Your Take: Concert Crunch

Spalding could be right. I know rock concert tickets are a LOT more expensive than country tickets. I guess that’s why I always feel I’m getting a steal when I buy tickets to a country concert. I thought concert ticket prices had gone down, but it’s probably, because I’m only buying country tickets these days.

Here’s another possible factor: look at where these artists are playing. They do a lot of state fairs. FOr a country artist, there’s no shame in playing state fairs and small markets all summer, because that’s where your fans are. In rock, it’s a sign of a flagging career. You’re a rock band and you play a state fair, or one of those festivals with 25 bands in a field in the Midwest, you’re either just starting out, or your glory years are fading in the rearview. And there are exceptions that that, just like everything else, but that’s the general atmosphere.

As for ticket prices overall, we have Steely Dan to thank. When they first reunited in the ’90′s, they were the first artist to be charging over $50 for tickets, because they (or their management) felt they could, that there was enough of a demand for it. And then everybody started doing it, because THEY could get away with it too. And then you had TicketMaster adding on ridiculous surcharges, then Live Nation comes along and owns most of the market and the major artists and effectively blackballs promoters who don’t work with Live Nation. Then you have record companies, who aren’t making as much money selling records, so they grab a slice of the touring and merchandising revenue, which traditionally was where the artists made their money (not off record sales), and prices get driven up even higher, to where it’s $30 at least for a damn T-shirt. Basically, the machine has gotten so big, it’s eating itself.

I don’t go to arena shows anymore, big amphitheaters and football stadiums, with a very few exceptions (Slayer/Megadeth/Testament coming up in a couple weeks–surprised to see them in a place that big, honestly, since all three play large clubs on their own). Most of the artists I like these days, country and rock alike, play in bars anyway (some of them real dives) but even that’s not cheap.

As for country fans being excited to hear an older artist’s new material, good point. Rock bands are always complaining that American audiences just want to hear the old hits, a lot of them not even aware that a band has a new album, or even a string of them, because the traditional outlets like radio (MTV is now a total non-factor) won’t support it. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden has griped about this for years, the way American fans want a greatest-hits show, where European crowds actually know all the words to their newer music.

Yeah, it’s ridiculous. And another thing is, these scalping companies that hire people to go online at the time of sale and buy up all the tickets they can, and then resell them for much higher prices. Some artists (and the Washington Redskins, too, and probably lots of other sports teams as well) came under fire last year when it came to light that they were withholding tickets specifically for scalpers to get first dibs on. The Redskins had a waiting list of over 100,000 fans wanting to buy tickets, yet were keeping tickets back from every game for scalpers.

I paid $6.00 for a ticket to see all the Beatles at Red Rocks, then paid a $250.00 to see to see just the one Beatle, Paul McCartney last year. I like when you can pay for early access to a general admission venue, or if you get a meet-n-greet and want to pay for it, Like Toby Keith does. It’s whatever the market will bear, I guess.

I think Michelle is right that country tickets tend to be cheaper. The most I’ve ever paid for a country show was $100 for one ticket to see Strait/Reba/Womack in Omaha earlier this year. Usually I get pretty good seats in the $30-50 range.

There is also the back end factor. Large rock shows often mean large budgets for the show itself. Alan Jackson and Brooks and Dunn don’t have to drop 20,000 per show on pyro, dancers and miscelaney, ergo they can charge cheaper prices.

I got the top seat at $54 for a Carrie Concert. Didn’t price the T-shirts as I don’t buy that crap.
Now with Strait, Reba and Womack coming to Lexington in Sept, I will have to pay more for that ticket but c’mon..that’s still a deal with these 3!!

The people who book country events at the State Fair level have been trained into–and are now often lockled into–the idea that they have to have One Huge Act that will draw 80,000 or 100,000 people, and even complian, these days, that there aren’t enough of those acts to go around. Someone–probably someone younger, is going to look at that situation, look at models that work more like the web, with varied flavors of interets, and figure out that having four shows running at once on smaller stages, ecah drawing 20,000 who go for this flavor or that, can work better, last longer–and that there are plenty of acts–very good acts– that can draw that sensible number.

The music business needs to get over elephantiasis. Even if it means retiring dinosuars to get there.

There are plenty of country acts that can draw 20,000 people on their own?!

Agree with Barry. The fair in my state (Delaware) brings the same artists back year after year. I don’t just mean the same TYPE of artists, but the exact same artists. The Beach Boys. Jason Aldean. Lynyrd Skynyrd. Brad Paisley. 3 Doors Down (although they were mercifully absent this year). Rodney “Velveeta” Atkins. And the token, third-tier Disney act for the kiddoes. Can somebody get some imagination, please?

I was just expressing a little surprise at the idea that there are plenty of acts who can draw 20,000 on their own – or, for that matter, that there are acts who can draw 80 or 90,000 by themselves. I think if you dropped a zero off all those numbers they’d be more realistic.

I guess I’m not seeing the signs that the fair circuit is hurting like the concert one is. And until that’s the case, there’s not much incentive to experiment.