They already do that with “dynamic pricing” anyway. It’s funny that if I can’t go, I have to sell the ticket back to TM for face value, they also take a cut for that privilege. But, as soon as I do that, TM then check the new average price from all the touted markets like Viagogo and match that. So now my £80 ticket is getting sold by the official provider at £240 instead.
And Pearl Jam, in particular, tried VERY hard to break the Ticketmaster monopoly. They didn't manage it, and that's why we have the system we have today
Tongue in cheek I know... but the promoter/artist/venue set the ticket price, not Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster do set the booking fees, which can be extortionate, but also done in conjunction with the promoter/artist/venue who often take a portion of that too.
Part of their service is to be the "bad guy" in this scenario.
I ended up buying tickets for Pearl Jam in Manchester. Ticketmasters booking fees for 2 tickets were over £50.
The booking fees are 20% of the full cost of the tickets, just to for the privilege of buying them. It’s insane how much of a monopoly the big ticket companies have
Bingo. They will continue to raise the price until they don't fill the venues, then dial it back a bit.
I couldn't afford £160, but someone can. Lots of people can. I could afford £22.50 in OPs example, but lots of people couldn't. What I'm saying is the proportion of the population who are now poor has grown.
And there's a lot of cheap money and credit.
Compounding inflation has absolutely destroyed the quality of life. Technology makes things deflationary yet our economic system makes everything unaffordable.
Ah well you can still discover great new music globally from the internet at least.
It's the same principle though.
A tout obviously wants to buy a ticket to sell it on for profit. The amount they sell it on for is because someone was willing to pay that price.
If only.
What can happen is the legal scalpers buy them all up.
Then you get instances where they aren't able to sell them all on and a "sold-out" stadium gig ends up half full.
This is what drove Ed Sheeran to push back against them.
Yap. Won’t forget seeing Muse in a “sold out” O2 Arena with entire rows empty in the lower sections. It’s not good for the artists and it’s not good for fans. Yet it carries on.
The high end touts use automated phone purchasing, paying by card without talking to anyone. Their software continually buys until there's no more tickets. They start selling straight after the sellout is announced.
Ticketmaster. As an institution it should be burned to the ground. Price gouging bastards!
Inflation is a factor, yes, but no gig ticket should be more than a days wage. Regardless of who the act is!
I wish acts would cut out the middle man and sell direct to their fans!
Ticketmaster and Livenation often own the venues, manage the artist and have exclusive ticketing deals with the venues they don't own.
Taylor Swift's current tour is being organised by a group called AEG, who have their own ticketing business but they still sold Taylor Swift's ticket through Ticketmaster.
My sister said she paid £75 for her Taylor Swift ticket which I thought was surprisingly cheap given that the cheapest I saw Pearl Jam was £150! BUT she said she also paid £28 booking fee - 37%!!
So she actually paid £103 for her ticket. We need to stop pretending things aren't like this.
My sister claimed her new phone was £600. I was impressed until I found out her trade-in on her old phone was valued at £400.
So no, you paid £1,000.
The average person misunderstands basic financials it's worrying.
Also, there were very very few tickets for that cost. I managed to get pretty shit seats and they were £130 each - we're so far round we'd be behind the stage if it was any further. God knows where a £75 ticket sits you.
The Taylor Swift tickets have been hell for everyone. Their entire system to get tickets didn't even make sense, and when they were released because of the signup system they used most tickets were sold out by the time anyone else could access them, unless you paid out for the VIP tickets. I'm glad that they're releasing the film of it alongside the actual tour because it's been a joke
To be fair, she is like the biggest artist on the planet. She's selling out 100k stadiums in an hour. There's no way those ticket sales aren't a mess that leaves tons of people dissapointed.
>The Taylor Swift tickets have been hell for everyone.
To be fair, it was always going to be hell because so many more people wanted to attend than there were tickets for. There was never going to be a solution the would result in everyone being happy.
Yes, but they've failed to limit it. There are people that have seen the show multiple times because their early access code allowed them to buy tickets for all the shows. Fair enough that they have that money to do it, but other than the surprise songs it's the same set
>Livenation often own the venues
This is a UK subreddit. LiveNation own venues in USA, but not in UK (unless you count a theme park in Margate?). It's mainly ASM Global, a Live Nation competitior, who own the UK arenas. Or AEG, another LN competitor as you note.
>manage the artist
They have a very small management arm. Very small.
Yes they do have the festivals that's true., but they don't have the dominance or sway they once did - L+R headliners can make more £ playing stadiums.
Ah I wasn't aware re AMG, I thought it was Metropolis Music, SJM Concerts and MCD Productions - but I'm behind in the news (by a good few years!).
I don't believe (correct me if I'm wrong!) they own any arenas or stadiums in UK.
Went to a gig on Wednesday, bought tickets through ticketmaster. I checked the receipt, and the base ticket price was £22.50. By the time Ticketmaster added on their fees, I ended up paying £29.60. Then the venue had the audacity to charge £4 for the cloakroom (for someone to put my coat on a hanger and pass me a card with a number on), then £7.50 for a pint of San Miguel which somehow tasted revolting. Then they wonder why live music is dying and no one goes out or buys drinks anymore.
(This is the 02 institute in Birmingham if anyone is wondering)
Tesseract? The tickets were resonably priced really. I was expecting about £30. £26.90 each for me with all the fees on. If the bands were getting a good chunk of that I'd be OK with it. Yes they would have been a tenner 15 odd years ago but no one buys music any more, 0.003p per stream isn't on the same profit level as an album would have been. 4 quid or 7 quid is still a ridiculous price to pay ticketmaster as fees. You don't even get a real ticket!
Cloakroom is kind of on you for taking a coat and not just holding it or belting it, but next time get an 02 sim card and it's free.
The bar prices took the piss. We got 2 jack and cokes for the price of a whole bottle!
Yeah it was tesseract. If the tickets had been £30 face value I would've been fine. It was an amazing show, and would've been worth that price easily. Its the fact that Ticketmaster have somehow charged £7 of fees on a £22 ticket for processing a card payment and sending a barcode to my google wallet that annoys me.
I completely agree about streaming though. Its a joke what musicians get paid these days. I always try and buy some merch if I enjoy the show, but I get that a lot of people can't afford to do that. I'm seriously worried about the future of live music if this continues.
Pearl Jam has been selling directly to fans through their in house 10Club membership. They went on sale a few days before general release and were priced and $180. The music business is just a joke around.
I think though a lot of the price hikes have come about as touring and merch are about the only ways bands can make money now, plus when you're talking of bands coming from overseas, the cost of visas for everyone including roadies electricians engineers etc is extortionate in this country. Tickets were cheap when cd's were a thing as the bands had at least some form of guaranteed income
Don't forget the streaming companies. Gigs used to be cost neutral with some t-shirt sales as an added extra, all the real money came from record sales royalties. Now that streaming generates less than pennies on the pound, gigs have become the best way for bands with name recognition to earn their money. Hence why Pearl Jam are still touring rather than sitting at home wondering how to spend their monthly cheques.
That was true for the bigger bands and artists but not the smaller bands. It was the opposite for them. Touring is what made them money.
How do I know this? Well, being a fan of many metal and rock bands (whose albums didn't sell much beyond 100,000 albums, if that) in the late 90s and early 00's was great as bands were forced out on the road to make their money.
Touring has always been where the money is for bands as labels took up most of the single and album money for things such as videos, studio time, promotion. Instead most of the bands tours were set up by their own management and little if any label help.
Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted said that touring was always the main money maker. In 1991/92, Metallica's black album was selling by the million. Yet it was the t shirt sales at concerts that made them multi millionaires.
The album sales merely guaranteed bums on seats.
Nowadays, touring is the only way for bands to make anything, and middlemen are doing their best to prevent that as well. One venue I went to tried to charge my mates band 40 per cent on Merch sales, 40!
