The presale breakdown also prompted a congressional hearing. Swift’s fans largely directed their anger at Ticketmaster rather than the singer, who posted a statement on Instagram criticizing a process that left much of her audience frustrated and ticketless. That’s a big line between haves and have-nots.” “Some of that is financial, but it’s also about information. “It’s another way of creating a line between folks who get in and folks who don’t,” Waksman said. Demand for Swift tickets was so high that her entire “Eras” tour - including three shows in May at Gillette Stadium - sold out during presales, before the general public even had a chance to buy them. Fans also need enough tech savvy to navigate the online ticketing process, and no small measure of luck. Buying a ticket for the likes of Springsteen, Swift, or Beyoncé not only requires money, but access to presales, often through fan clubs or credit card companies. Yet concert tickets selling for thousands of dollars apiece creates a different kind of scarcity, one that is turning audiences into a self-selecting group with resources beyond the reach of many people. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’” “The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. Pricing tickets according to real-time demand is ostensibly a way to thwart scalpers, and direct the money to the artist instead of the resale market - a rationale Springsteen offered in the Rolling Stone interview. ![]() “But $1,000 to some guy who works at a hedge fund is a different thing than a college student or me or you or millions of people in the middle.” “When you get a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or whatever, there’s obviously massive, incalculable demand,” said Tony Margherita, who managed the alt-rock band Wilco from 1995-2017. As Barnum knew, scarcity is lucrative - even when it’s manufactured by artist managers or tour promoters. Not only did those add-ons generate additional income for artists, they created an air of exclusivity for fans willing to pay for them. So did perks: premium stuff, like backstage meet-and-greets and VIP ticket packages. “It was assumed that the average person who was going to go see a rock ‘n’ roll show was probably a teenager or not much older than that,” said Steve Waksman, professor of music and American studies at Smith College, who recounts the Lind tour in his 2022 book “Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé.” “So you had to keep the prices in a range where you wouldn’t overshoot the mark of what they would afford, because you weren’t going to sell those tickets to 35-year-old middle-class people.”Īs boomers aged and amassed more spending power, prices increased. That was the result of generalizations about socioeconomic class - rock was not considered or priced like “high culture” - and about demographics. When rock ‘n’ roll came of age with baby boomers in the 1960s, tickets were cheap: seeing Jimi Hendrix on Boston Common in 1969 would have cost you $3, or about $25 today. It wasn’t so long ago that no pop musician could have gotten away with charging so much. Leaving one of the most dedicated pillars of his fan base feeling “dispirited, downhearted, and, yes, disillusioned” as it closed up shop is a sign of how damaging it has been to Springsteen’s relationship with his audience, or a portion of it, to treat his fans like other stars do. That response sounded flippant enough to Backstreets editor Christopher Phillips that he cited it when he announced last month that Backstreets would shut down after 43 years. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back,” Springsteen said. ![]() With the cost of a night out for two at a big-name concert able to rival the median monthly mortgage payment in Massachusetts - $2,365, according to recent Census data - certain live music experiences are again becoming a pastime for the affluent. That sounds familiar: Some tickets for upcoming Boston-area performances by Bruce Springsteen - who plays TD Garden on Monday - Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé went on sale for thousands of dollars each, thanks to “dynamic pricing” - prices that rise with demand in real time. Dodge’s winning bid was $625 - the equivalent of nearly $24,000 today, and an indication that concert attendance was reserved for the moneyed class. Dodge bought the privilege of choosing the first seat, anywhere he wanted in the hall. When the auction began, a singer and composer named Ossian E. ![]() Barnum, sold them at auction - dynamic pricing in its original form. When Jenny Lind came to Boston on her first US concert tour in 1850, demand for tickets to see the Swedish opera star was so high that her promoter, P.T.
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