Last November, Taylor Swift fans girded themselves to do battle with Ticketmaster for tickets to see her Eras tour. But none of them expected it to be quite as bloody a battle as it proved to be.
Typically, for popular shows, fans with “verified fan” presale logins get ready to punch numbers into the site at 10am, the moment they go on sale. Ticketmaster later said that 3.5 million people registered and 1.5 million presale codes were sent out – but that the system had 3.5 billion hits, most of them by bots.
The boondoggle this caused was incredible.
Ella Youssef, for example, a 21 year old student at USF, signed on to Ticketmaster at 9am, and was sent to the back of the queue three times. Youssef skipped class to stay in the queue all day. She ended up logging off Ticketmaster at 5pm, still in her pajamas, without any tickets at all.
Eventually, Youssef scored tickets on the floor for both nights of Swift’s dates in Denver, CO, but it was only after several weeks of combing resale sites and eventually receiving a second opportunity from Ticketmaster to purchase seats at face value. Even then, she ended up spending a cool $1,200 for two seats on two different nights—a price she now thinks reasonable—for the privilege.
“I have savings,” she shrugs. “But it was a blow.”
PRICE OF FANDOM
Ella is fairly typical of people going to see Swift this summer. A long-time fan, she was eager to see her, she says, because of the 5-year gap between tours. But participating in the mayhem seems to be part of the pleasure.
The Federal Reserve Bank has estimated that Swift’s tour will add 5 billion dollars to the economy, and most of that isn’t the cost of tickets. Flights, hotels and local restaurants will all get a share of the profit. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, since Swift fans are also shelling out for extremely tailored experiences: custom outfits, themed manicures, elaborate hairstyles and so forth.
This week the Eras tour has landed in the Bay Area, and it’s hard to overestimate the excitement around it. As of this writing, resale tickets cost $1,100, the city of Santa Clara has renamed itself “Swiftie Clara” and Taylor herself has been named honorary mayor. It’s fair to say that the Eras tour is going down in history as a monocultural event along the lines of a Superbowl or Olympics—even a coronation. Something that happens only once, worth sacrificing a lot for.
Certainly, there have been historical precedents regarding artists with rabid fanbases, from the Hungarian Lisztomania of 1841, to the screaming hordes of girls at shows by Elvis and the Beatles. Swift is just one in a long line of entertainers (incidentally, one of the first female ones) to garner this kind of attention. But although that may explain the frenzy around getting tickets, there are a host of other economic reasons that have made ticket prices rise to astronomical heights.
In the past year, tickets to see concerts by artists like U2, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and even Neil Young have far outpaced the amounts paid in previous years. Young tickets in Napa went for $700 recently, while prices for seats to see Bruce Springsteen in some markets topped a thousand dollars, a fact which caused a lot of angst amongst his fans (and which Springsteen never apologized for).
Suffice to say, something is very off in the concert ticket market, but then, something is off in the global economy as well. As inflation skyrockets and the gap between rich and poor widens, rock concert audience are an excellent allegory for the issues plaguing the economy at large. The rich get richer, and the poor…well, the poor don’t get to see Taylor Swift.
CASH FLOW
One thing that should be emphasized about Taylor Swift’s extravaganza is that the high prices do not necessarily reflect extraordinary greediness on her part, given that she spends many millions of dollars just to get the show on the road. Swift’s Eras tour is said to utilize over 50 semi-trucks and employ literally hundreds of people to put together the giant LED screen, football-field sized catwalk and many other complicated, computerized special effects. Building the stage takes almost a week—meaning that there are two sets on the road at any given time.
The Eras tour also includes a 10 piece band and 14 backup dancers, as well as the members of two opening acts. And since the cost of fuel and hotels is now about 30% higher than it was before Covid, that’s no small chunk of change being carried by the artist.
So, it’s easy to see where at least some of Swift’s profits are going—and also what fans are getting when they spend so much money to see her. It’s not quite as obvious for other acts which may just be hauling their band equipment around. A recent Neil Young show, for example, was upwards of $300 for face value tickets at venues like the Greek in Berkeley, which just a few years ago topped off at about $80 or $90.
Much of the problem can be laid at the feet of two culprits. The first is the consolidation of concert promotion through semi-monopolistic practices. In former years, every market had its own promoter, but now, vast conglomerates like Live Nation and Ticketmaster are in charge of each venue.
Ticketmaster, in particular, has incurred the wrath of music fans lately, who attribute the high cost of resale tickets solely to them. But that is too simple of a solution. In fact, high prices are also the fault of fans who pay them, as well as artists, who allow them to be charged.