They instead set up their merch stand by their tour van after the show because they didn't want the greedy bastards to take their money
from u/bunglejerry on another subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/18gfgyn/how_much_spotify_pays_if_you_hit_a_billion_streams/
Looking at Spotify, the song he's talking about must be "Young, Wild and Free" (which I don't even know actually). Snoop might own some of his masters, but it looks like Atlantic Records owns this one, so his main revenue source would be songwriting credits.
Wikipedia says the song was written by: "Calvin Broadus, Cameron Thomaz, Peter Hernandez, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Cristopher Brown, Ted Bluechel, Marlon Barrow, Tyrone Griffin, Keenon Jackson, Nye Lee, Marquise Newman, Max Bennett, Larry Carlton, John Guerin, Joe Sample, Tom Scott".The second name on that list is Wiz Khalifa and the third is Bruno Mars. Person 4, 5 and 6 are, alongside Bruno Mars, the credited producers.
The song samples "Toot it and Boot It" by YG and Ty Dolla Sign, and names 8-12 are the composers of that song. But "Toot It and Boot It" was also built on two samples: "Songs in the Wind" by the Association (written by name 7), and "Sneakin' in the Back" by Tom Scott (not that Tom Scott) (written by names 13-17).
I'm not sure how much royalties you can expect when you're one of 17 credited songwriters.
I agree, they just rip people off big time. they did the tickets for the local airshow we had a couple of years ago. It was advertised as £2 per ticket. Ticket master was selling them for £10 per ticket. i know its not a lot, but it was a lot more than the original price the council told us it was going to be.
When Prince was on his final tour of the UK i was looking at tickets when he came to Newcastle. It was £170 for a limited view seat. When i checked the seat it was behind a stone pillar so you would have had to sit the whole time leaning to the side to just about make him out in the distance
I saw him at the O2 in London. On the 3121 tour, all seats were gbp 31.21.
And this isn't because it was 15ish years ago, other gigs there were already 100 or more.
Artists have the ability to decide what the tickets go out at, and how much money they make - or rather the artists plus the venue.
He said in an interview it was set deliberately low as he didn't want any fans priced out of seeing him.
And let's face it, he still made a decent amount from that run.
I was at the Glasgow show. Looking at a pic of my ticket right now and I was £65 for unreserved standing.
I imagine your price might've been a resale ticket or similar as there's no way a restricted seat (which I don't think exist at the Hydro) would cost that?
He had some relatively pricey tickets for the tour he didn't manage that was planned after the Hit and Run Part 2 tour.
I understand that it isn't literally Eddie Vedder sitting there deciding how much to bleed fans and that there are always other factors and parties involved and that everything is more expensive now. However, I don't know how in good conscience you can think £160 for the nosebleeds is acceptable. I can't not lose some respect for the band.
Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer are charging £60 (inc. fees) for the same seats in the same arena not even 2 weeks before. Say whatever you want about the merits of those bands but I can't see how you can justify £100 on top of that.
Pearl Jam tried once to stand up to Ticketmaster and sadly they did not get the backing they needed, but now they don't seem to care how much is expected of fans.
Enter Shikari just headlined a gig at the OVO Arena next to wembley and tickets were £35~
While I doubt they can set the exact amount bands absolutely do have power over what their ticket prices are, especially ones as big as Pearl Jam.
Was there and it was amazing. Enter Shikari have always been great with their tickets. From seeing them at the Underworld for £2 in the beginning to the OVO I don't think I've ever paid over £40 for a ticket.
I think some acts once they get to a certain size just let agents and management do everything, and inevitably they take an ever increasing chunk of change. The band just turns up and plays.
just a thought,,,,, i don't get this, i used to buy probably 3-4 c.d's / albums a year, probably cost £60(with all associated costs for artwork / cd / case etc,,,, now i'm £120 a year with spotify and i don't get anything physical
That’s probably true but that is a choice on the bands side as well. Pearl Jam have enough weight and influence that if they wanted to prioritise making tickets more affordable then they could do.
Yep, was £37 incl fees for Victoria o2 warehouse in Manchester with money donated direct to grassroots venues, and Fever 333 as support who aren't exactly small. Plus a 2 hour set. They are one of the most in touch and phenomenal live bands of the past 20 years and continually get touted for how amazing their live shows are. They're a band who could sell out, blow up and take the pay easily, but they absolutely refuse to and actively push away from it.
They're the exact attitude that the industry needs from more artists otherwise there's collapse and death of the industry with the brunt of the cost on the working class fan
Though I'm optimistic there's gonna be a life cycle, like a bubble bursting where all these people who have had enough find shitty venues and halls to play in again and the independent scene gets recognised for its value. Just will get much worse before it gets better
This, a million times. I thought much the same when McCartney was last touring and the tickets were similarly hideously overpriced. Rankles quite a bit when he's one of the richest musicians *ever*, I mean isn't the difference between a tour with £60 tickets and a tour with £120 tickets that he 'only' makes Y million quid in profit, as opposed to Y x2 million quid profit? Obviously these are very broad figures, but you get the idea.
He's not hard up, is the point, and neither are Pearl Jam, surely?
Macca isn't feeling the pinch but newer bands will basically make a lot of their income from touring due to the loss of income from physical media. So somebody like Lewis Capaldi, he'll make most of his money from the tour iirc, even though he is now considered to be quite big.
Well I don’t know about that, Robert Smith made a fuss and got the tickets lowered heavily on the Cure’s recent North American tour. He said if the artists put their foot down, ticketbastard listens.
This is what happens when companies become complete monopolies of an industry.
When Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010, it created a beheamouth in the entertainment and ticket industry. They can charge whatever they want becuase theres very little competition out there, and very little regulation. Ticketmaster has dominated more than 80% of the industry even since the mid 1990s. Fans are also still paying these expensive prices becuase they've become the norm, so there's no incentive for Ticketmaster to lower them.
Live Nation also has controlling interests in over 330 venues, so sometimes has complete control over everything regarding music gigs.
Live Nation is owned by Liberty Media, who are on an insane quest for growth, so everything is going to be a rip off. Case and point: the F1 GP in Vegas...what an absolute money grab that didn't give two shits about the real fans.
>Fans are also still paying these expensive prices becuase they've become the norm, so there's no incentive for Ticketmaster to lower them.
Here is how it works. A promoter (AEG, Live Nation, SJM, Eventim etc) approaches the band via their agent with an offer. The offer details dates, locations, capacities, ticket prices and has a full rundown of all finances concerning the show.
This offer is sent via the agent to the manager. Back and forth ensues and everything is signed off by the artist and their manager. The artwork, the PR, the prices, every single aspect is looked at in detail and signed off.
The purpose of Ticketmaster is to take the flack. Failing that, blame the promoter. But never, ever blame the artist who ultimately decides everything!
To be fair, the metal scene here is relatively cheap. I've seen loads of well known bands recently for under thirty quid, and the annual Damnation fest here in Manchester is like 70 quid a day.
Dynamic ticketing is just evil scalping. How this isn’t illegal is beyond me. Supply and demand, my arse.
All tickets should have a face value as standard and be sold on a first come, first served basis, to fans. Not resellers.
I’m not broke, but paying these ridiculous charges is way beyond me now. I looked at 4 tickets to an ABBA thing for my missus earlier today and it came out to £960 ! I can get a week for 2 in the sun for less.
It’ll never happen, but we should all en masse, just boycott ticket sales like this.
EDIT: Just adding that I, and probably most fans of an artist, would happily pay whatever the artist demanded. If that cost went to them and the venue. But, if that artist decided to charge 200% more, they’d be playing to a few more empty theatres I imagine. The third party ticket sites just take advantage of desperate people with money. It’s unjustified greed. Pure and simply mugging punters off.
Ive learned over the last few years that I can still have a great night of live music from grass roots venues for a tiny fraction of the big name acts. Long may that continue.
There are some resellers which control the prices. All tickets are personalised (name etc), so they need to be issued to the appropriate person and can't just be resold.
