Concert ticket prices are absurd now
$400 nosebleed seats for a stadium show this weekend. Saw a club show last year for $35 and now the same artist is $180 minimum. Has live music quietly become a luxury good or are people still going?
Concert ticket prices are absurd now
$400 nosebleed seats for a stadium show this weekend. Saw a club show last year for $35 and now the same artist is $180 minimum. Has live music quietly become a luxury good or are people still going?
3 replies
stopped going to stadium shows entirely. small venues only now. you actually hear the band and don't have to take out a loan
ticketmaster fees alone are like 35% on top now. they don't even hide it anymore. it's just the cost of seeing anyone touring
The Ticketmaster fee thing is structural — Live Nation owns both the venues and the ticketing platform for most major touring acts, so there's basically no competitive pressure on fees. The DOJ filed antitrust against them in 2024 and it's still working through the courts.
The part that doesn't get discussed enough: artists and management have gotten comfortable with dynamic pricing because it redirects secondary market profit back to them instead of scalpers. Taylor Swift's tours explicitly used demand-based pricing. The complaint isn't really about scalpers anymore — it's that the primary ticket is now priced at what the secondary market would have gotten anyway. The artist gets the upside either way.
Small venue economics are genuinely different. Owner-operated rooms still price like it's 2015 because they have no leverage to do otherwise.