To ask if you've refused to pay ridiculous prices for concerts?

Friend paid £1400 for two tickets 😱 I'm still in shock it's not even my money 🤣

I think a few more of them should take a leaf out of Yungbluds book.

Swift deserves a net wealth of $2 billion, frankly.

I’m no fan of her music, but she’s a phenomenal economic force. There are towns and cities that benefitted to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars from her tour. That deserves reward - she’s not a charity.

@latetothefisting

You can still buy current albums on CD for £12, but few people buy them. It’s vinyls that cost a fortune.

Don’t give me the ‘poor artist’ schtick, like they’d all be destitute if they didn’t charge £200 a ticket. On the first leg of the Eras tour, Taylor Swift made $190,000,000 post tax. In five months! She has a net worth of $2 billion. She could easily afford to knock a few quid of the cost of a ticket.

Paul Heaton famously keeps ticket prices low. And at the end of the tour he splits the money evenly with every person in his crew. He gets paid exactly the same as the musicians, the sound and lighting crew, the roadies, and the guys who sell the merch.

Me too! I paid a bit more than that. I remember my father asking if I was mad. 🤣

I would and have paid £££ for gigs I really wanted tickets for
Personal choice for me

Oooh which DJ? 👀 I’m off to Tomorrowland this year (and went last year).

I think older people with more disposable income are spending more on live music, for sure.

By older, I mean people in their 30s and 40s. I’m mid-30s and spend a fortune on festivals every year. In my teens and early 20s there is no way I could afford to go to Tomorrowland and the like. Indeed there are hardly any under-25s at some festivals, and an increasing number of over-45s.

I think a big part of it is millennials not wanting to grow up (see also: tumbling birth rate). 😁

One of my best gigs was £25 in a small club in Plymouth, and he's brilliant and plays Tomorrowland now and cream fields. Trying to buy tickets for a DJ tomorrow, will pay up to £200 though as he's amazing and it's a all day event

A theory I have about ticket prices is that concerts are full of mums taking their kids. Especially big names like TS or HS. When I was young, absolutely no one would be going with parents. They wouldn’t be seen dead! But it seems to be quite a thing now-and maybe one of the reasons why prices are as they are is because it’s middle aged people buying them.

You clearly DON'T understand it though!

it's hardly "selling out" to make their music available via the most common/only technology around. If your average new band only released a CD who on earth would buy it? Most people don't even have cd players anymore!

Again, if you "used to pay £12 for an album" that was twenty plus years ago! Even if streaming had never been invented that would probably be £20-30 an album nowadays if prices had risen along with inflation. 2 or 3 albums a month = £750 a year plus a few £40 concerts which you would also have expected to increase with inflation, so actually more like £80 = just under £1000 per year. Or you can stream spotify for free and spend that money on 6-7 £150 gigs a year, and if you don't go to that many, you're actually quids in.

"exposure" doesn't pay the bills! Expecting performers to not make any sort of profit on their work is what's unfair.

Touring is hard work - away from home for months at a time, sleeping on the road, having to perform at 100% even if you're feeling sad, or ill or stressed. It's not like 99% of the ticket price goes to the artist - of that £££ they have to pay security, management, sound and lighting technicians, make up and costume staff, personal assistants, backing vocalists/dancers/musicians, transport and hotels for all of the above, people to check the tickets, cleaners, costumes, sets, lighting, outlay for merch, venue fees, advertising, % to the ticketing website, huge amounts of insurance...if they get 5% of your £100 ticket they're lucky, and if it's a band rather than an individual that's then split 5 ways.

Basically = tell me you don't have a clue about either music or finance without telling me....

Somewhat of a derail, but does no one else get a bit bored at gigs that are seated and the music isn’t easy to dance to? I predominantly go to raves which are all/mostly floor tickets and it’s non-stop dancing.

When I’ve tried regular live music, I was just sitting in my seat like a lemon surrounded by people singing out of tune? Example was seeing Morrissey a few years ago. Love his songs, but it wasn’t exactly a barnstorming night out! 😅

Yeah, production has got nothing to do with price. I paid $300 for a New Year’s rave/festival and it was just DJs on a stage (albeit fantastic DJs) and a few fireworks at midnight.

It’s the artist that people are paying for, not fancy lights and lasers - they’re definitely secondary.

£100 - £150 seems to be the base price now. I’ve recently paid that for gorrilaz, foo fighters, bts, take that, kings of Leon, oasis - whether it’s a full on pop extravaganza with fireworks and loads of dancers or it’s 4 blokes stood stock still with guitars and drums, you’re paying the same.

