Ticketmaster and Live Nation have destroyed the concert experience. But it didn’t use to be this way. Today, Oasis and Taylor Swift tickets might go for thousands of dollars, but back in 1955, you could see Elvis Presley in concert for less than the modern-day equivalent of $20.
Thankfully, my favorite group, the acappella group Home Free is still inexpensive and even cheap - I paid $30 a seat to see them last year. I could have had a $15 seat in the balcony if I had wanted.
Do you think if they’d charged ten times more that people would have still gone? Something has changed about there being enough people who’ll pay $200 (equivalent)
Yes income and wealth inequality. Elites v peasants and boomers v everybody else.
I suspect people now just go to see their, one, most favourite artist, maybe once every 5 years or something. As opposed to going to see one or two artists per year before. Or for people who want to be able to continue to go once or more a year, they just see newer artists who have reasonable prices.
I mean any real music fan these days, who doesn’t have a massive budget, should be going to festivals instead of individual gigs as these are massively better value for money.
Which came first though? Either people stopped going (and they charged more to compensate) or demand increased (so they found they’d still fill the room at a higher price)?
Why do you assume this has anything to do with a supply/demand curve? Because that’s the first thing you were taught in Econ 101 and it stuck?
In reality, most people aren’t that sensitive to small changes in price. And the demand drop is not instant. It might take months or years. Execs make the decision to raise the price, they don’t see the demand drop off immediately, and they instantly absolve themselves of any responsibility for the effects of their price increase. After all, there was hardly any demand drop in the quarter in which they made the change.
Look at say, Coca-Cola. You could easily double the price in five years and the price is negligible enough that most people won’t even notice. (Oh wait, they did this.)
You question if supply and demand has anything to do with it then point out coke doubled their price in 5 years and people kept buying it? Confusing
Music venue ticket increases isn’t a short term thing, were talking about how it’s comparatively risen over 60 years from Elvis to Taylor Swift
It is a supply and demand curve.
The supply is incredibly small for a world-famous artist compared to their demand. If the reason some people can’t buy a ticket because there are no tickets left, there’s room to increase the price of the ticket and sell the exact same amount of tickets. If resellers can just buy all your tickets and sell them for 10x the price, then you can 10x the price of tickets and sell the same amount.
The problem is that you can’t just use the profits from selling Taylor swift tickets to make another Taylor swift so you can increase the supply of Taylor swift.
There are only 3 ways they can increase their Taylor swift profits: 1. Make concerts in bigger venues so they can sell more tickets. 2. Increase the ticket prices. 3. Increase the amount of Taylor swift concerts.
- And 3. Have upper bound limits. Specially 3. Because what incentive do multi-millionaire artists to work more? If I were so wealthy, I’d strive to work less, not more.
The easiest option is 2. why wouldn’t they do it?
Sure, if I was a music fan it’d suck, but the truth is that they are corporations, and they are legally required to increase the shareholders’ value.
It’s actually more of an issue of artificial supply and demand caused by a monopoly that controls ticket sales, secondary market, and venues. They’re also very hostile to performing artists, using their monopoly to force them to play more expensive venues and charge higher prices or risk blacklisting at virtually every major venue. It’s the kind of shit that anti-trust laws were created to prevent but, there has been little to no enforcement for near a half of a century.
I just saw an article about how ticket sales are slumping, and that people aren’t willing to spend 600 per ticket anymore. The poor Ticketmaster CEO said that people just don’t want to.
Yep my dude, can’t be that you’ve changed concerts from “we should go see _______!” To “I guess it’s the one time in my life I’ll ever see them, I’ll go one time and then never again” level of special occasion. Seriously 600 dollars per person is nearing Disney level vacation money.
So yeah, of course money isn’t infinite. You hit the ceiling. Taylor and oasis may gather that much, but your other artists are going to suffer. I’ll be honest I paid 600 for Taylor. It was a once in a lifetime experience. But now they want me to pay something like 400 for any random music act that comes to town. No, Ticketmaster, she was my favorite, that was a one time thing. I’m not paying 400 to see like, Weezer.