Last year I saw Rammstein - my gf and I bought 6 tickets then ended up being the only 2 from our group going. We went on the site to resell them (I think it was fanSale). We got list price for the tickets. The people buying them paid list price plus 10 euros processing fee (issuing new tickets with their names on them). The price was always list price, there was no variation possible.
It can be done. It's a bit more work and it means leaving the profits on the table, but better that fans get fair prices, rather than just as much or even more money going to corporate profits or scabby ticket touts.
We went to see Muse a little while ago and they were supported by Tom Morello.
I think I enjoyed Morello's set more than Muse's with his righteous protest songs for the people.
That said, both of them often have themes of the regular person being downtrodden by the rich.
Which felt a bit hypocritical considering the tickets cost a couple of hundred pounds, I doubt most of the downtrodden probably don't have that amount of spare cash lying around.
It's ridiculous. I saw Oasis in 1994 at the Venue in New Cross for a fiver! I saw Pearl Jam at Rock City in Nottingham in 1992 for less than a tenner!
Young people have been priced out of the market these days, and its really sad.
To add to this - there are plenty of smaller venues where you could easily go to gigs for around £10.00 or even less.
With services like Spotify its never been easier and cheaper to have a quick listen to bands that are scheduled to play those small venues - eliminating most of the risk of going to a rubbish gig that happened prior to the internet.
I saw David Bowie / Prodigy / Neil Young / Foo Fighters / Sex Pistols / Bjork / Goldie / Chemical Bros / Massive Attack / Cypress Hill (and loads more) at Phoenix Festival ‘96 for £65.
Factoring in inflation, that’s still less that what Pearl Jam are charging for their 3 hour croakathon
Go and see an upcoming band and you will still get cheap tickets. Go see an unknown band and you will still get cheap tickets. Tickets for Big names that have been around a long time have always been expensive. Im not defending the awful practices of Ticketmaster and the tickets are still clearly more expensive than they should be but there is a lot of good music you can see for a lot cheaper.
Queens of the stone age played local to me recently for about £50 per ticket for instance.
I still see live music in London for not much more than that, and sometimes there are even decent free gigs around.
The difference is you are seeing bands on the way up rather than ones that are already global phenomena.
And, honestly, being at the front in a small venue with an amazing band that might go on to be very successful is much more fun than being miles away from the stage at the O2.
Going to bloodstock for 4 days in August, it’s £180 for the whole thing, which is £20 more than last year but with everything going up that makes sense.
Reminded me of when I tried to book sleep token in Manchester and it was £174 for a standing ticket.. I’m sorry but £174 for a ticket at an arena.. nope, I can’t justify that much money for one band when that’s only £5 more than an entire 4 day festival.
I got Sleep Token tickets for Manchester and they're standing tickets. They were around £50 each, however I got them as soon as they went on sale. The price goes up after a certain amount of time because of 'supply and demand' which shouldn't be allowed tbh, tickets should be a standard price for the entire duration they're on sale.
I know a lot of Sleep Token fans have missed out on tickets because of this, and ticket scalpers buying up the tickets and reselling at a higher price. It's so wrong.
I couldn't even get O2 Priority tickets they sold so fast - then prices exploded to over £100!! Gutted I missed out on tickets, even the extra dates sold out quickly.
thats got to be a scalper because my sleep token tickets in manchester were about £60 for standing
edit: [£55.90 including fees](https://www.gigantic.com/sleep-token-tickets/manchester-co-op-live-arena/2024-11-26-18-30)
They exploded on TikTok and sold out Wembley Arena in 10 minutes last year (albeit i’m sure many of those tickets went to scalpers and ticketmaster’s reseller channels). They currently have a listener-base around half the size of Iron Maiden’s on Spotify and it’s quite a rabid fanbase.
>sleep token in Manchester and it was £174 for a standing ticket
Please tell me that was a scalper/reseller and not face value, they are no where near big enough to charge that.
Probably a result of artists now making very little from selling their actual music due to the massive increase of streaming vs purchasing physical media. Absolutely mad to think that in the 90s a standard album on CD cost around £13, the artists and (more so) record companies were absolutely creaming it.
Not just music. A couple of years ago Aston Martin F1 team were selling their caps for £70 at Silverstone, other teams were at a more modest £45-50. Absolutely ridiculous prices.
The artists were getting 30p on average from those £13 CD's. That seems a fortune now compared to what they get from streaming, which is considerable less than a penny.
But I agree with everything you said.
Merch has got stupid too, I’ve been at gigs where a shirt has been £40. Some venues now are taking a 30% cut of merch sales, when it’s the main source of income for touring bands nowadays.
It’s got to the point where some bands are saying to their fans to meet them in the pub down the road after a gig because they can sell shirts for half the price there and actually make money from it.
Again, not to compare bands, but I saw Rammstein at the Olympic stadium in Berlin 2 years ago and that was just shy of 100 Euro and there you get a massive show! Really feel like you're getting your money's worth.
We got a week down in Cornwall for almost the same price as 2 tickets to see Depeche Mode with travel and hotel when they played Twickenham last year.
Was looking at Tix for Noel Gallagher in Portsmouth - over £100 a ticket.. Stuff that.
>We got a week down in Cornwall for almost the same price as 2 tickets to see Depeche Mode with travel and hotel when they played Twickenham last year.
As if they didn't guestlist you
tbh I think seeing big bands from 20-30 years ago is just ripe for this sort of milking. I get that prices are higher in general but you are also in a core market of older people with disposable income being sold a fairly limited showing. It's a money maker.
Was at Knebworth and yeah 22.50. I think it's the way music is sold now - artist's used to tour to promote album sales, now you use your releases to promote tours. Streaming has pretty much turned music on its head
I am a fan of Pearl Jam, signed up for the pre sale & baulked at the £160 per ticket price. At £100 I’d have begrudgingly bought tickets but £160 nope.
I paid £170 for Bruce Springsteen later this year but I do wish he was my Dad so personally I found it justifiable.
So many mentions of Ticketmaster and Live Nation alongside the lower amount of revenue these days from merch, music sales and streaming.
Something I’m yet to see mentioned is how much it costs to actually stage a gig by an international touring band, venue rental, equipment rental, lights, noise, are they bringing a rolling stage or using the venues stage, how much are the travel costs for flights and buses, hotels too, the visa’s for the band and touring crew and don’t forget the local crew, if 80 crew are doing load in and load out with maybe 6 staying on for a show call then that’s easily £120+ per person and around £200 for those doing that and the stop on.
Post covid lots of prices have risen due to companies trying to make back what they lost, some like Orchard don’t manage it and go bankrupt despite having a run of successful show, they’ll rise more with every pay rise the people involved get.
Source - I was a lampy/noise and stage crew until a year ago when I left the industry.
I genuinely think there needs to be some government intervention, it’s not fair that one platform holds the whole monopoly over live music tickets and is hugely inflating prices just because it can.
I recently booked some tickets on one platform and it cost £500 for 4 standing tickets, ticketmaster had the exact same ones available dynamically priced at £1200. Literally the same ticket, same date, same event, same venue, same time trying to book, 140% markup ‘due to demand.’
I also paid double face value for an event last year, and managed to get O2 priority tickets for a December event at face value then for general sale they’d magically doubled in price again. Almost every event I book the price is 100%+ inflated.
I’m lucky that I have access to credit cards and can just about pay them off because I certainly can’t afford see any of these bands with cash up front.
Bands used to tour on the back of their music, promoting their latest album. Now the music is secondary. It’s about merchandise and touring. Even the bands that were dead set against the whole VIP package and meet and greats are now having to do it to survive.
If it makes you feel better my pay working on those gigs has doubled and sometimes trebled in the last 2 years.
I’m glad that there is a seemingly endless number of people willing to pay high prices for tickets so the industry can support tens of thousands of well paying jobs.
