Millionaire willing to pay higher prices for luxuries because they aren’t worried about money. How shocking.
If y'all keep paying them, they'll assume you can pay more. Every big business takes a such as possible from you.
I go to a lot of live music shows but I haven’t purchased a TicketMaster or Live Nation ticket in forever. I don’t see huge bands because they are prohibitively expensive but I get to see a lot of really fun shows and experience a far more engaged crowd.
Honestly smaller local shows are so much better anyway. I’d go see some local band at the dive down the street over a stadium show any day.
My friend sometimes gets free tickets to bigger concerts and invites me. I saw ELO (or whatever the name is now) and Incubus recently and both were great in a different way. They're too different to compare IMO, even though I do prefer smaller shows because that's what the bands I like play
You're doing it right. The way to deal with overpriced concerts and scalpers is to vote with your wallet. Don't buy overpriced tickets. Don't buy from scalpers. Nobody needs to go see a particular artist at a particular concert, I don't care how much you "love" them, or that you might never see them on tour again, you don't NEED that. Let it go. Let go of the FOMO. Step one of defeating scalpers is to remove their market. If they cannot make money, they will not exist.
Of course he does, it's Capitalism, which will always incentivize firms to get as many people as possible, to pay as much as possible, for as little as possible.
I'm so glad I feel no need to actually go to concerts.
Me too. I haven't been to a show in 10-ish years. Don't miss it at all.
Too many concerts are not about the music anymore, too many events are becoming overinflated. And thus overpriced.
I watched parts of a Katy Perry show on TV lately: with every song came different costumes, lights, fire and explosion effects, acrobats, lasers, smoke, vehicles, waterfalls, bubbles, confetti, inflatables, whatnot onto the stage... It was a total mess and utterly exaggerated.
Are people really all so numb that they need these extreme overstimulations to feel something?
With pop music, maybe. They arent written to be appealing in and of themselves. Pop music is a pretty strict style and structure with the same bass line and same few chords. Then they are played on the radio ad nauseum, so that when it's first released you become familiar with the song enough to like it. As a batch of pop songs start to become old, another batch is released with similar style and structure. There's hardly anything new.
In order to keep people excited about a pop song that went through that life cycle 10+ years ago, there needs to be more. Don't forget that there are quite a few pop performers who rely on auto tune because they can't sing in tune, so they are just lip-syncing on stage. I'm sure some of the spectacle is also to keep the performers going and energetic during performances of the same pop crap they've toured with for more than a decade.
Meanwhile the local band is performing for 50 bucks and a couple of free drinks
Depends on the band. Popular trendy groups are going to have a lot of gee-whiz effects. I’ve probably been to a dozen shows over the last few years and seen zero fireworks, and the only costume change was a singer taking off a jacket after getting too hot on stage.
I mean from an economics standpoint if people are willing to pay higher prices on tickets being resold then they are underpriced. The price people are willing to pay is the "true" value of the thing. Personally I think concerts are too expensive even at list prices but artists are consistently selling out venues at these prices and even higher because people are paying more for tickets on secondary markets. Obviously there are people for whom seeing Taylor Swift is actually worth over a thousand dollars, and to be honest, if that's how much it is worth to them there's not much you can do to stop them from going, and I'm not sure I even want to. I might go see Taylor Swift for $40 a ticket just for the experience but is that really worth denying it to some super fan willing to pay 10x that? I won't get nearly as much from the experience as they will, and it's obviously not worth it to me.
Your economics argument assumes competition where there is none. Alas, it is unsound.
I am not assuming competition. The fact of the matter is that people are paying these prices for tickets regardless of who is selling them. Nobody needs to go see Taylor Swift to live (in spite of how some people feel) and yet they are still shelling out for these absurd markups on resale tickets. That's what I am saying here. People are willing to pay what these tickets are being sold for, so that is their value.
Well I think he's stealing too much of our oxygen & should be stopped.