Yup, I don’t go to any price gouged concerts period. I can afford it but I refuse on principle because more than $50 just isn’t worth it for me to see any artist so I mostly just see moderately big names when they play open stages at festivals. On the other hand traditionally “high class” music like symphony orchestras still have tickets in the $20 dollar range.
The one concert that is on my life long bucket list, for over 40 years, is to see Billy Joel live. He came to my local venue but I did not buy tickets because nose bleeds were over $400 and because I will not do business with Live Nation, period. It makes me sad but resolute.
Edit: For more context, I grew up hearing his music and I remember distinctly driving west on Java from Jakarta to the West coast in 1984 in a little piece of shit Daihatsu van my parents owned (that consistently burnt the bottoms of my feet because the exhaust was so close to the floor) and listening to Billy Joel on an eight track while bouncing and banging around on the awful roads on the way to the beach.
I have saved a lot of money by just not being at all into Billy Joel.
That’s brutal.
Say it ain’t so!
Yeah to be fair if I were a big Taylor Swift fan and knew that she was actually going to be decent live, like could actually sing well and put on a good show, then this latest “Eras” tour does sound like a pretty good experience, since you’re getting music from her whole career which I’m assuming you wouldn’t get from her other standard gigs for like individual album releases (I guess you would to an extent but probably not to the same extent as this eras tour?)
However I actually still wouldn’t be able to go see her in that situation, cos I literally don’t have enough money for it, but I get the appeal. But it is insane that it has to cost so much for everyone.
I saw Eminem at Reading Festival a few years ago and because it was a festival, I suppose that makes up for it as I saw some other alright bands on the same day, but it was actually a shit performance from him. Well not him, but the sound was fucked up the entire time. The music was basically too loud so you could barely hear him rapping over the top. That would have been a truly shocking fucking experience if I had been paying £600 for a ticket though! I actually think you should be able to get a refund in cases like that. When there are clear technical faults going on. You hear it happen shockingly often, like you’d think they’d be able to work out how to at least get the sound sorted out for a gig!? That’s surely the equivalent of a faulty product where you would be able to take it back to shop for a full refund.
Yet I’ve never heard of anyone getting refunds for stuff like that, even when sound issues have been widely reported so were clearly a problem, not just someone’s individual opinion.
Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent but yeah…haha.
I went to see Green Day in 2010 because I guess the tickets didn’t sell well and my friends and I got them for like $10 each the day of. I’m not a super fan or anything, but I was young when they were big and probably really enjoy ~10-15 Green Day songs, so I totally thought it would be worth $10.
It was fucking awful. The music was rough, Billie Joe told the arena full of twelve year old girls about how he was so wasted that morning he pissed in his own luggage, and it was just a bad vibe.
Damn yeah that is weird vibes. Don’t wanna slander the guy or whatever the right word is lol but like hopefully it doesn’t come out that he’s yet another to add to the list of paedos. But I swear the list of celebrities coming out with stuff like that or SA stuff is pretty depressing and I’m thinking that story is a sort of a yellow flag warning moment lol.
Hopefully not though. Sorry Billie!
Yeah, I was 19 and I was sketched out by how an adult was talking to kids, but maybe he didn’t realize the crowd makeup yet.
Billie Joe is sober now. Entire band night be sober, at least they don’t drink at shows at all now.
But that’s basically my point, is that they changed concerts from a casual affair to a once in a lifetime experience, where we have to choose our favorites we actually want to see, and can’t go see people we only casually like.
And yeah I totally get the risk aspect, because at that cost in the back of my head was “is this worth it? Was it worth the price?”
Yeah na I get what you mean. It does suck. And yeah it’s a bit shit if you’re constantly worrying about the money, means you can’t enjoy it as much which is the opposite of what you want cos you spent a lot of money… but cos you spent you worry… haha I’ll stop now but yeah ironic cycle continues round.
Which is why I probably just wouldn’t bother these days unless I was seriously seriously sure about it or just had a lot of disposable income at that point.
