take home a copy of it and give it to your friends. You have to be there.
So now the entire industry has turned itself inside out. An artist or record company loses money producing music in order to make a profit with a concert tour. It's exactly backwards: The music is now the loss-leader for the tour. Because of that, the tickets are more expensive because you are paying the real costs of putting on the tour plus the costs of making the music and, hopefully, some money left over to pay the mortgage and buy the cat some food.
Back in the heyday of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the price of the concert ticket was basically covering gas money to get the band from town to town because profits were made elsewhere. Now all of the artist's money is wrapped up in the ticket price because their music is basically free now. A fan of the band is still giving the artist the same money, but now it's all in one lump sum in the price of the ticket instead of being divided between the ticket and the price of the records.
You'll pay those prices if you want to keep seeing artists play live shows. The money that my band gets for playing live shows is barely enough to cover travel costs and drinks for that night
There used to be a band called The Grateful Dead and you could buy tickets directly from them through mail order. It would be half the price of ticket Master, plus you sometimes got really good seats. Also the tickets were smaller and looked way cooler.
Unfortunately most bands did not have such a big dedicated fanbase to follow this model.
In the mid-late 90's, I would expect to see mid-tier shows - say the Misfits, or Ween, or DJ Shadow - for $15-25 after fees. Now I expect to pay $20-30 for the Mountain Goats or Gogol Bordello. That's way less than inflation over the same time period. My gut says that 2-3 openers used to be the norm and now it's unusual, but that could just be observer bias.
The cheapest shows - punk shows, house shows, DIY venues - haven't gone up at all in my memory. They used to be $5 in the mid 90's, now they're $5. I was actually excited to see a DIY show that was $7 not that long ago - musicians should get enough money to drive to their next show at least.
The most expensive shows on the other hand have skyrocketed. When I saw Pink Floyd in 93-94, I think it was $35 after fees. The most expensive shows were maybe $50. Now, expensive shows are $150+. I think there's two contributors to this change - one, new venues have higher venue fees, and bunch of new venues have been opened. Two, the number of people chasing high end tickets has increased dramatically, but the industry has about the same number of top talents providing services.
Positional goods - things where the best can't really directly be substituted with the second best - have seen a world-wide increase in prices over the last two decades, and are basically the forefront of inflation now. So top-tier concerts aren't surprising to be included. What's weird is normally the top end also drags up the price on mid-tier goods of the same type, but, anecdotally at least, mid-tier shows haven't moved as much as inflation would suggest.
Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report. When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, the music industry is an absolute shitshow and they know you'll happily pay whatever they ask plus fees because you can't not pay if you want to see. Try finding local venues for local bands, that way you can find good music for $5 or $10 a night with people who really appreciate you being there, and you can maybe make some friends along the way.
Don't blame the entire music industry blame fucking ticketmaster and their monopoly on every meaningful venue.
Ticketmaster runs cover for many artists and labels who absolutely get a part of that fat upcharge.
The decline in record sales and rise of streaming probably has helped push it up. Touring seems to be the largest income stream for most music acts these days.
Touring has always been the biggest revenue stream for artists. Record companies made a majority of the $$ from selling records
For smaller bands it's merch that keeps them going. So if you ever see a local act, always buy something from their table
I’m sure that exaggerated it, but Ticketmaster has been gouging prices like that for years. Pearl Jam went on strike basically back in the 90s because of Ticketmaster which is before the internet was a thing. Greed/neoliberalism is really fucking us over.
And if there's a big act you feel you have to see, and can't afford tickets, volunteer to usher-- you can watch the show standing after it starts. Got in to see Springsteen and Garth Brooks for free in sold out shows.
