I remember seeing back in the 1970’s Aerosmith, ZZTop, Uriah Heap, Alice Cooper, and others for $1.00 each at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park, NY.
Concert Ticket Prices - Not a Rant - Just an Observation
I’m not a major concert-goer. I do look for new bands playing small venues and I enjoy those. Some of these are as low as $15. Some as high as $50. I recently saw Marcus King at a tiny venue. Tickets were $90.
I haven’t seen a band in a large venue in ages.
I recently ’discovered’ a band that I was blown away by. Came across them on YouTube. They’re called The Red Clay Strays. They are relatively new from a recognition standpoint. I figured I’d look up their tour dates and maybe find a concert in a small-ish venue.
Well, my first surprise is that this band has already hit the big time. I ’discovered’ them a year too late. They are already playing civic arena sized venues almost exclusively.
I figured that since they’re coming to a couple of cities near me I’d go to a show. That’s when I got my second surprise. They’re ticket prices are in the $350-500 range. Yes, there are some for around $175 but most of those are single seats in the nose bleed sections of civic arenas.
I’ve heard that Taylor Swift and Springsteen tickets are $1000+.
I looked up Rush tickets and they’re in the $350-600 range.
I got to thinking about ticket prices. I went to see a lot of concerts in high school and college. Early to mid 80s. I remember seeing the big bands like Foreigner and Journey, often with 2 opening acts for $12.50. That never seemed like too much even for a high school kid with no allowance and an after school job for cash. An AI search indicates that that was indeed the typical price for big artists even bands like The Who, Fleetwood Mac and Rush.
A Google search indicates that $12.50 in 1982 was about like $80 is now. But tickets for the big acts are not $80. They are 4-8 times more than that now. That’s quite a phenomenon that vastly out paces inflation.
That brings me back to seeing the Red Clay Strays. They’re coming to my area in October. They usually sell out. Tickets for these shows were moving fast almost 4 months before the show.
My wife and I decided to go. We have some old friends, two couples, who also love this band and who have been extremely generous to us over the years. We decided to get six tickets and treat them to the show. We could not find six seats in a row at any price. Even as we browsed seats were disappearing. We finally found 4 seats in a row with two right behind them.
We bought the six tickets. Good seats too. Our friends are thrilled and we are thrilled to repay some of their kindness to us. It will be great to see them and get together for this.
Yes ticket prices are shocking even for a new act like the Red Clay Strays which, in fairness seem to have hit it big. But their shows are selling out and a tight wad like me bought six of them.
So it seems like they are charging what the market will bear.
Hope they put on a good show.
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As to ticket prices. I paid $3.50 CDN to see Elton John in 1971 and $6.00 CDN to see the Stones backed up by Stevie Wonder. That $3.50 in 1970 is around $28.00 in today's dollars. We have become a society of greed that measures success in dollars and cents. There is something critically wrong with any society that pays an athlete $50M season to play football, but grinds teachers and healthcare workers for every penny. It wouldn't be this way if everyone, with NO exceptions, paid 10% in income tax, but that would require Elon, Mark, Jeff, Larry and Donald to actually care about the world they live in. Ticketmaster is just one symptom of a much bigger disease.
