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Scalpers..Are They Helping Kill Live Music?
- Thread starter ZenG
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- kill live live music music
They are buying tickets. Meaning the artists and venues get their $$$. Same as always. And as always the scalpers buy the majority of the tickets.
This is nothing new.
Or Cab/Uber rides. I just went out to have drinks with friends. Bar was just a bit more than walking distance. It was $8 each way, for $16. A couple of drinks for another $20-25 bucks, counting tip but not the round I bought for a friend. That’s $40 for a night at a bar. Add a cover charge or venue ticket price and service fees, and that’s a spendy night out, even for my middle-aged white-collar and no-kids self. Ministry just rolled through town for $60+ a ticket. That’s a $100 night out. I could afford it, but I have other things I’d rather spend $100 on. Skip two shows like that, and buy pretty a nice effect pedal, for more entertainment/enjoyment time, and I can sell it when I’m done.
Just my priorities. YMMV
The only time I ever bought from a scalper was for a Philles game back in the 80's. We were walking away and then he dropped the price so low we pounced on it. Other than that I have never found that a scalper has interfered or made a difference with any live concert ticket transactions of mine. Most concerts I go to are more of the "esoteric" type so maybe that's why I'm out touch with the OP's premise. If there is anything killing live music these days it's the young folks' infatuation with big name DJ's. I personally don't get it - I find it ridiculous, but then again what do I know? I'm a 64 year old geezer.
I seem to remember back in the 70's, Concerts at places like MSG for the more popular bands (Led Zeppelin) would only sell 4 tickets to each customer, possibly to allow access to more fans. Of course, the scalpers adapted by paying multiple people to stand in line at Ticketron and Ticketmaster and resold them at a healthy markup. Sorry; I WILL NOT pay hundreds of dollars to see ANYBODY!
It can’t all be upside. There must be scalpers buying up a venue’s seats, only to sell a few tickets, and take a bath on that event.
I won't pay $150 no matter who it is. When i was younger and working as a roadie for some of Australia's biggest acts i wouldn't go to a gig unless i got free tickets. I even didn't go and see Counting Crows, one of my favorite bands as getting to Sydney, accommodation, ticket price etc all added up would have meant the weekend costing over $500. Sorry, no band is worth that. Add to that the fact that too many bands can be disappointing live and the prices they're asking is stupid before you even get to the scalpers.
Of course, you say that with the understanding of scale that an electronic scalper has versus the guy that bought a few extra tickets decades ago, .......right?
I go to a bunch of shows a year, mostly medium and small venues where there a plenty of great smaller acts that are affordable, usually under $30. The key is that you have to open your taste to some newer bands. Music festivals are pricy, but you can see good acts in bulk at a very reasonable per act price. If you wanna see the big stuff, it's next to impossible to buy tix that aren't from brokers. The high cost of these tickets do hurt the pocketbook. It's starting to become a class division issue, which is also nothing new to the entertainment industry. Only the wealthiest can afford top tier entertainment. look at Broadway, opera and other historically classy or highbrow entertainment options. People just don't like the fact that classic rock is drifting into that category.
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How Garth Brooks Holds the Key to Resolving the Ticket Bot / StubHub Dilemma
"Woman: There you go, bringing class into it again... Man: That's what it's all about!"
One thing I have not seen mentioned in this thread is the fact that most of the bands we're talking about on this level are pretty much in hock to their labels/making nothing on sales (since no one wants to purchase music anymore) and so the only way they can make money is through touring and merch. I can see why they wouldn't fight this system.
Uh huh......... so his solution is to have even more concerts and sell even more tickets.
As I said, that's not why.......
The price of concert tickets has gone through the roof. The Eagles were the first to charge $100 because they saw scalpers were getting that much, we are now at a point where going to a concert with your date can cost you more than your monthly car payment. Forty years ago I was paying $7 for arena shows, and gas was a little over a dollar. Now gas is three times that and the tickets are 10 to 30 times that.
The ability to buy tickets online has only made scalping easier...no longer do you need to hire people to stand in line at the box office at 6 AM the day tickets go on sale. You just sit at your computer, run a program and grab as many seats as you can until the show is sold out.