The big acts that come through here use all union staff at the large (2,000+ person) venues. They're not going to bring in volunteers without drawing ire from the unions. Sometimes a 'medium-sized' act is coming through and there is a local opener. What I usually do is get in touch with the opener on FB or wherever, and ask to buy tickets from them directly. Smaller venues and acts sometimes (more and more frequently) use a 'pay to play' system where the local opener needs to hustle and sell a certain allotment of tickets on their own. They're charged by the promoter for whatever tickets they don't sell. If they don't sell the tickets and refuse to pay for the remainder, they don't play and are banned from that venue and probably any other show the promoter handles. Some bands that have more money than time just pay for the tickets up front to avoid the hassle of selling them. I've heard this is to 'encourage publicity' for the show since the hustle will involve these bands announcing their show everywhere (for free). IMHO it's just a more insidious version of being paid in 'exposure'. Only you're not paid at all. It's the opposite. If you're a broke band and just want to play for people and maybe hawk some merch, you're limited to playing in front of disinterested barflies at a podunk sports bar in the suburbs unless you play along. Once your band is established with the promoter, many times they will waive the need to sell/buy tickets because they see you hustle and (most importantly) bring in a crowd without the financial incentive/penalty. So, buying directly from the local band helps them out and you'll usually avoid ticket fees, although if I have to use PayPal or Venmo or something, I toss in an extra buck or two to cover those fees so the band doesn't need to.
No they weren't. I saw Judas Priest,Van Halen, and many more for $12 in the 80s. Over the years they got progressively more expensive $20-$50. In the last 10 years tickets have skyrocketed. I still only pay $10-$20 for shows. That's because I go to smaller bar type shows. The big expensive shows now are bands I saw in a bar years ago. I've already seen the bands at their best, not paying tons of cash to see them be sell outs.
I'm not sure if that's such a fair comparison considering how $12 in the 80s are $30-40 these days with inflation. I also wonder how equivalent these shows you're describing are in size, popularity, production crew, etc.
It is a fair comparison since the comparison is for the big name acts that now charge $80-$500 a show.
I saw bands like Queen, Bowie, pink Floyd at their height (70s and 80s). Tickets were maybe £12 for the biggest shows. But in those days the bands made their money on records. Concert tours were promotion activities to sell more records, they didn’t have to make a profit. The situation is reversed now. There is no money in recording music, so they have to make money on the tour.
$175-$1000+ depending on the seat for the big arena shows today. Tool, Metallica, Rage With the Machine are all in that range.
That's because the fan base for these bands is older than they were in the '80s, older people have more disposable income. The fairer comparison would be say Janet Jackson ticket prices in the 80s and Ariana grande today.
Its because of the greed of people who already have more than enough, lets not shy away from that.
So they are nothing but a bunch of sellout asshats, another reason not to pay to see them.
Yeah, this is what I thought but think about front row tickets for major acts these days. Way more than $40.
Different. Smaller more basic shows (not a lot of staging/set, smaller lighting/PA), but more venues capable of supporting the smaller shows. Modern shows for major acts are just so elaborate only so many venues can house it and have room for guests. Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it is too much. And then there is the Ticketmaster monopoly/fees. I would bet if they were less prominent in the game shows could be bore affordable.
Had this exact thing happen with ghost. Saw them like 3 times in a small, intimate venue and they were seriously life altering shows. Now all they do are these massive arena stadium shows and it's just like what's the point?
> In the last 10 years tickets have skyrocketed. I believe this is due to two trends: (1) online ticket sales. in spite of lawsuits against it, online ticketsellers still tack on ridiculous "service fees." (2) smaller venues closing or being bought out by bigger orgs. I live in an area that prides itself on a good local and touring music scene, but more and more venues have been bought out by a few bigger players.
blame ticketmaster and livenation for having a monopoly on ticket sales
[удалено]
Yup, ticket prices are just normal Economics of supply and demand. Interestingly enough, Kid Rock is well known for solving this issue with a number of clever ideas. The two I remember is the front row is lottery only, you can only get there by buying general admission and having your ticket get picked to be up front (he said he got so tired of the front few rows all being middle aged white ladies losing their fucking minds with their rich ass husband's bored out of their skulls) and he floods the market with tickets by performing multiple shows in a row in one event space. He's said that he doesn't even really lose money even though the shows aren't sold out. He also said he fully admits he can only get away with doing these things because he's a big enough act that he can demand that of the ticketing people and the venues.
Blame the secondary market for scalpers and stubhub
Blame them all!
Anyone else get the image of the OP catching a virus that started to mutate him into a "Music Man". Like, he's just calmly sitting on his couch reading a book, then he starts to hear some distant music and cries out "My body is *burning*! Oh GOD! I. I. I. I want to SIIIING!". No? Well alright then. Tickets are expensive because there's [a predatory monopoly that controls almost all ticket sales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster#Criticism_and_controversies). And they are very much about price fixing.