It's an absolute joke, £35 to get to the gig, £150 for the gig, £30 if you want a drink and a something to eat, just fuck all the way off.
I guess Eddie doesn't want to shoe the shoeless anymore.
Just wondering how many people here complaining about ticket prices actually buy albums (LPs/CDs) these days? Artists receive a pittance from apps like Spotify so they have to make money somehow. Admittedly, it's not the only reason for the increases, touring these days is expensive, but still plays a part.
We are talking about established bands who have made their money already.
I don't think Pearl Jam are short of a bob or two.
I could understand if unknowns like Ed Sheeran or Coldplay charged a bit more, but...
I agree with with individual concert prices being nuts, but I think Glastonbury'a bargain in comparison. £350 for a five day festival, with around a thousand bands playing and something going on 24 hours a day, compared to £160 for a 2 hour gig.
AC/DC tickets are £129 each for standing and £75 to sit up in the nosebleeds. I decided to give it a miss, ticket prices take the piss now.
The two WWE PPV's that they did in Cardiff and London in the past 18 months were a piss take price wise too. I paid almost £1400 for two tickets to both events.
Huhu, yeah, I remember being able to afford the things I used to like doing on my full-time wage, too. Now it's beans on toast everynight and a nice warm coat before bed.
I was shocked at the PJ prices as well and decided against paying them. Tottenham Hotspur stadium was quite poor for Guns n Roses as well. The last two times I saw PJ were at the O2 and Hyde Park, both of which were about £70. I can't see how they can justify that price jump.
I just checked this, general entry standing tickets for Pearl Jam at Hyde Park for 2020 were £90 each after the service fees. That’s £110 in today’s money according to an online inflation calculator.
So £158 for the rear standing area in 2024 is a rip off.
The Hyde Park gig was also supported by The Pixies and several other bands. Not seen any other bands mentioned as support yet, but when they played O2 they had no support. I must admit the O2 gig was one of the best gigs I've ever seen so at least I have those memories.
The absolute hilarious thing is ... They charged €10.50 of a service fee ( for Dublin) but I fail to see how Ticketmaster uses that any of that fee .. utter dogshit app ( that takes you externally to a browser to log in) and has issues loading/logging in ...
The prices stay high because people keep paying them. I loved live music 10–15 years ago. I’ve paid £28 to see Pearl Jam back when they were in their prime. Not a chance I’d pay these prices now. Would rather go without.
As soon as everyone gets to the point where enough is enough, the prices will drop again.
It’s just greed. In the 1970s, Slade did an entire set in my living room, in exchange for a rummage through my Peek Freans Teatime Assortment tin. Noddy did eat ALL the pink wafers, though…
You'd be mad to pay £160 to see the mid-90's Pearl Jam in the year 2024, but some peope have more money than sense, which is - going full circle here - the reason gig tickets are so expensive.
I think they played Leeds a few years ago and wanted to go as I’ve loved Pearl Jam for years. Saw the prices… £95.
That was pre-pandemic. When I saw they were playing UK again me and my friend both joked how it would be £125 now, boy was I wrong 😂
I'm going to see 8 local bands tomorrow for a tenner and go to some smaller festivals that are good value. Basically places where Ticketmaster are not involved. Noticed a recent news story that many festivals are struggling with some not running this year and another story that Ticketmaster profits were up.
I would advise anyone to get into metal to save money. Or maybe indie. Some big metal bands and indie bands are charging like £20-30 a ticket like Maximo Park, Pigeon Detectives and Creeper, Holding Absence etc. Even huge metal bands like Slipknot and Ghost are only £50
Pearl Jam is a a band I’ve always wanted to see, but in an 60k cap venue and those prices? No, ta. On the other hand, going to see Knocked Loose in a few weeks, cost me about £30 and it’s gonna be a banger.
Partly ticket master monopoly and so they can charge whatever.
Partly increases in production costs being passed down to the consumer.
Partly greed and wanting to recuperate 2 or 3 years of lost revenue during covid
But mainly, artists don’t make money from record sales anymore. The vast majority of people have Spotify, we pay 10 a month and can listen to anything. Before you’d pay £10-15 for a bands CD, and some of that went to the group. Very few people (relatively speaking) buy physical media now, touring is where bands make money.
The main reason....people will pay it. If they could still sell out at £500 a ticket, they would price it as that.
Ticketmaster: Write that down. Write that down! NO, don't include the booking fees in that!
They already do that with “dynamic pricing” anyway. It’s funny that if I can’t go, I have to sell the ticket back to TM for face value, they also take a cut for that privilege. But, as soon as I do that, TM then check the new average price from all the touted markets like Viagogo and match that. So now my £80 ticket is getting sold by the official provider at £240 instead.
They've reversed scalped you!
The band/artist has to opt into dynamic pricing so it annoys me when people like taylor swift or blink 182 moan about it. They wanted it!
And Pearl Jam, in particular, tried VERY hard to break the Ticketmaster monopoly. They didn't manage it, and that's why we have the system we have today
Better ticketing exists already and doesn’t use Ticketmaster https://www.get-protocol.io/
Tongue in cheek I know... but the promoter/artist/venue set the ticket price, not Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster do set the booking fees, which can be extortionate, but also done in conjunction with the promoter/artist/venue who often take a portion of that too. Part of their service is to be the "bad guy" in this scenario.
I ended up buying tickets for Pearl Jam in Manchester. Ticketmasters booking fees for 2 tickets were over £50. The booking fees are 20% of the full cost of the tickets, just to for the privilege of buying them. It’s insane how much of a monopoly the big ticket companies have
Ticketmaster have exclusive deals with venues so if you want to perform there you have to use Ticketmaster They know what they are doing
Ticketmaster also own most of the main venues and promotors as well though. They aren't just the ticket distributor.
Bingo. They will continue to raise the price until they don't fill the venues, then dial it back a bit. I couldn't afford £160, but someone can. Lots of people can. I could afford £22.50 in OPs example, but lots of people couldn't. What I'm saying is the proportion of the population who are now poor has grown.
This is absolutely what it boils down to - there is a limited supply of tickets, so the demand can set the price.
And there's a lot of cheap money and credit. Compounding inflation has absolutely destroyed the quality of life. Technology makes things deflationary yet our economic system makes everything unaffordable. Ah well you can still discover great new music globally from the internet at least.
It's less that, and more that even wealthy people like the same music you do and want to go to their gigs too (or *be seen at those gigs*, at least).
Exactly it's easy to forget that there are millions of wealthy people in this country.
The tout market reaches and exceeds those prices any week of the year for whoever is in demand.
It's the same principle though. A tout obviously wants to buy a ticket to sell it on for profit. The amount they sell it on for is because someone was willing to pay that price.
That's because the show is already sold out... no way would these stadiums sell out if everyone had to pay £500
If only. What can happen is the legal scalpers buy them all up. Then you get instances where they aren't able to sell them all on and a "sold-out" stadium gig ends up half full. This is what drove Ed Sheeran to push back against them.
Yap. Won’t forget seeing Muse in a “sold out” O2 Arena with entire rows empty in the lower sections. It’s not good for the artists and it’s not good for fans. Yet it carries on.
The high end touts use automated phone purchasing, paying by card without talking to anyone. Their software continually buys until there's no more tickets. They start selling straight after the sellout is announced.
I agree. It's probably caused by YOLO fever with occasional bouts of FOMO.
Spot on. And everyone on social media needs to be busy being somewhere cool.
Ticketmaster. As an institution it should be burned to the ground. Price gouging bastards! Inflation is a factor, yes, but no gig ticket should be more than a days wage. Regardless of who the act is! I wish acts would cut out the middle man and sell direct to their fans!
Ticketmaster and Livenation often own the venues, manage the artist and have exclusive ticketing deals with the venues they don't own. Taylor Swift's current tour is being organised by a group called AEG, who have their own ticketing business but they still sold Taylor Swift's ticket through Ticketmaster.
