At the age of five, I memorized all the lyrics to Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games,” and have been an avid music fan ever since. Just when I was getting old enough to start attending concerts more frequently, however, a little thing called the pandemic made seeing live music an impossibility. Now that concerts are back, I’ve made it my mission to make up for lost time.
But have you noticed that just in the past few years, the average cost of a concert ticket has gotten insanely high? Between resellers, bots, and the inevitable extra ticket fees, it seems like there’s no such thing as a cheap concert anymore. Just as an example, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour offered seats of up to $500… that’s if you were even lucky enough to get a coveted spot in the queue and paid face value; for most it meant going through a resale site such as Stubhub or SeatGeek, which could run a Swiftie as much as $7,000. I suppose one could see that as a bargain considering a Coldplay fan reportedly spent $11,000 for a ticket to their upcoming show. It forces a music lover to ask themselves, with the ability to watch fan-shot videos of nearly every concert online, are these ticket prices ultimately worth the experience?
These extreme ticket prices were not always standard. In 2024, the average ticket price for a concert is $123. However, before the pandemic, the average price in 2019 was $91 – an increase of 35% in only five years. And yet this gap seems miniscule compared to what our parents paid to see their favorite bands when they were in high school. In 1985, the average concert ticket price was only $13 (my parents confirmed this for me). True, they had to physically wait on a line at their local mall and engage in conversation with the seller to secure their tickets, but if I’m being honest, that actually sounds kind of fun. Out of curiosity, I polled five teenagers (15-18) and asked them how much they would expect a hypothetical Ariana Grande concert ticket to cost, then compared their answers to a group of five adults (45-55) to whom I posed the same question (I chose Ariana because I figured there was a good chance that adults had heard of her). For the teens, their guesses averaged at $310 a ticket including fees, while the adults guessed only $150 a ticket. The generational difference in assumptions about prices reflects the issue at hand: kids are becoming sadly used to being charged a fortune to see an artist.
The biggest difference from then to now (minus the obvious inflation rate over time) is the rise of social media. In my case, having a Tiktok algorithm devoted to promoting the Gracie Abrams concert only made me more determined to see her live. In the past, fans were alerted to tours through newspaper ads or mailing lists, but social media relentlessly makes our generation more aware of every concert coming to town, and instills in its users a sense of FOMO. Of course, social media also comes with its perks. Last year, I spent hours watching the Coachella live-stream because I wanted to see some of my favorite artists perform but had no way of convincing my parents to fly me to California, let alone buy me a ticket. Now I’m not saying that sitting on your couch watching your TV is the same as jumping around in the crowds, screaming all the lyrics, and enjoying the sense of camaraderie that comes with going to concerts, but it is a very viable alternative to breaking the bank.
So why are these tickets so pricey? David Gottlieb, owner of the artist management company Death or Glory, is quick to explain that many factors contribute to the price of a concert ticket today. “Ticket prices are set based on a combination of artist-promoter and to a smaller extent venue and ticket platform,” Gottlieb says. These things are all intertwined, the size of the venue dictates how much a ticket might cost, and the higher the ticket price is, the higher the transaction fee. “They do it on a scale,” Gottlieb explains, “The fee literally changes every $5 increase in price. This is despite the fact that a transaction on a $25 ticket at Bowery Ballroom is the exact same transaction as a $200 Sabrina Carpenter ticket at MSG.” Gottlieb also agrees that the pandemic was a big turning point. “COVID had a massive impact on ticket prices the last three years. Crew members on every level asked for significant raises in salaries – 50% is not an unheard of number.” Add to that “cost of transportation (buses, trucks), gear, venue rental, etc. all went up significantly after the pandemic.” Someone has to pay for that, and unfortunately that someone is us. To make matters worse, the ticket resale sites like StubHub only further this cycle. “Promoters and artists see tickets for their sold out shows selling for 2x, 3x, 4x the face value and the artist-promoter says ‘OK, we can charge more,’” Gottlieb shares.
As for whether or not these tickets are worth the price, I say no. It is simply unjustifiable that a concert ticket costs more than some people’s monthly rent. I think it’s helpful to look at concerts the way we do sporting events: the playoffs and the World Series may cost you a lot, but your average regular season baseball game should be much more affordable. Obviously, going to a concert is an awesome time and you are getting an experience that you will cherish forever, but until we find a solution to this issue – whether its “all-in pricing” that includes fees in the original cost to not shock the buyers or putting stricter limits on what resale sites can charge its customers – I think it’s clear that the answer to the question “are concert tickets too expensive” is a definite yes. That being said, I am a sucker for live music and probably will use all of my work money on shows even though I know it’s crazy. To paraphrase a Gracie Abrams lyric, I heard the risk is drowning (in debt!) but I’m gonna take it.