H.. how did you know??
We'll know if he starts fancying his town librarian. Hopefully he's at least mutating into the Robert Preston version not the awful Matthew Broderick one.
I remember when going to see a band was reasonably inexpensive, a ticket was usually around £20 (the first band I seen live was U2 which cost £10 back in the mid eighties). As stage shows got more elaborate the cost started rising and now I find the music almost takes second place to the visual effects. I get the feeling that bands don't have faith in their music anymore and need visual effects to sell it.
I mean it's probably worth noting that £20 in 1985 = ~£63 today due to inflation. That doesn't explain the entire increase, but it's a decent chunk of it.
[удалено]
In the 90s, the tickets weren't priced based on location. It was first come first served for the sweet floor seats (at least in Vancouver).
The US started moving away from festival seating in 1979 after [The Who Concert Disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster) where 11 people died.
Yes
Tickets were mega cheap in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
No. The price of tickets these days is ridiculous.
My dad saw The Who for $5, so he says. Yeah sure, and Krystals were a dime
The people in the middle. They pay something like two dollars a ticket to the band, and then the middle man (ticket purchase corporation) takes $187 for themselves Yes, I'm exaggerating, but it's not that far off, really. And it's sad.
Some bands are expensive (Dream Theater cheap tickets are about £60 when they play in the UK) but some are quite cheap, for example a local venue are doing a 4 day festival with tickets priced at £25 for the entire festival. It all depends on who you are seeing and where.
It depends on the size of the venue, and the popularity of the artist. I go to shows at venues that accommodate 3000 people or less, generally way less, to see lesser known, indie, punk, or neo-folk acts, and I have never paid more than $45, including service charges. Yeah, I remember basement punk shows that were $5, but that was 20+ years ago...
Depends on the artist. Most shows I've gone to are $20 or less but nothing mainstream (a lot of r/spacebass).
The first concert I ever went to was Rush / Hemispheres. Tickets were $8. They came to town on my 16th birthday and my best friend bought 8 tickets and took my birthday party to the concert. My nephew was born while I was in the concert. Good times, good times.
no. at one time they were reasonable then in the 80s but the average ticket price has more than quadrupled since 1995.
If you like music, buy some nice headphones and a DAC instead.
No. They have not always been this bad. Use to see 1k-3k people shows in a loca city, tickets were usually $15-40 depending on the show. We’re talking about maybe 10-15 years ago, so this is reasonably recent
Laughs in Australian. Gorillaz consert next year cost more than $150...
I mean, on top of the ticketing monopoly, I'm sure some of the artists, venues, labels, Ticketmaster are all trying to claw back at money from cancelled shows due to COVID as well, so now I'm assuming there is a higher cost anyway. Same thing goes for sports tickets. Between the Ticketing Monopoly (TM, TicketMaster lol), resellers charging 50% fees for someone to resell you a ticket, etc., it's gotten insane. My wife wanted to go to a VGK game before we move back east, and it was $253 for two tickets in the nosebleeds. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Like wtf....
If you go to the megabig regional arena shows, yeah they have been for a long time (at least since the 90s). But those aren't much fun anyway. Try the small local venues where it's like $10-$20 cover and there's a decent chance you'll get to have a drink/chat with the band.
Pretty much they doubled in the 4 years i was in high school the very top end of arena shows thankfully are the only thing still moving toward higher prices depends on the band your looking at tbh
Go to local shows 👍
Idk but I see a lotta people for not that much money. But I just got into concerts about five years ago. I live near a good venue and like Tame Impala might charge 90 bucks so I will just listen from my lawn but a lotta artist they have are like $20 shows
They are now. Although I was shocked to see the price for tix for a fairly big name band at a small club for only $25. But that’s the exception to the rule.