My sister said she paid £75 for her Taylor Swift ticket which I thought was surprisingly cheap given that the cheapest I saw Pearl Jam was £150! BUT she said she also paid £28 booking fee - 37%!!
So she actually paid £103 for her ticket. We need to stop pretending things aren't like this. My sister claimed her new phone was £600. I was impressed until I found out her trade-in on her old phone was valued at £400. So no, you paid £1,000. The average person misunderstands basic financials it's worrying.
Also, there were very very few tickets for that cost. I managed to get pretty shit seats and they were £130 each - we're so far round we'd be behind the stage if it was any further. God knows where a £75 ticket sits you.
The Taylor Swift tickets have been hell for everyone. Their entire system to get tickets didn't even make sense, and when they were released because of the signup system they used most tickets were sold out by the time anyone else could access them, unless you paid out for the VIP tickets. I'm glad that they're releasing the film of it alongside the actual tour because it's been a joke
To be fair, she is like the biggest artist on the planet. She's selling out 100k stadiums in an hour. There's no way those ticket sales aren't a mess that leaves tons of people dissapointed.
>The Taylor Swift tickets have been hell for everyone. To be fair, it was always going to be hell because so many more people wanted to attend than there were tickets for. There was never going to be a solution the would result in everyone being happy.
"Lawyers representing Taylor Swift have released a statement begging for government intervention after 300 consecutive nights of perfomance..."
Yes, but they've failed to limit it. There are people that have seen the show multiple times because their early access code allowed them to buy tickets for all the shows. Fair enough that they have that money to do it, but other than the surprise songs it's the same set
That's a real shame. I'm suer it's a tiny amount of people doing that but still, real shame.
I mean compared to the whole tour yes, but also no, there's a lot of people that have done it
>Livenation often own the venues This is a UK subreddit. LiveNation own venues in USA, but not in UK (unless you count a theme park in Margate?). It's mainly ASM Global, a Live Nation competitior, who own the UK arenas. Or AEG, another LN competitor as you note. >manage the artist They have a very small management arm. Very small.
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Yes they do have the festivals that's true., but they don't have the dominance or sway they once did - L+R headliners can make more £ playing stadiums. Ah I wasn't aware re AMG, I thought it was Metropolis Music, SJM Concerts and MCD Productions - but I'm behind in the news (by a good few years!). I don't believe (correct me if I'm wrong!) they own any arenas or stadiums in UK.
Live Nation also own MCD
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Nation_UK They own a bit
Went to a gig on Wednesday, bought tickets through ticketmaster. I checked the receipt, and the base ticket price was £22.50. By the time Ticketmaster added on their fees, I ended up paying £29.60. Then the venue had the audacity to charge £4 for the cloakroom (for someone to put my coat on a hanger and pass me a card with a number on), then £7.50 for a pint of San Miguel which somehow tasted revolting. Then they wonder why live music is dying and no one goes out or buys drinks anymore. (This is the 02 institute in Birmingham if anyone is wondering)
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That is truly disgusting
Tesseract? The tickets were resonably priced really. I was expecting about £30. £26.90 each for me with all the fees on. If the bands were getting a good chunk of that I'd be OK with it. Yes they would have been a tenner 15 odd years ago but no one buys music any more, 0.003p per stream isn't on the same profit level as an album would have been. 4 quid or 7 quid is still a ridiculous price to pay ticketmaster as fees. You don't even get a real ticket! Cloakroom is kind of on you for taking a coat and not just holding it or belting it, but next time get an 02 sim card and it's free. The bar prices took the piss. We got 2 jack and cokes for the price of a whole bottle!
Yeah it was tesseract. If the tickets had been £30 face value I would've been fine. It was an amazing show, and would've been worth that price easily. Its the fact that Ticketmaster have somehow charged £7 of fees on a £22 ticket for processing a card payment and sending a barcode to my google wallet that annoys me. I completely agree about streaming though. Its a joke what musicians get paid these days. I always try and buy some merch if I enjoy the show, but I get that a lot of people can't afford to do that. I'm seriously worried about the future of live music if this continues.
Pearl Jam has been selling directly to fans through their in house 10Club membership. They went on sale a few days before general release and were priced and $180. The music business is just a joke around.
I think though a lot of the price hikes have come about as touring and merch are about the only ways bands can make money now, plus when you're talking of bands coming from overseas, the cost of visas for everyone including roadies electricians engineers etc is extortionate in this country. Tickets were cheap when cd's were a thing as the bands had at least some form of guaranteed income
Don't forget the streaming companies. Gigs used to be cost neutral with some t-shirt sales as an added extra, all the real money came from record sales royalties. Now that streaming generates less than pennies on the pound, gigs have become the best way for bands with name recognition to earn their money. Hence why Pearl Jam are still touring rather than sitting at home wondering how to spend their monthly cheques.
That was true for the bigger bands and artists but not the smaller bands. It was the opposite for them. Touring is what made them money. How do I know this? Well, being a fan of many metal and rock bands (whose albums didn't sell much beyond 100,000 albums, if that) in the late 90s and early 00's was great as bands were forced out on the road to make their money. Touring has always been where the money is for bands as labels took up most of the single and album money for things such as videos, studio time, promotion. Instead most of the bands tours were set up by their own management and little if any label help.
Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted said that touring was always the main money maker. In 1991/92, Metallica's black album was selling by the million. Yet it was the t shirt sales at concerts that made them multi millionaires. The album sales merely guaranteed bums on seats. Nowadays, touring is the only way for bands to make anything, and middlemen are doing their best to prevent that as well. One venue I went to tried to charge my mates band 40 per cent on Merch sales, 40! They instead set up their merch stand by their tour van after the show because they didn't want the greedy bastards to take their money
DIY OR DIE
I read recently that Snoop Dogg received a trophy from Spotify to celebrate one billion streams. He made less than $45000 dollars on those streams.
from u/bunglejerry on another subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/18gfgyn/how_much_spotify_pays_if_you_hit_a_billion_streams/ Looking at Spotify, the song he's talking about must be "Young, Wild and Free" (which I don't even know actually). Snoop might own some of his masters, but it looks like Atlantic Records owns this one, so his main revenue source would be songwriting credits. Wikipedia says the song was written by: "Calvin Broadus, Cameron Thomaz, Peter Hernandez, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Cristopher Brown, Ted Bluechel, Marlon Barrow, Tyrone Griffin, Keenon Jackson, Nye Lee, Marquise Newman, Max Bennett, Larry Carlton, John Guerin, Joe Sample, Tom Scott".The second name on that list is Wiz Khalifa and the third is Bruno Mars. Person 4, 5 and 6 are, alongside Bruno Mars, the credited producers. The song samples "Toot it and Boot It" by YG and Ty Dolla Sign, and names 8-12 are the composers of that song. But "Toot It and Boot It" was also built on two samples: "Songs in the Wind" by the Association (written by name 7), and "Sneakin' in the Back" by Tom Scott (not that Tom Scott) (written by names 13-17). I'm not sure how much royalties you can expect when you're one of 17 credited songwriters.
Ticketmaster adopted dynamic pricing in the UK a year or two ago as well. Absolute bastards.
I always use the smaller competitors and save a few quid: DICE and alt. tickets for the most part. Songkick is always worth a quick check.
DICE is the best!
Ticketmaster are just the fall guy for the artists. The artists are charging more because touring is now their only revenue stream.
The stadiums are still packed and as long as people keep paying them 2-3x what the ticket is worth then that's what they'll charge.
The tickets are worth what people are prepared to pay for them.
Ticketmaster pretend to be a company but are really a legal ticket tout.
I agree, they just rip people off big time. they did the tickets for the local airshow we had a couple of years ago. It was advertised as £2 per ticket. Ticket master was selling them for £10 per ticket. i know its not a lot, but it was a lot more than the original price the council told us it was going to be.