TBH though by the way. TS is kind of a jerk. The way she released that last album that people pre-ordered (imagine how lucky she is that people even actually purchase her music in full albums!! She seriously doesn’t need to be making shit loads off concert tickets) but then she releases like 20 EXTRA songs that aren’t available never pre-ordered one from what I understand right? So then people actually went ahead and purchased the album AGAIN to get the extra 20 songs.
So she’s cleaning the fuck up lol. I mean I dunno how many mugs actually did re purchase it, no offence if you’re one of them, but like damn, that’s really taking the piss out of your fans IMO. But people love her so much that they are just happy to have those extra songs available to listen to (AND PURCHASE) so it gets glossed over.
Like the people who pre-ordered are really loyal fans, so if anything she should be rewarding them for that. Like giving them those extra songs for free on the album.
People even purchased all her old music twice a lot of the time I think. When she re-recorded all the albums.
Just seems insane to me. She is truly raking it in.
I spent $10 at the door to see Deftones (mid 90s or so?), a friends band was opening for them.
I want to point out, this was after adrenaline, so they weren’t an unknown here - they were headlining. Now its about $200 for the same venue (just checked).
$10 in 1995 is $20 today for inflation. That $200 ticket would be $100 in 1995. There is no way I would have paid $100 in 1995 to see my friends OK band, even opening for the Deftones.
I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t know that I will ever even be in a realistic position to take my daughter to go see Taylor Swift without it being a huge birthday present or something.
It actually sounds to me like Ticketmaster found out that people were scalping tickets and decided to get in on the action.
I hope they get sued out of existence and then their executives beaten, tarred and feathered, and exiled from the music industry.
I want successful musicians to receive the accolades of their work but I also want their work to be financially accessible.
Yeah but now what happens is scalpers use bots to buy up all the tickets and immediately resell them for a markup. And ticketmaster is happy to get their cut.
Happened when we went to buy Bruins tickets last year. What was orignally a 75 dollar seat was not a resale seat for 140. And this was the nosebleed section.
Yeah, that’s the problem with middle men. They’re not there to lower the prices for the consumer.
Yeah I’m not entirely sure of what the way forward is there. But somehow they need to get the prices of shows down or it’s literally just gonna be a load of rich kids at these shows.
I heard that… I think it was The Jam? Actually “stood up” to ticketbastard a while back. But then from what I read, it turns out they actually just ended up getting a negotiated better rate with them, so that THEY got paid more for the gigs, but ticket prices remained the same or possibly even went up as a result. So just a completely selfish thing as opposed to a “fuck the system, let’s stand with the people” moment.
Sort of a variation on a don’t meet your heroes moment for their big fans I think.
Happens all too often though. I haven’t actually checked so possible he hasn’t actually sold out. But MGK at his beginnings was meant to be a proper “movement” he was completely idolised by his fans (including me when I was much younger lol). So if his tickets are or ever do become super expensive then that’s a sure sign of another sell out.
He’s kinda completely changed fences now anyhow which I think pissed off a lot of his base although I’ve always been into alternative rock and rock rap like mixture genre thing. So I thought it was kinda cool tbf anywho probably no one even knows who he has so I’ll shut up now. But yeah hopefully he isn’t another sellout.
I follow CHH, and some of the bigger Christian rappers and their labels run the entire tours themselves. Indie Tribe’s Holy Smoke Festival, which is pretty big, sells some tickets for like ~$100. Still a lot, but considering their popularity it’s not bad, and way more attainable than those Taylor Swift tickets lol
That’s a great festival name for the genre
Christian Rapers?
Wow that sounds as riveting as Christian Rock was.
Christian rapers sound riveting to you?
Just saw Green Day. 4 people in the pit, 1400 bucks
No band is worth that unless somebody you love has literally risen from the dead.
Saw them in the early 2000s at a medium sized, indoor venue that had no seating. $25 / ticket. They stopped in the middle of a song to make sure someone was ok and a guy even jumped from the (not super high) balcony, crowd surfed to the stage, and played guitar with them for a song.
You got ripped off. :/
WTF. That’s vacation money. Thanks for providing some reference.