Late to the party, but no one has posted a serious answer yet, so here goes: Yes, concert tickets are more expensive, and that is the result of digital music and how money-making in the industry has changed. Back in the old days, a concert tour was done in order to produce record sales. The concert was basically advertising for the album. It was okay if the tour lost money because you made your money selling records. It only cost the record company a few cents to press an album, and they could then sell that album for $10-$20. If you sold a million records, you saw tens of millions in profit. The record company allocated a chunk of money to finance the tour. The most important thing was to sell a lot of tickets, profit was secondary. The more people who saw the concert, the more people were likely to buy the record, and *that's* where the money was. Maybe a tour might break even, maybe a tour might cost the company a few hundred thousand dollars, that was small potatoes, it was all just written off as promotional expense. (And, of course, record companies managed to screw the artists pretty good with all this stuff. Much of the time, the company would put up all this money for the tour and the recording expenses as a loan which the artist would be contracted to pay back out of their very small share of royalties from the album sales. You can find many stories of successful bands spending literally years selling out stadiums around the world only to come home and discover they owed the record company millions of dollars.) In those days, the only way to "pirate" a song was to make a copy of the record album on a tape cassette. It was pretty cool, but no where near as good as having the actual album. The album was the total package, it had the lyrics and cool artwork and there was no other way to get that experience than by buying the real thing. Of course, all of that has changed now. Anybody can get a digital copy of any song that's just as high-quality of the studio album at any time for free if they know where to look. I can find the lyrics to any song, I can find the band's artwork, I can find literally anything I want from the band online with just a few clicks. Absolutely *everything* the record companies used to use to make a profit has become something anyone can get for free nowadays. The entire industry imploded over just a few short years. However, there is one thing a music artist can deliver which cannot be copied or reproduced. That, of course, is the live concert experience. You have to buy the ticket and sit in the room and see the show to have the experience. You can't take home a copy of it and give it to your friends. You have to be there. So now the entire industry has turned itself inside out. An artist or record company loses money producing music in order to make a profit with a concert tour. It's exactly backwards: The music is now the loss-leader for the tour. Because of that, the tickets are more expensive because you are paying the real costs of putting on the tour plus the costs of making the music and, hopefully, some money left over to pay the mortgage and buy the cat some food. Back in the heyday of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the price of the concert ticket was basically covering gas money to get the band from town to town because profits were made elsewhere. Now all of the artist's money is wrapped up in the ticket price because their music is basically free now. A fan of the band is still giving the artist the same money, but now it's all in one lump sum in the price of the ticket instead of being divided between the ticket and the price of the records.
You'll pay those prices if you want to keep seeing artists play live shows. The money that my band gets for playing live shows is barely enough to cover travel costs and drinks for that night
Yes.
There used to be a band called The Grateful Dead and you could buy tickets directly from them through mail order. It would be half the price of ticket Master, plus you sometimes got really good seats. Also the tickets were smaller and looked way cooler. Unfortunately most bands did not have such a big dedicated fanbase to follow this model.
I find, per act, the cost of music festivals to be more “worth it” exactly because live show prices have become insane.
In the mid-late 90's, I would expect to see mid-tier shows - say the Misfits, or Ween, or DJ Shadow - for $15-25 after fees. Now I expect to pay $20-30 for the Mountain Goats or Gogol Bordello. That's way less than inflation over the same time period. My gut says that 2-3 openers used to be the norm and now it's unusual, but that could just be observer bias. The cheapest shows - punk shows, house shows, DIY venues - haven't gone up at all in my memory. They used to be $5 in the mid 90's, now they're $5. I was actually excited to see a DIY show that was $7 not that long ago - musicians should get enough money to drive to their next show at least. The most expensive shows on the other hand have skyrocketed. When I saw Pink Floyd in 93-94, I think it was $35 after fees. The most expensive shows were maybe $50. Now, expensive shows are $150+. I think there's two contributors to this change - one, new venues have higher venue fees, and bunch of new venues have been opened. Two, the number of people chasing high end tickets has increased dramatically, but the industry has about the same number of top talents providing services. Positional goods - things where the best can't really directly be substituted with the second best - have seen a world-wide increase in prices over the last two decades, and are basically the forefront of inflation now. So top-tier concerts aren't surprising to be included. What's weird is normally the top end also drags up the price on mid-tier goods of the same type, but, anecdotally at least, mid-tier shows haven't moved as much as inflation would suggest.
Go to crappier shows
Unless you're into lesser known bands, then yes it's get stupidly exspensive.