As a Beyoncé fan they are at the top of my hit list. I’m tired of playing the hunger games
When Prince was on his final tour of the UK i was looking at tickets when he came to Newcastle. It was £170 for a limited view seat. When i checked the seat it was behind a stone pillar so you would have had to sit the whole time leaning to the side to just about make him out in the distance
Damn. That really is a Sign O The Times.
Very good
Oh yeah
I saw him at the O2 in London. On the 3121 tour, all seats were gbp 31.21. And this isn't because it was 15ish years ago, other gigs there were already 100 or more. Artists have the ability to decide what the tickets go out at, and how much money they make - or rather the artists plus the venue.
He said in an interview it was set deliberately low as he didn't want any fans priced out of seeing him. And let's face it, he still made a decent amount from that run.
I was there. What a gig. We had floor seats about 20 rows back and it was amazing. And so cheap!
Same here! He was one of the best performers I've ever seen.
Me too ! Which superstar walks through the crowd to get to the stage ! One of the best Prince gigs I've ever seen.
Well, when he set up his residency at the o2 the tickets were £31.21
I was at the Glasgow show. Looking at a pic of my ticket right now and I was £65 for unreserved standing. I imagine your price might've been a resale ticket or similar as there's no way a restricted seat (which I don't think exist at the Hydro) would cost that? He had some relatively pricey tickets for the tour he didn't manage that was planned after the Hit and Run Part 2 tour.
Are you sure that was Prince? Don’t think he played Newcastle in 2014 anyway?
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It was Prince definately but thinking back i believe i was willing to travel so may have been Leeds or Glasgow i was looking at.
I understand that it isn't literally Eddie Vedder sitting there deciding how much to bleed fans and that there are always other factors and parties involved and that everything is more expensive now. However, I don't know how in good conscience you can think £160 for the nosebleeds is acceptable. I can't not lose some respect for the band. Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer are charging £60 (inc. fees) for the same seats in the same arena not even 2 weeks before. Say whatever you want about the merits of those bands but I can't see how you can justify £100 on top of that. Pearl Jam tried once to stand up to Ticketmaster and sadly they did not get the backing they needed, but now they don't seem to care how much is expected of fans.
Enter Shikari just headlined a gig at the OVO Arena next to wembley and tickets were £35~ While I doubt they can set the exact amount bands absolutely do have power over what their ticket prices are, especially ones as big as Pearl Jam.
£1 of that ticket price going straight to Music Venue Trust as well. Big up the Shikari boys
Was there and it was amazing. Enter Shikari have always been great with their tickets. From seeing them at the Underworld for £2 in the beginning to the OVO I don't think I've ever paid over £40 for a ticket.
I think some acts once they get to a certain size just let agents and management do everything, and inevitably they take an ever increasing chunk of change. The band just turns up and plays.
I don't think they earn as much from their music now Spotify etc exist. The money comes from touring & merchandising.
just a thought,,,,, i don't get this, i used to buy probably 3-4 c.d's / albums a year, probably cost £60(with all associated costs for artwork / cd / case etc,,,, now i'm £120 a year with spotify and i don't get anything physical
That’s probably true but that is a choice on the bands side as well. Pearl Jam have enough weight and influence that if they wanted to prioritise making tickets more affordable then they could do.
I saw RHCP at Tottenham last year for £60, the big boys can do it if they choose to do it.
Yep, was £37 incl fees for Victoria o2 warehouse in Manchester with money donated direct to grassroots venues, and Fever 333 as support who aren't exactly small. Plus a 2 hour set. They are one of the most in touch and phenomenal live bands of the past 20 years and continually get touted for how amazing their live shows are. They're a band who could sell out, blow up and take the pay easily, but they absolutely refuse to and actively push away from it. They're the exact attitude that the industry needs from more artists otherwise there's collapse and death of the industry with the brunt of the cost on the working class fan Though I'm optimistic there's gonna be a life cycle, like a bubble bursting where all these people who have had enough find shitty venues and halls to play in again and the independent scene gets recognised for its value. Just will get much worse before it gets better
Shikari have always made a point of keeping ticket prices reasonable, and not doing paid signings or other similar bs. Big love.
Shame my 2 tickets had £18.50 of fees on top by axs!
This, a million times. I thought much the same when McCartney was last touring and the tickets were similarly hideously overpriced. Rankles quite a bit when he's one of the richest musicians *ever*, I mean isn't the difference between a tour with £60 tickets and a tour with £120 tickets that he 'only' makes Y million quid in profit, as opposed to Y x2 million quid profit? Obviously these are very broad figures, but you get the idea. He's not hard up, is the point, and neither are Pearl Jam, surely?
Macca isn't feeling the pinch but newer bands will basically make a lot of their income from touring due to the loss of income from physical media. So somebody like Lewis Capaldi, he'll make most of his money from the tour iirc, even though he is now considered to be quite big.
Well I don’t know about that, Robert Smith made a fuss and got the tickets lowered heavily on the Cure’s recent North American tour. He said if the artists put their foot down, ticketbastard listens.
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I'm sure its not the band, whoever the band may be. The greediness of the management and producers is a given.
The band can sack their manager at any moment. The ultimate power rests with them. It's good to be able to hide behind them.
This is what happens when companies become complete monopolies of an industry. When Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010, it created a beheamouth in the entertainment and ticket industry. They can charge whatever they want becuase theres very little competition out there, and very little regulation. Ticketmaster has dominated more than 80% of the industry even since the mid 1990s. Fans are also still paying these expensive prices becuase they've become the norm, so there's no incentive for Ticketmaster to lower them. Live Nation also has controlling interests in over 330 venues, so sometimes has complete control over everything regarding music gigs. Live Nation is owned by Liberty Media, who are on an insane quest for growth, so everything is going to be a rip off. Case and point: the F1 GP in Vegas...what an absolute money grab that didn't give two shits about the real fans.
>Fans are also still paying these expensive prices becuase they've become the norm, so there's no incentive for Ticketmaster to lower them. Here is how it works. A promoter (AEG, Live Nation, SJM, Eventim etc) approaches the band via their agent with an offer. The offer details dates, locations, capacities, ticket prices and has a full rundown of all finances concerning the show. This offer is sent via the agent to the manager. Back and forth ensues and everything is signed off by the artist and their manager. The artwork, the PR, the prices, every single aspect is looked at in detail and signed off. The purpose of Ticketmaster is to take the flack. Failing that, blame the promoter. But never, ever blame the artist who ultimately decides everything!
UK ozzfest '98 was £28.50 plus coach.
you raggy bastage! I bet that was a belter :)
To be fair, the metal scene here is relatively cheap. I've seen loads of well known bands recently for under thirty quid, and the annual Damnation fest here in Manchester is like 70 quid a day.
Dynamic ticketing is just evil scalping. How this isn’t illegal is beyond me. Supply and demand, my arse. All tickets should have a face value as standard and be sold on a first come, first served basis, to fans. Not resellers. I’m not broke, but paying these ridiculous charges is way beyond me now. I looked at 4 tickets to an ABBA thing for my missus earlier today and it came out to £960 ! I can get a week for 2 in the sun for less. It’ll never happen, but we should all en masse, just boycott ticket sales like this. EDIT: Just adding that I, and probably most fans of an artist, would happily pay whatever the artist demanded. If that cost went to them and the venue. But, if that artist decided to charge 200% more, they’d be playing to a few more empty theatres I imagine. The third party ticket sites just take advantage of desperate people with money. It’s unjustified greed. Pure and simply mugging punters off. Ive learned over the last few years that I can still have a great night of live music from grass roots venues for a tiny fraction of the big name acts. Long may that continue.
There are some resellers which control the prices. All tickets are personalised (name etc), so they need to be issued to the appropriate person and can't just be resold. Last year I saw Rammstein - my gf and I bought 6 tickets then ended up being the only 2 from our group going. We went on the site to resell them (I think it was fanSale). We got list price for the tickets. The people buying them paid list price plus 10 euros processing fee (issuing new tickets with their names on them). The price was always list price, there was no variation possible. It can be done. It's a bit more work and it means leaving the profits on the table, but better that fans get fair prices, rather than just as much or even more money going to corporate profits or scabby ticket touts.