It's 2025 and people can't boycott a company that over sells tickets, saying "I can't miss Taylor Swift".
Aren’t Live Nation the Astroworld guys? Yeaaahh not gonna give those guys any credence whatsoever
Ffs man, the prices are out of control for concerts. Live Nation needs to have their monopoly broken up.
This for sure. Once they consolidated everything, they raised the ticket fees and the venue fees for artists. They charge more and most artists makes less. Live Nation is a textbook example of a monopoly fucking over the consumer.
This, of course, does not factor in the problem of scalpers and the hugely increased fees charged on the secondary market.
Well, if tickets for a given band are being scalped, then it's a good sign that they're probably initially selling below market rate.
No, it's a sign of an improperly regulated market.
tbh how do you regulate the ticket market to demotivate scalpers?
The same way everyone else who regulates it does it - require the ID of the purchaser to be presented upon entry. Ticketmaster/LiveNation are simply not interested in curbing scalping as they make directly money off of it. Small independent vendors have employed ID verification for a long time to stop scalping along with explicit obvious messaging that tickets cannot be resold prior to purchase.
Also add reasonable limits for the number of tickets someone can buy at a time. Being able to buy 8 tickets in one go is absolutely ridiculous.
Absolutely. And if it's a large group of people, it's not difficult to have several people buy a few tickets each.
People won't scalp what won't sell.
You're right that scalping is an issue that could be addressed. But if people are going to pay the high prices, then most bands/venues will charge those prices.
Always have been. We had a system where bands didn't make as much as they humanly could because it was generally accepted that the art of live music wasn't made just for the enjoyment of the highest bidders in society. And this is still largely true from most artists' perspective. But they aren't the one setting the prices anymore and profit maximizing, when playing in most medium-to-large venues in NA.
I think that would depend on how you define both the words market and rate.
Simply because some people are buying tickets that were scalped and sold at higher prices, doesn't mean that the scalp price is the true rate.
When you raise prices you actually change your market demographic. The more affluent you require your demographic to be, the less available customers you will have.
If tickets are bought even entirely by scalpers, then live nation is still selling every ticket they have and should therefore be able to profit. If they raise prices, there will still be scalpers but now they have more risk that there's less buyers.
Honestly though, everyone is probably better off saving money and watching local performances and giving money directly to the venue and bands.
The last time I went to a large event that was well priced, it was an insane amount of sweaty people rubbing against me for about 6 hours, most of that was spent waiting, and I got the flu afterwards. It really turned me off to large venues.
The CEOs pay requires that belief of them, and so they are not free. They are in fact, yet another entrapped enemy of humanity, enmeshed as gears in a system.
This timeline is weird
Thieves are just there out on the open bragging how they steal, and then just taunt people with saying that they'll come back and steal some more
Yet he doesn't get jailed?
I appreciate what you're saying, but nobody is forcing anyone to buy tickets.
Stop going to arena shows! That's it! It's not even that hard, support small(er) local venues. If you have to miss massive band/artist, que sera. If the band doesn't give a shit, then it's not worth it anyway.
Do you live outside of the United States or something? Or just not go to concerts? Live Nation owns almost all of the small venues too. They've bought nearly everything out, and the few remaining independent venues are on life support. And if you're a local band, good luck. 20 years ago, venues would pay you to play. But now you have to pay them like $200 just for the privilege of playing at a small venue with a 350 person capacity. In my city less than 20 years ago, I remember being able to walk downtown in the music district on any day of the week, and there would be over a dozen venues right next to each other all playing something different. It could be a Tuesday night. Music was everywhere, and tickets were $6-20. But there was also tons of free stuff. But after the venues all got bought out, that all stopped. There's not enough big money in music 7 days every week. A lot of venues now only have shows as little as twice a month. And then they'll want to charge $70+.
Why shouldn't we be outraged? Music culture is being destroyed. Your "stop going to shows" solution isn't a solution. Nobody is going to concerts several times in a week anymore. What there once was has been destroyed. Live Nation needs to die.