I’ve seen Green Day and Weezer in concert so many times when I was younger. Then they did the tour with Fallout Boy a few years back and I just couldn’t justify the cost. Which is a shame but it is what it is.
I think I might have gone to that… weird I can’t remember but I was an alcoholic so didn’t remember much of those times!
Not sure if it was a tour as such though, well it was British Summer Time Festival in I believe Hyde Park. I deffo saw at least one of them there anyway but I have a feeling it was not actually which would be a pretty damn strong gig for the UK. (I know in America they get a lot more of tours/gigs with lots of big names but it’s quite rare in the UK really).
I almost bought tickets to that since they were gonna be in town on my birthday but decided to wait.
Covid hit a month later. Was so glad I didn’t get those tickets. Was gonna be $250 a pop for the cheap seats.
Yea, they eventually did the tour and honored the tickets. I guess $250 isn’t terrrrrrible, when I was looking it was like $250 for essentially nosebleed seats.
I went to a bunch of shows in the 80s and 90s for $20-25. I rarely go anymore, the prices are out of hand.
While they most certainly suck, so do most other people. As long as there will be a secondary market online someone will scalp tickets. Whether that’s some random asshole or these organized assholes hardly matters in most cases.
Of course with random assholes doing the scalping there is still a chance to get a cheap one by being faster, albeit a very slim one.
They need to stop bots and stop people buying over a certain amount of tickets each (I’m sure they do already usually limit tickets per person but people are obviously getting around it somehow). Because if you were only up against other fans who had a genuine interest in actually going to the gig themselves, not selling the tickets on, then you would be up against much much less people and you would get lucky a lot more often. Right now (or at least the last time I tried to buy tickets for something a few years ago) there was just no chance and the tickets were being resold in abundance within minutes, meaning it wasn’t genuine fans getting lucky over me.
Make tickets non-transferable, boom no more scalpers.
The LiveNation app has tickets being resold right in it.
The experience could be somewhat tamed by a lottery process.
Accept a token deposit for a week or two, and then draw from people contending for a given seat, then give them another week to pay the balance. Any unclaimed seats are put up at will call night-of-the-show. Limit the number of deposits taken from any given card to prevent “I’ll claim 30 seats and only buy 1” gaming of the lottery.
There’s probably some more complexity about it (if you want N seats together), but I think that would dramatically cut back on the frustration for “the tickets were only available for 14 seconds and the server was being DDOSed by scalper bots.”
Having to put down a deposit with no guarantee of a ticket also makes “buy All The Seats” scalping theoretically impossible and economically riskier. If there’s 5/1 contention for a ticket, you’d have to find a way to get 3 lottery slots for a better than even chance of getting it. If the deposit was $10, you’re spending $30 for the chance to buy a $50 ticket-- so if you can’t resell the ticket for at least $80, you lose. Under current policies, if you can sell that $50 ticket for $51, you’re ahead.
From what I understand though, this is actually more about people not purchasing albums anymore, so now artists have to basically make the bulk of their money from concerts.
Ticketmaster doesn’t force dynamic pricing for instance; that’s a choice the artist has made in order to maximise their profit from the ticket sales.
I don’t know if the tickets need to be quite as expensive as they are, for artists to make a profit - likely not. But they certainly are making a lot less money from the likes of Spotify than they used to make from albums sales, so it has to be a big part of the problem.
People like Oasis take the piss to be honest, because I doubt they’ve actually run out of money (according to this YouTube channel that was talking about them, they seem to think the brothers both still have plenty of 90s money, I dunno how you check this stuff… but yeah. Makes sense that they shouldn’t have spent it all unless they were really fucking stupid with their investments or lack thereof). So they really don’t need to be making this much money from the ticket sales, but for newer bands the Spotify thing should apply.
I thought that most artists never made much from record sales, it was always live performances. The label gets record sales.
AFAIK merch is often bigger than concerts for the non big names. Local bars etc
Well they definitely made significantly more than they do from Spotify cos Spotify is so cheap for the end user that they can’t possibly be paying the bands much of anything at all.
