As 2024 comes to an end, several artists have announced their concerts and tours for the upcoming year. SZA and Kendrick Lamar have recently announced their collaborative world tour, and Tyler, The Creator announced his upcoming 2025 tour as well. As a fan of these artists, the announcements of these tours were exciting to hear about. However, my hopes of attending the tours were shut down when I realized that one ticket for the Kendrick Lamar and SZA concert was 400 dollars. The obnoxiously high ticket pricing is due to the issue of tickets being resold. The original price for this ticket would have been in the range of $100 to $150. I was heartbroken to find out that due to my financial situation, it was not possible to attend both the Kendrick Lamar and SZA and Tyler, The Creator concerts.
In addition to unrealistic ticket resale prices, artists also struggle to sell out arenas due to a lack of people buying the originally-priced tickets. Artists will sometimes end up canceling performances at a venue. When Bad Bunny came to Minneapolis in March, my dad and I purchased tickets and the day the concert was supposed to happen, it was canceled due to lack of tickets sold, which shattered me and my dad, who were looking forward to seeing him. Bad Bunny needs to realize, like other artists, that there are some ticket prices that people simply will not pay for. If artists know the financial situation of the majority of their fans, they should lower the cost of the tickets that they are selling. These artists profit so much from concerts and their music.Because they know that their fan bases aren’t at that level of wealth, knowing how much their music means to their fans, they should be more considerate about pricing.
Ticket pricing also impacts young people who are not able to afford these tickets and experience the music that they enjoy. The people who are actually able to afford these tickets are the people who might not know much of the artist music. It is difficult to get genuine fanbases, who can bring a desirable atmosphere because they know the music, to these concerts,when people who barely know most of the songs are the ones getting tickets. This is unfair to the fans who constantly support these artists by buying their merch or constantly listening to their new music.
Another drawback to overpriced concert tickets is the feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out). Not being able to attend a concert is hard enough, but with social media’s glorification of concert culture, people are forced to see the experiences they are missing out on. This increases the feeling of missing out on going to see an artist, which can create a sense of hatred for that artist because people missed out on an amazing experience. I remember when I wanted to go to the Sabrina Carpenter concert in Sept. and even remotely good tickets were ranging from $400 to $600. My friend who went to the concert who paid that amount said he had such an amazing experience that he posted on his Instagram. I experienced a wave of sadness and anger because I knew he had an amazing time and went to see her because he was willing to spend an excessive amount of money.
Today’s touring artists have a lot of passionate fans. If these artists were more considerate and self-aware of how much they were charging their fans, maybe they might realize how unrealistic some of the pricing is. They may also be able to make restrictions on how much one can resell tickets. Artists get so much love and praise for their music and their fans want to listen and enjoy their music live. Some ways that artists could improve the way that ticket prices are scaled on is early ticket sales that are discounted, then putting out the overall tickets that might be more expensive so that the people who might want to pay the cheaper option can have an early chance to do that.
