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

[Netcurtainnelly]

Just a joke. The latest prices for Harry Styles after Oasis.
They are laughing all the way to the bank while most people are struggling with their everyday bills.
Always managed to go and see the latest acts back in the day without being fleeced.

How much money do these pop acts need to live on?

I haven’t not bought them as a protest, but at times I’ve not bought them as I can’t afford it!

Id I had enough money I’d still buy the tickets if I wanted to see the band enough.

I don't think I've ever paid more than £40 for a theatre ticket and I go a fair bit but I get the cheapest ticket. If it's a concert I want front floor.

Its the dynamic pricing thats also rubbish! Feel less are doing it these days but theres still a few out there.

That and the added fees. Paid 86 for Bruno Mars and the ticket themselves only 70. Understand if got sent the ticket itself but all on the phone. Know more to it then that but still...

@Netcurtainnelly YANBU!

What also makes me horrified is that people fork out £100s for a ticket just to see this teeny tiny dot on a stage.

If you can't get tickets with a good view, then I don't see the point. I've been to see Foo Fighters and U2 and various other artists, but only ever bother when I can get good seats.

I also think any re-selling above face value and any sales outside the venue should be banned.

Same for football matches and the cost of a season ticket. It was always the irony that the average salary of a season ticket holder was very low.

We have been going to the Nutcracker ballet every year for years.

We're not bothering so much anymore as the prices are just rising too quickly.

It's years since we went to the Royal Ballet version, we started seeing the "cheaper" English National but even they're getting too expensive.

With the tax bracket thresholds frozen, people will only have less and less money year on year and this kind if thing is going to get a lot worse.

I got through for oasis tickets but after about 6 hrs. It was £300+ per ticket. I was like nope, I’m not paying that.

I paid £120 to see Justin timberlake about 14yrs ago and I thought that was so expensive! My friend was like how much omg what do I do, shall I still get them. In a bit of a panic we bought them lol. Amazing seats and what a concert. I wouldn’t spend anymore than £150 now and I think that’s expensive.

I was recently talking to my 16 year old son about this - he's mad about music and would love to go to loads of gigs & has a Saturday job but tickets at £150+ are beyond his and most teenagers' reach. When I was a teen in similar circumstance I went to loads of gigs not just small venues even big ticket Wembley arena ones weren't that much. I went to Live Aid FFS - £25!!! That can't be more than £70/80 nowadays. George Michael's Faith tour paid for myself from my Saturday job c.£10 then £30/40 now.

And YES @CraftyNavySeal totally agree about the seats up in the gods - you just end up watching the screen and no atmosphere to speak of. If I'm desperate to see someone I'll always try and get standing as I know I can't afford the reasonable seats. Same with theatre - hate paying £70/80 to be staring at a canopy or missing half the stage.

What also makes me horrified is that people fork out £100s for a ticket just to see this teeny tiny dot on a stage.

This is my thinking about a lot of enormous/stadium events. Maybe I'm just old and boring, but many of them are now televised - so I'm always going to get a far better (free) view from the BBC's vast array of top quality cameras operated by skilled professionals when sitting in my own armchair, than I would being in one single place a quarter of a mile away, having paid hundreds of pounds for the privilege.

I'm a huge Eurovision fan, and did try to get tickets when it was in Liverpool, as it seemed a shame not to even try when it was on home territory, but the only ones left were £500 each, so no way; but at home, watching on the TV, is undoubtedly far and away the prime viewing spot, albeit maybe without the atmosphere (and crush) of 'being there'.

Yeah, there was a lot of negativity about "Taylor" selling seats for thousands but that was all people with FOMO buying resale halfway through the tour! If you could buy one a year in advance they were fairly reasonable. With support act it was 4.5 hours.

My DD had a budget of £150 for Harry Styles, so managed to get tickets for her third choice, on pre sale. She'd set around £100 for My Chemical Romance and couldn't get tickets by the time she got through. We used to be able to get £46 tickets, I've seen The Police, Eminem, Oasis, Noel Gallagher, UB40, Lionel Richie, Mark Knopfler, the Killers etc for that. Now, realistically you need to spend £150, or get really lucky.

Yup i've pretty much given up on gigs except for local folk ones that cost £8. I COULD afford to see Oasis but fuck that

I won't do it. I don't really like 'popular' artists per se but I tried to get tickets for Kendrick Lamar (who I do like) for me and DS last year in Brum and they were 2-500 pound each. Just ridiculous, IMO.

Also tried to get tickets for System of a Down and they were even worse.300 quid for STANDING?!!

What really annoys me is dynamic pricing - not just because you can see prices rising in front of your eyes but because artists can opt out of it. They just don't because they're greedy.

I'll be watching festival line ups for anyone I want to see for the forseeable. Day tickets, hell even weekend tickets, are so much cheaper.

How any family can warrant over a grand for a couple of Taylor Swift or Harry Styles tickets is beyond me.

Exactly this.

The greedy bastards don't deserve my money.

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.

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.

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.

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

How much was harry styles?

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

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

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.

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

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. 🤣

£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.