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A couple of months ago, The Rolling Stones were coming to my town to kick off their Zip Code Tour. It was the biggest concert of the year that anticipated record attendance and a sold-out show. But because there were going to be a lot of music lovers and fans who wanted to see the Rolling Stones, and due to the simple fact that it was the Rolling Stones who were performing, it was easily foreseen that tickets were going to be pricey.
As soon as I heard about their Zip Code Tour, I anxiously waited for their tickets to go on sale to the public since seeing them perform was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. However, waiting would turn into mayhem once the tickets were available for purchase online, which ultimately turned into a disaster and disappointment for many fans.
Aside from finding that getting a decent seat would cost at least hundreds of dollars, the probability of even acquiring available tickets was nearly impossible. The high amount of traffic going to the website that was distributing the tickets had turned the purchasing experience into a game of Russian Roulette where their system consisted of putting people into a virtual waiting room where they waited to be picked at random to choose their ticket types. However, this system was impractical since a lot of people had issues with finding available tickets 10 minutes after they went on sale to the public.
I was unable to get tickets, which was very disappointing since it will be a while before the band decides return to the US for another tour. But you can't count on that since the members of The Rolling Stones are as ancient as the dinosaurs and who knows how much longer they will still be around (joke intended).
Despite this experience, the one thing that stood out was not the horrendous waiting system but the ludicrous ticket prices (the cheapest ticket came down to around $45, which reserved a seat on the top-most level of the stadium, but at this point, you are paying to watch ants perform). Even though it was expected for these tickets to be expensive, especially for a band like The Rolling Stones, these numbers are just one of the many instances of bands and artists whose ticket prices are steadily increasing over the years as their concerts are becoming their primary source of revenue. Consequently, higher ticket prices will also lead to a shift in the demographics of concert-goers where the socioeconomically elite whose higher spending power will allow them to make up the majority of the audience.
Going to concerts used to not hurt the wallet. There are concerts you can attend for an affordable price and still make the most out of the experience, but this depends on who you are seeing and the venue location. Nowadays, tickets are absurdly pricey, especially if they are for bands or musicians who are either pop artists or veterans of the music industry. But even if this is the case, why go the extra mile and charge fans $300 for a decent seat?
People are willing to pay
People are willing to pay hundreds to see their favorite artists, so as long as you have those people, tickets will remain expensive. If this trend continues and prices become more expensive, the demographic of concert-goers will shift from including the average person to their eventual exclusion, and seeing people who are willing and/or could afford to drop hundreds to thousands of dollars for a good seat. As to why people are willing to splurge is mainly due to the simple reasons of "why not?" and demonstrate spending power in exchange for bragging rights to tell your friends and family that you attended a concert that others had trouble getting into.
Piracy
Since people are willing to pay a hefty price, it should not come as a surprise that piracy has contributed to these costs and that those same people who also happen to illegally download music are now paying for it. Taken from RIAA's page on piracy:
Since peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 53 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.0 billion in 2013.
Nowadays, most content is downloaded digitally online. Artists used to have their primary source of revenue come from album sales, so touring was their way of promoting their albums. But due to the rise of illegal downloading, the roles have reversed where touring has become their primary source of revenue and albums are released to promote their concerts, which is a price that fans, whether they have partaken in illegally downloading content or not, will have to pay.
Lack of competition
Live Nation Entertainment is the largest live entertainment company that manages concerts venues, the careers of many popular artists, and happens to own Ticketmaster. Given that Ticketmaster is the largest and primary ticket seller, they don't have competition, which means they are free to set the prices of their tickets as high as they want. It is also worth mentioning that Ticketmaster is also notorious for having excessively high processing fees (eg. $16.50 for processing an online ticket purchase).
Demand surpasses supply
With the way that artists book their venues, and if you take into account that some artists may be on their last concert tour, there is a limited supply of tickets to go around. It is extremely rare nowadays for artists to hold two concert performances at a venue within a short period, so this builds the demand for concert-goers and results in high ticket prices since seats are limited. With that said, it is even more rare that supply will surpass demand, so the chances that ticket prices will go down are very remote and are not going to happen any time soon.
What does this shift mean, and why does this and expensive ticket prices matter?
Music lovers are a diverse group of people who come from different backgrounds. Seeing our favorite band or artist perform in an up-close and personal manner is something most of us would like to experience, and as much as we want to, we would like to do it at an affordable price.Although there were more than 42,000 attendees at the concert, those who were able to get in and see the Rolling Stones kick off their tour had to pay an average of $563.94. On the secondary market, tickets averaged at $651.75.
To sound even more ludicrous, and for nostalgia's sake, a Rolling Stones concert ticket in 1981 averaged at $16, which, by today's inflation standards, would cost at around $46. Those were the days when you could pay a reasonable amount to see and hear musicians play quality music. But now that the market has considerably changed since then due to our ability to acquire music digitally, rising ticket prices are inevitable, which makes it increasingly difficult for the average person to have this concert experience.
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