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I’m pretty sure I posted this before but I use it as a measure of a few things. Elvis 1975, $12.50. And he happened to have been magnificent that afternoon. My friends and I were very active through the 70s and ’80s between clubs and College tours and Arena Acts. Everything was very affordable on our movie usher money that also covered drugs and liquor/beer and the occasional formal date. We saw the Stones in 81, 13th row, for about $50, Billy Joel, Hall & Oates, other names I’m not remembering when they were playing college gigs. Shit back then was very reasonable before the Ticketmaster Mafia owned everything. My wife and I do a lot of Broadway and concerts at this stage of our lives. Broadway is kind of funny, if you keep looking for the deals, they pop up and as I mentioned somewhere else in this long ass post, if I’m sitting off to the side a little bit but close to the stage, I’m really good with that. I picked the seats that are next to the $500 ones for anywhere between 125 and 200. I got a great deal on Death of a Salesman a few months ago. I think we were in for about 400 bucks a few rows from the stage. We don’t do a lot of the Blue Ribbon stuff, meaning the Jay Z’s and The Rolling Stones, cranky old Springsteen isn’t much fun anymore, though I’ve done the Stones a handful of times through the years as late as 2019. I’m probably not going to go back for the Rolling Stones. I’ll pay for McCartney again- as I told my son as we were involved in the naa na na, na na-naah finale at MetLife a few years ago, out of respect for who and what he is, I’ll keep showing up as long as he keeps showing up.. within some reason. The reasonable concert tickets in our lives, which are spread out throughout the year to one or two concerts/shows a month at places like the St George Theatre in Staten Island, my favorite The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, Bergen pac, NJPAC, the Paramount in Peekskill.. Etc. Mostly seeing the oldies acts, like a wonderfully impressive Diana Ross show a couple of months ago, my favorite ’70s and ’80s bands...I really loved the Happy Together tours up until a couple of years ago when headliner age and continuous death toll started making it not so much fun. Natalie Merchant, Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, phenomenal Dead Songs show a month or so ago.. Special mention has to go out to the most surreal Johnny Mathis show at the Westbury theater last year or the year before. I don't even remember why I bought the tickets but the guy was 90 years old and he was fucking phenomenal. My wife and I were completely wrapped up in this one-of-a-kind display of Excellence. Jazz people I love, like Samara Joy and Kurt Elling and Ravi Coltrane.. you can see top Jazz Acts for not a lot of money, fortunately and unfortunately. I paid a Blue Ribbon price for Tom Jones at the Beacon Theatre this coming September... there’s definitely a Legend Tax on that right now and that’s okay because if you check the YouTube videos of current Sir Tom shows, he still rocks in a different way. Anyway, those tickets, if you sit off to the side but still five or six rows from the stage, you can pull off a $300 night for you and your favorite companion...without dinner of course. A little trip to Bethel Woods had us with Darius Rucker for about that price the other night and he was great. The periphery stuff like the gas, the night in a little hotel and the day off from work the next day, that too costed, but he wasn’t playing anywhere in NYC or Westchester. For the rest of the summer, I have Joe Jackson coming up next month I believe. The war and treaty next month, the Fab Faux next weekend, the Stray Cats if they show up in August.. this is all we do. We no longer dine like Foodies, not paying for kid crap anymore, not really vacationing while the psychos in the Middle East are doing their thing.. so we’re enjoying our lives here as long as we’re still in this region of the country. And lastly , a special shout out to Paul Simon. I paid a lot of money last year for my beloved Paul Simon at the Beacon because- as he’s done a couple/few of times before, ultimately this is on me because, this time I really believed him) he, once again, made like this is it...again. lt wasn’t. I think I’m going to buy a single ticket to see him at Forest Hills next month. The performance is not yet horrible and as long as it’s kind of musically good , I’ll enjoy being in front of him while he plays some music. That said, either he’ll die first, really lose this hearing and or run a couple more tours, but in any event, I’m not taking his word for it. |
Some others may have opined on this, but my belief is that because streaming has overtaken physical media (which pays almost NOTHING to the artists) that the only way for musicians/bands to make money is to perform live. In the past, it was the opposite. From what I understand, bands made all their money selling albums. That is just not the case anymore. My 2 cents. If someone has a different take, I defer. |
@fred60 I think you’re right and honestly, if I can at least feel like some of that ticket money reaches the band I feel a little better about it. I heard someone say on a pod cast, or here, or somewhere that buying a CD or vinyl from a band’s website is comparable to 10,000 hits on streaming. I don’t know if there is any truth to that or not. But, I’m still into CDs so if I hear something decent I get a CD and if it is an active band I get if from their website. I’m not a vinyl guy. I have an old Sony turntable with a decent cartridge on it and a DJ Pre 2 phono pre, which I am assuming is terrible, but I bought the Red Clay Strays double album from a live show at the Ryman because it has several songs you can’t get elsewhere. It was $45. For their latest album (Grateful) they released different colored vinyl in limited runs and people were paying hundreds of dollars for them. Seems nuts to me but good for the band I suppose. |
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