Of course the record companies would take a negotiated slice which I should imagine would be larger for the first album but probably the band can negotiate better terms for the second album if the first is popular. They wouldn’t agree to a contract for a stupidly low amount at least not for consecutive albums when they gain popularity and therefore bargaining power.
But even 100% of Spotify proceeds is shitty. 100% of fuck all is still fuck all as they say. Physical albums always made a much larger “pie” to start with. So everyone’s share is much more generous.
I’m talking like the I know the music industry and shit lol but I’m just making most of this up or repeating it from other people’s comments I’ve seen before about how it works but I’m pretty sure this is more or less accurate.
They charge as much as they can and have for a long time. They would still do it if they made lots of money from albums and streams.
What’s changed is the secondary market is controlled by the primary ticket sellers and they have better awareness of how much they can charge. People expectation of ticket prices has slowly changed and the prices always push at that.
Dynamic pricing exists now because it’s easier to implement. Not because the artists don’t have enough money.
Yeah, some of us are over 25-30 years old and remember concerts being, like $10 to $20, depending on your age.
I was talking with my dad about this just a few weeks ago. He’s Gen X and could go and see a big name band for 10 bucks. I’m a Millennial and could do the same for 20. Even as a high schooler, I was able to afford to go see a couple of concerts every summer just on an allowance of a few dollars per week.
I’d go to full day festivals for $30. Seriously. One year, I went to ozzfest and it was free! That year they dubbed it “freefest”. This isn’t even that long ago, I’m talking 15-20 years ago I was able to do this.
I was at that free Ozzfest. Shit was sick AF. How were they even making money? Merch and booze sales?
It must have been all that. I’m sure I bought something while there. It was only done one year so maybe they didn’t make enough money.
I remember going to a music festival when I was maybe 18 or 20, and the heat was so bad that I decided to just leave before seeing any of the bands I wanted to see because the ticket prices were low enough that there was no sense of “oh no, what a waste”.
There was a local radio station near me that would host a summer festival every year. The tagline was ten bands for ten bucks.
And we’re talking big name bands too - Smash Mouth, Bush, The Offspring. Usually 6-7 big bands and a couple just starting to break into the scene who were always huge 1-2 years later.
They just rebooted it this year. $50 plus fees for 6 bands. It’s still a decent deal considering but not the same as it used to be.
Oh man, I would kill to see The Offspring, especially if they were playing some of their real classics.
I saw Dave Matthews in Austin for 20 bucks fifteen ish years ago. Great show. Tickets can still be affordable if you don’t go to arena shows.
Even in the ‘80s you could see big-time bands for less than $20.
I saw Van Halen with David Lee Roth on their first time touring in like 20 years or something. I paid $25 and this was I wanna say '07 ish?
I was at the Ozzfest where Black Sabbath did a reunion tour. Think the tickets were $25.
Seriously? Those of us who grew up with that music would have paid top dollar for that, even if their voices were shot
I mean I’ve seen more than a couple of shows at my local waterhole, and the price has been between free and $20. The $20 one was Moonhooch and absolutely worth it!
If you like listening to live music, it’s there, but it’s not T-Swizzle.
I know it’s a relatively niche genre but I almost exclusively go to folk punk shows. They’re usually $15-20 or “meh, pay what you can just have fun”
Folk punk sounds like a really interesting genre. Do you have any recommendations?
Pigeon Pit, Left at London, Sister Wife Sex Strike, She/Her/Hers, Apes of the State. You may notice a theme with those ones… There’s also classics like AJJ, Jeffery Lewis, Pat the Bunny, and Against Me. Of the ones I listed Pigeon Pit, Sister Wife, and Apes are my favorites which is pretty convenient because all three of them are playing in a concert tonight near me for like $20
I would never consider today’s ticket prices.
How many albums have you bought? How are you supporting the musicians you love?
That’s kind of the issue. Ticket master is killing the industry with a service problem.
This is same issue with gaming or shows. To quote the god of service “Piracy is a service problem”
Ticket master take 20-30% of the ticket price and own all the large venues.
This is a monopoly problem, not a service problem.
I mean it Could argued that is the service issue.