Promoters love this! You can sell out a show the day it goes on sale, which increasingly is months in advance (I've gotten plenty of emails about shows for next summer). Heck, an act can sell out the whole tour in advance! Remember, there are no returns or exchanges on tickets...so even if nobody makes it to the show all the seats were paid for. Nice business to be in, eh?
Scalping has hurt sports as well. Here in Massachusetts scalping was illegal for a long time and then pressure by "ticket agencies" resulted in the laws being rolled back and now it's impossible to get Red Sox or Patriots tickets at face value. They are all on StubHub the day they go on sale. There's one scalping agency that is "an official sponsor of the Red Sox" right across the street from Fenway Park, for pete's sake. They make it sound like it's perfectly normal to have middleman between you and the box office.
The ability to buy tickets online has only made scalping easier...no longer do you need to hire people to stand in line at the box office at 6 AM the day tickets go on sale. You just sit at your computer, run a program and grab as many seats as you can until the show is sold out.
Promoters love this! You can sell out a show the day it goes on sale, which increasingly is months in advance (I've gotten plenty of emails about shows for next summer). Heck, an act can sell out the whole tour in advance! Remember, there are no returns or exchanges on tickets...so even if nobody makes it to the show all the seats were paid for. Nice business to be in, eh?
Scalping has hurt sports as well. Here in Massachusetts scalping was illegal for a long time and then pressure by "ticket agencies" resulted in the laws being rolled back and now it's impossible to get Red Sox or Patriots tickets at face value. They are all on StubHub the day they go on sale. There's one scalping agency that is "an official sponsor of the Red Sox" right across the street from Fenway Park, for pete's sake. They make it sound like it's perfectly normal to have middleman between you and the box office.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
You can't get Red Sox or Patriot tickets now because they are winning. When they were mediocre, there were LOTS of seats available.. This has helped sports fans. Now you can get good seats easier, at great prices if you are willing to wait, and more people have ticket plans, since they can re-sell games they can't make.
Music sales ebbs and flows. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. Now about the scalping issue and someone buying up all the tickets for resale. Easy fix. Take the ticket sales offline, go old school, wait in line at the venue the day they go on sale and cap it at 6 tickets max per person. Nothing makes you appreciate a show more than when you had to stand in a line for 5 hours to get tickets.
Yeah I’ve seen stories. It sucks, i would rather see the bands and crews get paid more if people are willing to pay the higher prices. It’s all the people looking to make money off the bands that ruin everything. It sucks that so many people make more money off of shows than the bands that play them and attract all the people. We were talking about this at work a few months back when we saw some floor tickets to Bruno mars in Canada were being resold for 4 grand. I was like who the hell pays that much? It’s an odd thing to deal with. For example I wouldn’t want them to stop selling tickets online. One of the venues I like seeing shows at is the house of blues in Myrtle beach. It’s a 2 hour drive each way for me. Which I don’t mind driving for the show but if I had to drive down to buy tickets in person and they were sold out already I’d be pissed.
Ticket prices are pretty high in general. Chevelle is playing a large club show up the road from here in Raleigh, NC next week. Tickets are $60. If they were $30-$40 I might have taken off work and gone, but it adds up. $60 each for tickets, gas and maybe a cheap meal and your talking about $150 for me to take my wife to see a band I’ve already seen a couple times, and that’s before buying even one beer.
I do think the high prices hurt live music. I’ve started to see some new trends around here. A lot of the venues we play try to charge $10-$15 for local band shows with way too many bands playing. I prefer our shows to be $5-$7 at the door and half as many bands but playing an extra 15-30 minutes each.
A lot of good national bands have stopped coming here on their normal tours and only play Carolina rebellion in NC now which sucks for me because I get sunburn in like 30 minutes and can’t stand to be outside all weekend surrounded by people who have been drinking non stop and haven’t bathed for two days. Miss the days when it seemed like every week there was a big band playing somewhere within driving distance.
First off, it's been years since online ticket sales became common, and we're to believe that it's only affecting the market now? Seriously?
Second, live music generated over $9 billion in 2016. If that's slumping sales, please let me slump!
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Second, live music generated over $9 billion in 2016. If that's slumping sales, please let me slump!
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