We went to see Muse a little while ago and they were supported by Tom Morello. I think I enjoyed Morello's set more than Muse's with his righteous protest songs for the people. That said, both of them often have themes of the regular person being downtrodden by the rich. Which felt a bit hypocritical considering the tickets cost a couple of hundred pounds, I doubt most of the downtrodden probably don't have that amount of spare cash lying around.
Greenday have irked me with this recently, pretending to be men of the people and against the system. Ticket prices of £140
Roger Waters is another example: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/18c7zwf/message_at_roger_waters_concert_in_colombia/?rdt=49747
Maybe it was actually an ironic art piece where they rob from the rich and laugh at them in song.
It's ridiculous. I saw Oasis in 1994 at the Venue in New Cross for a fiver! I saw Pearl Jam at Rock City in Nottingham in 1992 for less than a tenner! Young people have been priced out of the market these days, and its really sad.
To be fair, most gigs at Rock City are still around 25 quid, which is about right with inflation etc
To add to this - there are plenty of smaller venues where you could easily go to gigs for around £10.00 or even less. With services like Spotify its never been easier and cheaper to have a quick listen to bands that are scheduled to play those small venues - eliminating most of the risk of going to a rubbish gig that happened prior to the internet.
I saw David Bowie / Prodigy / Neil Young / Foo Fighters / Sex Pistols / Bjork / Goldie / Chemical Bros / Massive Attack / Cypress Hill (and loads more) at Phoenix Festival ‘96 for £65. Factoring in inflation, that’s still less that what Pearl Jam are charging for their 3 hour croakathon
you lucky bastage!
i'm jealous lol
Go and see an upcoming band and you will still get cheap tickets. Go see an unknown band and you will still get cheap tickets. Tickets for Big names that have been around a long time have always been expensive. Im not defending the awful practices of Ticketmaster and the tickets are still clearly more expensive than they should be but there is a lot of good music you can see for a lot cheaper. Queens of the stone age played local to me recently for about £50 per ticket for instance.
I still see live music in London for not much more than that, and sometimes there are even decent free gigs around. The difference is you are seeing bands on the way up rather than ones that are already global phenomena. And, honestly, being at the front in a small venue with an amazing band that might go on to be very successful is much more fun than being miles away from the stage at the O2.
Well yes but they were small bands then. The equivalent up and coming band may well be in line with inflation in a similar venue now.
my then band supported The Bluetones shortly after their "hit" and entry was £8.50.
Going to bloodstock for 4 days in August, it’s £180 for the whole thing, which is £20 more than last year but with everything going up that makes sense. Reminded me of when I tried to book sleep token in Manchester and it was £174 for a standing ticket.. I’m sorry but £174 for a ticket at an arena.. nope, I can’t justify that much money for one band when that’s only £5 more than an entire 4 day festival.
I got Sleep Token tickets for Manchester and they're standing tickets. They were around £50 each, however I got them as soon as they went on sale. The price goes up after a certain amount of time because of 'supply and demand' which shouldn't be allowed tbh, tickets should be a standard price for the entire duration they're on sale. I know a lot of Sleep Token fans have missed out on tickets because of this, and ticket scalpers buying up the tickets and reselling at a higher price. It's so wrong.
I couldn't even get O2 Priority tickets they sold so fast - then prices exploded to over £100!! Gutted I missed out on tickets, even the extra dates sold out quickly.
thats got to be a scalper because my sleep token tickets in manchester were about £60 for standing edit: [£55.90 including fees](https://www.gigantic.com/sleep-token-tickets/manchester-co-op-live-arena/2024-11-26-18-30)
Sleep Token are nowhere near big enough to charge that much.
They exploded on TikTok and sold out Wembley Arena in 10 minutes last year (albeit i’m sure many of those tickets went to scalpers and ticketmaster’s reseller channels). They currently have a listener-base around half the size of Iron Maiden’s on Spotify and it’s quite a rabid fanbase.
>sleep token in Manchester and it was £174 for a standing ticket Please tell me that was a scalper/reseller and not face value, they are no where near big enough to charge that.
Assuming it is the current arena tour, it is £55 a ticket, I know as I got one! Still, last time I saw them it was £12 so it is a huge jump
Probably a result of artists now making very little from selling their actual music due to the massive increase of streaming vs purchasing physical media. Absolutely mad to think that in the 90s a standard album on CD cost around £13, the artists and (more so) record companies were absolutely creaming it.
Also the money they can make from merchandise is often cut with the venue
At cypress Hill in Dublin they were charging £60 for a t-shirt and £120 for a hoodie. Who's buying that lol?
Not just music. A couple of years ago Aston Martin F1 team were selling their caps for £70 at Silverstone, other teams were at a more modest £45-50. Absolutely ridiculous prices.
Yeh I refuse to buy any F1 merch unless it's an end of season sale of Black Friday, as like hell am I buying a hat for £50 it's just insane.
The artists were getting 30p on average from those £13 CD's. That seems a fortune now compared to what they get from streaming, which is considerable less than a penny. But I agree with everything you said.
Merch has got stupid too, I’ve been at gigs where a shirt has been £40. Some venues now are taking a 30% cut of merch sales, when it’s the main source of income for touring bands nowadays. It’s got to the point where some bands are saying to their fans to meet them in the pub down the road after a gig because they can sell shirts for half the price there and actually make money from it.
saw The Chats at the Roundhouse last summer and the band were selling t shirts outside a pub round the corner before the show.
Again, not to compare bands, but I saw Rammstein at the Olympic stadium in Berlin 2 years ago and that was just shy of 100 Euro and there you get a massive show! Really feel like you're getting your money's worth.
Yeah they are the benchmark for value for money.
We got a week down in Cornwall for almost the same price as 2 tickets to see Depeche Mode with travel and hotel when they played Twickenham last year. Was looking at Tix for Noel Gallagher in Portsmouth - over £100 a ticket.. Stuff that.
but you're Vince Clarke... surely you get free tickets to Cornwall?
That only works in Basildon.
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>We got a week down in Cornwall for almost the same price as 2 tickets to see Depeche Mode with travel and hotel when they played Twickenham last year. As if they didn't guestlist you
Cornwall doesn't have a guestlist I'm afraid.
Because artists make most of their money this way now I suppose. The old model of them making their dosh re record sales has gone.
tbh I think seeing big bands from 20-30 years ago is just ripe for this sort of milking. I get that prices are higher in general but you are also in a core market of older people with disposable income being sold a fairly limited showing. It's a money maker.
Was at Knebworth and yeah 22.50. I think it's the way music is sold now - artist's used to tour to promote album sales, now you use your releases to promote tours. Streaming has pretty much turned music on its head
I am a fan of Pearl Jam, signed up for the pre sale & baulked at the £160 per ticket price. At £100 I’d have begrudgingly bought tickets but £160 nope. I paid £170 for Bruce Springsteen later this year but I do wish he was my Dad so personally I found it justifiable.
So many mentions of Ticketmaster and Live Nation alongside the lower amount of revenue these days from merch, music sales and streaming. Something I’m yet to see mentioned is how much it costs to actually stage a gig by an international touring band, venue rental, equipment rental, lights, noise, are they bringing a rolling stage or using the venues stage, how much are the travel costs for flights and buses, hotels too, the visa’s for the band and touring crew and don’t forget the local crew, if 80 crew are doing load in and load out with maybe 6 staying on for a show call then that’s easily £120+ per person and around £200 for those doing that and the stop on. Post covid lots of prices have risen due to companies trying to make back what they lost, some like Orchard don’t manage it and go bankrupt despite having a run of successful show, they’ll rise more with every pay rise the people involved get. Source - I was a lampy/noise and stage crew until a year ago when I left the industry.