I found out one of the local arenas is charging substantially more for the same concerts at other arenas including London ones which I’m particularly incensed about and think is utterly taking the piss. And ticketmaster is a massive pile of shite for what they charge for booking and processing fees. In a lot of ways I prefer a £35 gig as I don’t feel under so much pressure to get my money’s worth.

I was at Biffy last week and think we were around £55 each for our tickets. I’ve got another 3 gigs next month and think the priciest was around £50. Cheapest was £22.50 but that’s a 45 minute mini-gig.

Up to £60 is around normal now I would say, if I really REALLY wanted to see an act I would consider up to £100 but I’d still have to think how much I wanted to see them at that price.

I’ve never bought tickets though resale places, I’ve always managed to get my gig tickets from pre sales or general sale, even managed one which sold out in 3 minutes. I count it as one of my top skills. 🤣

Foos had been on my bucket list forever - managed to get face value re-sale tickets a couple of weeks before the Villa Stadium gig in 2024! So good!!

Going to see them in Liverpool this year!

I'm a 90's indie / rock / punk girl through and through. The only band on my 'haven't seen yet' bucket list is Pulp (although I would very much like to get Bon Jovi tickets this year)

I'm into second and third gigs for most of the others now

It's when you rebook for an artist a few years on that the price difference really jumps out for me.

We saw imagine Dragons in 2018 I think. £35 a ticket. They were already well known. A year or so ago it was stupid money and almost immediately sold out for their latest concert.

In 2020 I had tickets to take DD2 to Lana Del Rey. That was £70 each. Cancelled just prior to covid kicking in. Booked for last year's concert when she finally then did tour again. If I hadn't landed a pre-order code in a ballot on her website we've not managed to get tickets, and then it was twice what we'd paid last time.

They sell out. It’s supply and demand. It’s not really refusing as in taking a stand you just choose not to pay those prices but it’s not going to achieve anything given that they sell out

I have big views on this due being a huge music fan and being married to someone in the industry

• a show at Wembley costs money to put on. A show that fans expect will cost multiples of Harry in front of a four piece band with no video screens, staging, costume design, choreography, production design, rehearsals, audio that is fit for purpose. The above is what the new expectation is for live shows on a grand scale
• yes Ticketmaster are bastards
• Touring is fucking expensive even for tiny bands, especially post brexit

How much was harry styles?

StubHub is similar to Viagogo. Twickets is another reseller site to check - it is a fan to fan resale site but tickets are resold at face value.

I have always had a visceral hatred for touts and Viagogo and Stubhub are swarming with them! It really pisses me off when tickets sell out in 10 minutes and are immediately available for three times the value on resale sites. I wish they would legally ban anything but official face value resale!

For some of the bigger artists the prices on Viagogo can be really high with TM and AXS being closer to face value. For other artists or bands Ticketmaster and AXS resale can be a little bit higher but at least you are guaranteed to be getting what you have paid for. If I'm forking out over £150 for tickets, I am not going to take the risk of not getting them just to save £20!

If it was me, I would wait - even if you still ended up needing to use Viagogo, there will be more tickets available nearer the time. The people selling now are more likely to be touts whereas people selling closer to the date are more likely to be fans where something has come up making them less risky to buy from. But it would be a risk of not getting any.

The touts also reduce their prices as it gets closer to the gig to make sure they can offload the tickets

There are so many amazing tribute bands around these days. I’ve seen some that in some instances are better than the real thing! You can have a great night out these days with a good classic or hard rock tribute band for like £5 or £10. And lots of acts these days aren’t just washed-up pub tribute bands but proper professional tribute bands with great sound and setup.

My limit always used to be £50 for a big artist, now it's £100. More than that I'm not going. But also it depends on the artist, venue etc too. A pretty small band who haven't really done anything in years are touring this year and tickets are £32.50 for a small, not very good local venue where the sound is iffy at best. I last saw them 15 years ago in a much bigger venue, for £12. 15-20 years ago I was at a gig every other week because we had a good local venue that had big bands for £10-£20 a ticket. Now every gig there is £50+ and they rarely attract big tours any more. It's depressing.

Me and my daughter are going to see the weeknd, I was totally shocked at the ticket prices once I beat the queue BUT it’s a one off thing, gone towards her 15th birthday and I know we’ll never get chance to see him perform again. The night will absolutely be worth it.

The last concert I went to was mcbusted in 2014 and cost £40 we were 3 rows back, compare that to the 1st tier £204 tickets, it is a huge difference.