Given how accessible music is, how accessible musicians are on social media, the fact that you probably have to travel to the venue, shit like COVID, eardrum shattering PA systems that make ear plugs a requirement, what is the appeal today even? And then it costs a thousand bucks?
I understand fun, but I feel like you could get a better deal if you’re just looking for a good time.
It was still more than we wanted to pay, but we just paid $80 apiece to see Squeeze on their 50th anniversary tour and it was worth every penny. Squeeze is one of my all-time favorite bands and I have never seen them live before. They were close to as good as they were back in the 70s and 80s.
Boy George opened for them with no introduction and no name on the marquee. I had to look up who it was. Suddenly it made sense why there was this guy who alternated between bitching about the sound mix and talking about how amazing the 1980s was in between reggae songs opening for Squeeze. I could have lived without that. His hype man was good though. No idea why neither of them bothered to say who the front man for their band was though.
Anyway, Boy George aside, it was a great show and I do not regret it at all.
I call shenanigans, flying squid generally only live 1 year in the wild.
Generally.
I don’t care about social media, I live in a big city so I rarely travel for a concert, sometimes I get sick sometimes I don’t and ofc it sucks when I do, I agree having to wear earplugs sucks…
The appeal is that I’m a metalhead and I feel like a metal concert is one of the only places where, within some rules, I can go batshit crazy. It’s cathartic. I don’t even have to get in the pit necessarily, it’s enough that I can scream until I have no voice.
I can still get the occasional 30-40 euro concert ticket for a smaller band, but that’s rare.
Capitalism is doing capitalism things, weird
Albums and singles make next to no money for the majority of musicians.
The only way to make money through music nowadays is touring and merchandise.
Yeah, poor Taylor swift :'(
I don’t think it’s the normal artist we are taking about here. We are talking about concerts going for a thousand bucks.
It’s a feature not a bug
I think Ticketmaster and Live Nation absolutely are to blame for hyperinflated ticket prices.
The fact that scalpers also operate is reprehensible.I will however say that production values of a modern gig are many factors higher than they were decades ago.
Safety standards are much higher, requiring more crowd control, more planning, more specialised equipment (both for the venue, and for the production).
It’s no longer “a stack of speakers and a mixing desk with 8 channels”. PA design and installation is both a science and an art in itself to achieve an even frequency response throughout as much of the venue as possible. Never mind the production of the actual music.
It’s no longer “120 par cans over the stage and a bunch of power”, it’s a huge quantity of intelligent lighting fixtures with months of planning and days of programming.
Never mind the video side of things requiring months of preproduction with kit that would make the lighting or sound budget look like fisher price.
And all of this has to be built and run with redundancy, so the equipment list is essentially doubled, and likely a lot of spares.
Venue costs are also higher. So all of that production has to be orchestrated to go in and come out in as fast a time as possible. And packed on and off trucks in specific ways to facilitate this. Logistics of a tour are intimidating.There are also entire university degrees based around these roles in production, people want and make a career out of touring. Places on tours are highly sought after.
Gigs are no longer just a band playing. There is a lot more show to it.
Whether this is actually what fans want is up for debate. And if it actually makes the experience better is also up for debate.Ticket prices are obscene, and I don’t think they are inline with the production provided.
However, if the live music is in demand then there will be people that pay. A band can only play so many gigs, and venues are limited.
Some of the increased cost can be attributed to making the job easier and safer for all the crew, staff and fans.
Some of the increased cost can be attributed “putting on a better show”.
Some of the cost can be attributed to some of these jobs moving from the “passion and hobby” to “a career”.
Some of these costs can be attributed to the increased skill level required to put on these gigs.
Some of these costs can be attributed general cost of living & inflation increases.
But I think most of the costs can be attributed to the exploitative behaviour of Ticketmaster etc.Mixing now requires phenomenally less equipment. We went from massive mixing boards to a collection of individual dials and now we are on very powerful digital modeling systems with a laptop interface.
Sure, these need to be dialed in at every venue, but most of the settings are staying close to the same to recreate a studio type sound with autotune turned slightly down and letting the chord change strum be left in.