And yet, it’s not entirely their fault, for although the artist certainly has some say in what their ticket price is, the price itself is suggested, or even set, but a host of ancillary industry figures, including managers, booking agents, arenas and the ticketing agency, in this case Ticketmaster, all of whom are fighting to get a high price to cover their own costs.
The venues themselves—many of them owned by Live Nation or by AEG—start the process. According to Dawn Holliday, a former booking agent, part owner of several San Francisco clubs and a former employee of Bill Graham Presents, after the artist cut, the venues and the agencies are left searching for money to cover production costs, and they do that in various ways, including taking 25% of merchandise and by increasing fees.
Holliday says that ticket sales have always been an area with a big potential for grift.
“There’s a lot of ways to screw around with ticket prices in a general admission venue,” she says. “Bill invented some of them, but compared to what’s going on now, he was almost a saint.”
Holliday blames the high cost of tickets mostly on the artists, or at least with artist management, but adds that computers and the internet are what have exploded the situation by adding layers of complexity, obfuscation and, most importantly, fees. Fees atop the ticket price are often kicked back to various interested parties—venue, agents, etc.—and add to the ticket’s original cost.
Then, the internet allows for a very robust secondary market, in particular Stubhub, a ticket resale site owned by Ticketmaster. In olden times, reselling tickets was called scalping, and it was illegal. It still is, if a person sells a ticket for admission to an event without the written permission of the owner or operator of the property where the event is taking place; the seller obtained the ticket for resale at a price higher than face value; or if the transaction occurs on the grounds of, or inside, the event location. Online resale sites presumably sidestep these regulations, but consumer experience suggests that automated bots now corner the market on tickets and make getting them in a legitimate way far harder.
Another thing sites like Stubhub allow is for artists to see how much fans are willing to pay. Sometimes, as at a recent Bruce Springsteen concert in Texas, where tickets could be had on the day of show for $10, or at Duran Duran’s recent show at SAP, this benefits fans who can pick up bargains. (I paid $20 to see the latter.) Sometimes, as with Taylor Swift, it goes the other way. As Ella Youssef pointed out, the $1,200 she eventually spent for two floor seat tickets at face value have now doubled in value.
Some artists—most notably, Robert Smith of the Cure—have fought this trend by insisting that their tickets be set at affordable prices and that the ticketers cut service charges. But as Stubhub sales show, for the most part, the confluence of interests setting the price are able to charge these high prices because audiences are willing to pay them. And as long as people are willing to pay these prices, the prices will never go down.
BETTER CONNECTING YOU
Have audiences changed or has attending rock concerts become a more valuable commodity? Perhaps it’s a little of both. Certainly, in the era of streaming, which pays artists a fraction of a cent per stream, even fairly prominent musicians are unable to make significant amounts of money from recorded music, so live performance has become their bread and butter.
Moreover, live performance has become one of the few unrepeatable and unique things that people can buy these days. A live performance has what Walter Benjamin called “aura:” that is, it is a work of art which is uniquely present in time and space and therefore unrepeatable. Aura implies authenticity: its value is in its singularity. Audiences who are eager to share their presence via Instagram and other social media sites surely recognize this aspect.
On the other, younger, end of the spectrum, attending rock concerts has acquired a new cachet thanks to social media. Ann Garland, a psychologist who specializes in adolescent psychology, says that the intensity of rock fandom has a lot to do with the invention of social media.
“There’s always been adulation of rock stars,” she says, “but what’s different is that with social media the fans feel like they know their idol better. There’s this very twisted intimacy between fan and star that’s not genuine or authentic…but sadly, the fans think it is.”
Garland believes this is confusing for young people, and accounts in part for the high value of tickets. And she points out that social media adds to ticket value in another way as well.
“In the last ten years, being able to show people that you were somewhere exclusive has become almost as valuable a commodity as being there.”
Garland points to the excitement and expense surrounding the Broadway play Hamilton in 2016 as setting a precedent for high prices, when having seen Hamilton became a high school student’s biggest status symbol. Bruce Springsteen’s subsequent theater performances also helped artists recognize the profit-making possibilities in the economic theory of scarcity.
Scarcity drives prices up. As Ticketmaster pointed out in its ‘mea culpa’ message to outraged ticket buyers, some people are just going to be S.O.L. For Swift to accommodate everyone who logged into Ticketmaster in November, she would have to perform every single night for two and a half years.