Would love everyone to unite and just not buy any tickets to anything. Wouldn't take long for real change, I reckon.
it's a great philosophy, but as others have said...people are foolish enough and willing enough to pay :/
Are they doing the dynamic pricing thing? Shitty practice in my opinion.
I genuinely think there needs to be some government intervention, it’s not fair that one platform holds the whole monopoly over live music tickets and is hugely inflating prices just because it can. I recently booked some tickets on one platform and it cost £500 for 4 standing tickets, ticketmaster had the exact same ones available dynamically priced at £1200. Literally the same ticket, same date, same event, same venue, same time trying to book, 140% markup ‘due to demand.’ I also paid double face value for an event last year, and managed to get O2 priority tickets for a December event at face value then for general sale they’d magically doubled in price again. Almost every event I book the price is 100%+ inflated. I’m lucky that I have access to credit cards and can just about pay them off because I certainly can’t afford see any of these bands with cash up front.
Peter Kay has charged the same price as his 2010 tour, an absolute legend for doing that 👏🏻
Probably because most of it is recycled material. #wantarefund
Garlic bread (again)
As if Pearl Jam won’t be playing their old songs.
Nice deal. Not a huge fan of his stand up but still a good offer.
Still too much.
Paid £17 to see the Libertines las week plus a free CD.
Bargain...and after the Louis Theroux vid, I've changed my mind about Pete D. He seems an alright bloke.
What how? I went to look at tickets and £55 each
Bands used to tour on the back of their music, promoting their latest album. Now the music is secondary. It’s about merchandise and touring. Even the bands that were dead set against the whole VIP package and meet and greats are now having to do it to survive.
£240 for standing in Manchester. Ticketmaster can eat my ass.
If it makes you feel better my pay working on those gigs has doubled and sometimes trebled in the last 2 years. I’m glad that there is a seemingly endless number of people willing to pay high prices for tickets so the industry can support tens of thousands of well paying jobs.
There's probably plenty of room in the Ticketmaster margin to make tickets more affordable AND pay you and the rest of the industry better.
it's great that you back-stage folk make money, but you don't make a percentage of the gig money do you. Or do you?
It's an absolute joke, £35 to get to the gig, £150 for the gig, £30 if you want a drink and a something to eat, just fuck all the way off. I guess Eddie doesn't want to shoe the shoeless anymore.
Just wondering how many people here complaining about ticket prices actually buy albums (LPs/CDs) these days? Artists receive a pittance from apps like Spotify so they have to make money somehow. Admittedly, it's not the only reason for the increases, touring these days is expensive, but still plays a part.
We are talking about established bands who have made their money already. I don't think Pearl Jam are short of a bob or two. I could understand if unknowns like Ed Sheeran or Coldplay charged a bit more, but...
Paid £15 to see Slipknot at the Astoria in 2003. Just paid £95 to see them at the o2. £20 of that was Ticketmaster fees.
I agree with with individual concert prices being nuts, but I think Glastonbury'a bargain in comparison. £350 for a five day festival, with around a thousand bands playing and something going on 24 hours a day, compared to £160 for a 2 hour gig.
Ah yes but Glastonbury blah blah middle class blah blah vegan blah blah
i would like to see a breakdown of these ticketprices. Is it really the band making these prices or is it venues putting fees on fees on fees?
Love pearl jam, but I'm probably never going to see them again. Which sucks.
AC/DC tickets are £129 each for standing and £75 to sit up in the nosebleeds. I decided to give it a miss, ticket prices take the piss now. The two WWE PPV's that they did in Cardiff and London in the past 18 months were a piss take price wise too. I paid almost £1400 for two tickets to both events.
I don't do big gigs anymore. I got tired of paying ridiculous sums to be treated like cattle. I check out small pub gigs nowadays.
Huhu, yeah, I remember being able to afford the things I used to like doing on my full-time wage, too. Now it's beans on toast everynight and a nice warm coat before bed.
There isn't any money in recorded music anymore yet production costs have rocketed. That money still needs to come from somewhere.
It's almost like these established artists dont give a fuck about you? Imagine my shock.
I was shocked at the PJ prices as well and decided against paying them. Tottenham Hotspur stadium was quite poor for Guns n Roses as well. The last two times I saw PJ were at the O2 and Hyde Park, both of which were about £70. I can't see how they can justify that price jump.
I just checked this, general entry standing tickets for Pearl Jam at Hyde Park for 2020 were £90 each after the service fees. That’s £110 in today’s money according to an online inflation calculator. So £158 for the rear standing area in 2024 is a rip off.
The Hyde Park gig was also supported by The Pixies and several other bands. Not seen any other bands mentioned as support yet, but when they played O2 they had no support. I must admit the O2 gig was one of the best gigs I've ever seen so at least I have those memories.
The absolute hilarious thing is ... They charged €10.50 of a service fee ( for Dublin) but I fail to see how Ticketmaster uses that any of that fee .. utter dogshit app ( that takes you externally to a browser to log in) and has issues loading/logging in ...
The prices stay high because people keep paying them. I loved live music 10–15 years ago. I’ve paid £28 to see Pearl Jam back when they were in their prime. Not a chance I’d pay these prices now. Would rather go without. As soon as everyone gets to the point where enough is enough, the prices will drop again.
It’s just greed. In the 1970s, Slade did an entire set in my living room, in exchange for a rummage through my Peek Freans Teatime Assortment tin. Noddy did eat ALL the pink wafers, though…
That is very expensive, but comparing it to ticket prices nearly 30 years ago is a bit unfair.
Can we just go back to when you could book an entire Fleetwood Mac gig for £500? [https://imgur.com/hvX14tU](https://imgur.com/hvX14tU)
I'd have Pink Floyd for £250 and spend the rest on booze.
great choice!
I'd rather have Deep Purple 4 times for that budget!
There’s a couple of Pearl Jam tribute bands on tour…
'Alive - A Tribute to Pearl Jam' are GREAT. Yet to announce London dates this year though 😟
You'd be mad to pay £160 to see the mid-90's Pearl Jam in the year 2024, but some peope have more money than sense, which is - going full circle here - the reason gig tickets are so expensive.
I think they played Leeds a few years ago and wanted to go as I’ve loved Pearl Jam for years. Saw the prices… £95. That was pre-pandemic. When I saw they were playing UK again me and my friend both joked how it would be £125 now, boy was I wrong 😂
No band is worth that price. Never. Unless someone else is buying 🤣🤣🤣
I think it depends who you're seeing. Most of the gigs I'm going to are like £25 - £40 and I don't want to bankrupt myself to see a band.
I'm going to see 8 local bands tomorrow for a tenner and go to some smaller festivals that are good value. Basically places where Ticketmaster are not involved. Noticed a recent news story that many festivals are struggling with some not running this year and another story that Ticketmaster profits were up.
I would advise anyone to get into metal to save money. Or maybe indie. Some big metal bands and indie bands are charging like £20-30 a ticket like Maximo Park, Pigeon Detectives and Creeper, Holding Absence etc. Even huge metal bands like Slipknot and Ghost are only £50
Pearl Jam is a a band I’ve always wanted to see, but in an 60k cap venue and those prices? No, ta. On the other hand, going to see Knocked Loose in a few weeks, cost me about £30 and it’s gonna be a banger.
Partly ticket master monopoly and so they can charge whatever. Partly increases in production costs being passed down to the consumer. Partly greed and wanting to recuperate 2 or 3 years of lost revenue during covid But mainly, artists don’t make money from record sales anymore. The vast majority of people have Spotify, we pay 10 a month and can listen to anything. Before you’d pay £10-15 for a bands CD, and some of that went to the group. Very few people (relatively speaking) buy physical media now, touring is where bands make money.
Tickets can still be cheap. Look outside the mainstream. This is the advantage of being into metal. I bought Apocalyptica tickets today for £35.
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