Yeh, consoles and generally the engineering side has (somewhat) come down in price. But it is more expensive to actually use it in a live gig.
I don’t know anyone that would mix on a laptop for a live music gig (as opposed to a band at a conference/function) any larger than solo acoustic for 50-100 people.
It’s not that a physical control surface would make it sound better (well, especially with preproduction), but that a physical control surface allows you to react to the music faster. Anything more than 2 button presses away is too far for a live gig with any stakes.
Yes the technology is there, and it is doable. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You are introducing massive disadvantages before you even start the gig.
Some comments on the increased complexity…
Wireless systems are more prevalent, along with IEMs. An 8 way stereo IEM system is a lot more than an 8 way monitor system. More expensive , and a lot more planning.
These days, it is much more common to have DSP amps, a channel (or even multiple channels) per box in an array, arrays are much bigger with additional fills and delays.
I’ve seen some of the daddy racks used in tours, they will be 2 or 3 x 30-40U racks of amps and systems per PA hang.The rigging for the PA is more precise, requires precise measurements (both physical and spectral), and it needs someone to actually run the PA.
All of this allows an install closer to the ideal PA for the gig, with tooling and simulation to plan it in advance. Which requires a lot broader skill set and planning than throwing in whatever PA you could hire and walking around until it’s good enough.
I’d say a tour 30-40 years ago was unlikely to have a dedicated systems tech dealing only with the PA. They’d likely supervise the install and some tuning, then be a patch monkey or monitor engineer or something. Or maybe just chill out until the derig.
These days, it’s not uncommon to have someone continually monitoring the PA, amps, desk racks etc. and it is as much a skill as engineering the actual band.20,000 people in a stadium having paid $20 a ticket is $400k budget per show. Seems like a lot, but a venue is going to cost anywhere between $100k and $500k per night.
100 crew/techs for the in, show & out is going to be $25k to $50k. Equipment hire is going to be anywhere from $50k to $500k.
Never mind rehearsal and pre-production costs.
There will be discounts for multiple nights and longer term hires, however anything like an actual tour has a lot of additional accommodation, travel and logistics costs & planning.Audience members going to a gig at a large stadium will have certain expectations, regardless of cost.
Tech crew are going to have certain expectations working at a stadium level gig. These are professionals at (most of the time) the peak of their career.While the equipment cost might be somewhat comparable (purchasing a couple Midas, outboard, splits, snakes would’ve been $100k to $250k. A redundant SD10 system with a monitor desk might be $150k to $350k and a hell of a lot more capable - analogue Vs digital sound arguments aside), it generally needs more people and more skill to be able to use and run these systems (analogue splits can be used drunk/hangover. Dante or madi have many layers of complication).
I’d say digital desks are a bit more fragile than analogue - when digital dies it’s dead, when analogue dies it sounds shit - which will increase the hire cost.
And by the time you have a desk that can make a live performance sound like a studio album, you also need a PA to back that up, and you need the kit to make sure the band is comfortable playing to that level.
Also, to attract reliable talent to actually work the gigs (not just the band and their requirements), a certain level of equipment is expected.Hell, I’ve been on gigs with dedicated coms techs. All they look after is networking and voice coms systems, and the kit they are deploying makes a video engineers eyes water (you know it’s a good gig when you see anything Riedel)
Modern gigs are on another level of complexity compared to the $20 gigs of Elvis’ time.
Even $40 a ticket in a 20k stadium doesn’t leave much wiggle room.
Then you have profits for the band and organisers. And the demand will drive up prices.Like I said, I think current big gig prices are exploitative.
But the comparison to gigs from decades ago isn’t a good one. Production capabilities are much higher, expectations are much higher, abilities and tech is much more refined.
You have to remember bands like The Beetles, Queen and Pink Floyd would be drowned out by the fans. Pretty shitty gig if you can’t hear the band.And that’s nothing to speak to lighting, video, production and artist management departments.
Sorry for the ramble. Halfway through a bottle of wine!
As much as I love working a GOOD budget gig, I’d rather have the equipment to be able to operate at the level I’m capable of - to the point that I no longer work the shitty gigs.