I was just in a hotel last night and a local band was performing for free.
Can you believe that? I didn't have to pay anything, I wasn't even a guest!
But let's be honest, going to shows for most people is so that they can say they went to the show. It's part of the culture of consumption and exclusivity where you need to spend money in order to be part of the conversation.
Do you live outside of the United States or something
Uh... Most people do, luckily
Why shouldn’t we be outraged? Music culture is being destroyed. Your “stop going to shows” solution isn’t a solution. Nobody is going to concerts several times in a week anymore.
Well clearly a lot of people are still going to a lot of concerts unfortunately. Maybe if your country ever gets a more sane government, there will finally be an anti-trust case against LN. But honestly that is so unlikely, y'all are just gonna have to start shooting more CEOs. Maybe someone will do this guy next.
Edit: So apparently there IS an ongoing anti-trust lawsuit that started in 2024, but now all he needs is to pay Trump the usual fee, so idk how it's going to end up.
Outside of the US, stuff is at least not as bleak. It's a bit harder to destroy things that have been established for so long. Like in New Orleans, things had been established for a long time and it took a natural disaster (Katrina) to destroy the independent venues. But there are no protections against late stage capitalism in the US. Often, taxes alone will destroy independent venues. And yeah, I don't have any hope in the US government doing anything to help. It would sooner call all music a form of terrorism and make it illegal.
Right, but don't blame the victims. Consumer choice cannot bust monopolies. It does not work that way.
Yeah, I just can't buy this being a victim thing. I'll put the slider somewhere between nothing and victim, but you don't need to see Taylor Swift. I'll even accept that you need to see live music, but there is live music available at better rates and in smaller venues.
I do think the monopoly needs to be broken up, it I also think consumers need to be better. I swear, consumerism is such a problem in the US. They could literally write "Fuck You" on price tags and people would be like, well, fuck me I guess, as they buy shit they don't need.
And I'm not suggesting we shouldn't spoil ourselves, it's all good, but if you complain about concert tickets and then go and spend 350-500$ on shitty seats in a stadium that sits 100k people, you need to do better.
Even victims' lives go on, though. And many things are not "necessary" but still we used to break up monopolies, because they are a societal plague, not a consumer choice problem. So again, you are blaming people for not solving a problem that they cannot possibility solve.
Yeah, this ain't food, or access to the Internet or some other utility. It's concert tickets. And I agree they should step in to stop the monopoly, but at the same time consumers can exercise some modicum of restraint and not spend a fortune to go see shows. I'm not paying 500$ for tickets to see Blink 182, fuck that and fuck them for allowing it to happen. Cash grabs have become the norm for bands these days and I'm just not going to support that shit.
From a purely economics standpoint, when scalpers are able to sell at a higher price, yes they are underpriced.
But doing so limits access to cultural events to only those that can afford them.
Not true. Economic models typically assume competition exists. This is a monopoly, so the models don't actually work here.
How do you plan on solving this? For each event that occurs, it can only happen in one physical place. Space is inherently scarce, that's why real estate is a shit show.
People want lotteries. Look at the savannah bananas as a model for safe, cheap ticketing for a premium event. If savannah bananas had unrestricted transfers and resale, then the tickets would be $100s of dollars. However, they restrict ticket transfers and you can only get your tickets through a lottery system, so the costs stay pretty low. I think $30 a seat, which is independent of where you end up sitting.
Some people think CEOs are too tall
Some think they breathe too much oxygen
Underpriced for who? 😑
Personally I rarely go to concerts any more, part of that is life circumstances part of it is I just can't justify the prices.
The thing is he's probably right, people are buying the tickets, people are scalping tickets and making a profit, therefore there are people willing to pay more than face for the tickets, on that basis he's right.
Doesn't make it fair, doesn't make it morally right, doesn't make it healthy for the industry.
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