Some, however, argue that seeing a Swift performance is worth a grand. Psychologist Suzanne Garfinkel-Crowell recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which she extolled Swift’s ability to cohere groups of teenage girls. After attending a concert, she observed “MetLife Stadium was a bacchanal of mass identification, a celebration of that ubiquitous girl who felt somewhat invisible until there were 83,000 of her, sparkling from miniskirt to concert bracelet, lighting up the night sky and wondering: Which era am I right now? Who was I last year? And what’s the part of me that is emerging, gaining complexity?”
That may explain Swift’s audience. But apparently people will pay up for legacy artists like Springsteen, the Stones, or, most recently, the Dead and Co, as well, either to relive the experiences of their youth, because they think it might be their last chance to see their favorite act or simply because they can.
Venues have also figured out how to court older people’s business, adding things like VIP bars with better access to toilets and so on.
COST OF BUSINESS
2023 may go down as the zenith of such high price points, in part because acts like the Dead, Neil, and Bruce are on their last legs. They are also the last generation of acts whose music was ubiquitous, thanks to the way that radio worked to instill only a few acts into our minds. Streaming works differently, with much smaller subsets of audiences.
On the other hand, the appetite for live music is clearly on the rise. David Lowery, a touring musician, is still on the road with his band Cracker. He says that there is a huge market for live music in his town—Athens, GA—where many doctors, professors and other well-heeled professionals who probably grew up going to punk rock shows are now happy to spend money on club tickets every weekend. Lowery says he is able to keep his tickets under $50, but that it’s increasingly hard to do.
“Fuel, flights, rental cars, food, hotels…prices are crazy,” he says.
That’s why, in the mid-range, many acts are touring less frequently. “There’s a lot more for bands to have to think about, and a lot fewer places to play,” adds Holliday.
Some bands have given up. According to a recent article in the Observer, over 100 summer music festivals in Great Britain were canceled due to a combination of rising costs and bands not touring. The article quotes the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) as saying that, although ticket prices have risen 15%, the costs of staging a show are up by 30%, and that gap is costing both artists and promoters. Some acts trim equipment or tour solo to cut costs. Others are just waiting it out.
Here in America, where there are fewer festivals, many mid-sized bands are just doing the latter. Sure, there are still big summer concerts and festivals happening, but economic theory ensures that when tickets cost this much, people—even rich people—are going to go to fewer shows.
And so it seems, the bottom line is that concert tickets to most shows have become a luxury item. Lowery notes that it has become important for bands like his to note who is playing in the area when their band hits town.
“If people have spent their wad on seeing the Who, they’re less likely to spend $50 to see my band,” he says. “Bad luck to those who are touring right behind Taylor.”
In the Bay Area’s punk and DIY scene, however, a different trend has taken off. Once defined by the dirt cheap price of ’80s hardcore shows, even these smaller concerts have gotten a little more expensive, rising from $5 entry to $10 or $15. But there is a word listed on the fliers for these shows that doesn’t appear on posters for Taylor Swift tours: NOTAFLOF.
“No One Turned Away For Lack of Funds.”
Local promoter Chris Gough has been throwing shows in the San Jose area under the name Heavy Lemon since 2016. In that time, every show Heavy Lemon has hosted has been NOTAFLOF.
“No matter where it was, if it was at a cafe or Playback Studios or a house, if somebody couldn’t pay or they could only pay some of the amount, we would let them in, and it was ok,” Gough says.
In the last seven years, Heavy Lemon have hosted some truly exciting groups in this generation of DIY music, bands like MSPAINT, Absinthe Father and Militarie Gun. All of them have been fine with their shows being NOTAFLOF.
“Music should be accessible,” Gough says. “I don’t like the idea that music or art could be inaccessible because you can’t pay for it. That sets a weird and dangerous precedent for humanity.”
But for Taylor Swift fans, that precedent is long set. And not everybody is willing to spend the cost of a roundtrip airfare to Paris on a single evening out. Ryan Mak, 22, a student from Hong Kong who attends USF, is a self-proclaimed Swiftie who recently wrote an entire term paper entirely made out of quotes from her songs. He missed out on getting reasonably priced face-value tickets, but has a relatively sane attitude about his loss.
“Ticketmaster disappointed a lot of fans, including me,” he says. “As much as I love Taylor Swift, I just can’t afford to pay that much money. That’s for my tuition.”
The truth is, if more people thought like Ryan, ticket prices would drop. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Maybe quotation marks around “tailored”? Too easy?
Ticketmaster sucks, end of story. But related, it amazes me how freakin expensive it is to go to an SF Giants game. And they come around a lot more often than, say, Swift does. I’ll stick with the SJ Giants.