A concert? In this economy?

0:01Astead Herndon:What's the most you've ever paid for a live concert? I'll start. Floor seats at Beyonce's Renaissance Tour cost me$450, which seemed crazy at the time. But these days, that could be considered a steal. Oh my God, the most expensive tickets are$1 ,100? And I think we need to go ahead what it is. It's greed. It's gotten so bad, Kid Rock just went to the U.S. Senate to complain. That this industry is full of greedy snakes and scoundrels. Too many suits lining their pockets off talent they never had and fans they mislead. You've got Ticketmaster in its dynamic pricing. And then there's the whole secondary market, with resellers jumping the line and scooping up all the cheap seats.

0:42Astead Herndon:The result? Some artists ditching the tour bus completely. And higher prices for everyone. So where does that leave us fans? That's coming up on Today Explained from Vox. Thank you. Rock on. Support for this show comes from the Working Forest Initiative. The working forest industry is committed to planting more trees than they harvest. More than 1 billion seedlings are planted in U.S. working forests every year. From biologists to GIS analysts, hiring managers, accountants, and more, working forest professionals have dedicated their focus towards sustainability, using their expertise to help ensure a healthy future for America's forests.

1:27Astead Herndon:You can learn more about Working Forest Initiatives at WorkingForestInitiatives.com. WorkingForestInitiatives.com.

1:57in all my must-haves. Wait, you want to shop Walmart with me? Alrighty, I think I can fit you in.

2:08Today is gonna be explained to you. My name is Taylor Mims. I'm a senior editor at Billboard, and I cover live entertainment and touring.

2:20Astead Herndon:Okay, so you are the right person to talk to because it feels like live entertainment and touring has changed a lot in recent years. I recently read that Harry Styles was charging$1 ,000 for a concert ticket. And, you know, no beef with Harry Styles. But that seems like a shocking price. Can you just tell me what's going on here? $1 ,000 is a lot of money for a ticket. If Harry Styles thinks that his fans should pay that amount of money to go see him on stage for an hour and a half, hard pass, ick. I don't even know what the price is. $7 ,000? How many dollars is that? What do you mean? $900? $7 ,000?

2:59I don't want those tickets. But if we're being completely honest, it's fairly typical for these big tours at this point to find tickets in the 1 ,000s, 2 ,000s, etc., especially for those really valuable seats. It's been slowly going up over the years, but it really became the normal, I would say, following the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerts were so in demand, still are so in demand. And people really want to be there and they will pay good money to have a good seat at a good concert.

3:34Astead Herndon:You know, I love a good stadium tour, but give me the experience kind of step by step. If you're a stan of Taylor Swift or someone who is playing these kind of big stadium tours and you're fighting with your fellow fans for tickets, what's that process like? Well, it can be really rough. You're going to try and get codes to be in the pre-sale. If you don't get pre-sale, then you're going to try to go to the general on sale, which should be a couple days later. And you should be signed in, ready to go. as soon as you hit the queue, you're going to see a number that you do not want to see. 18 ,500 people.

4:12So feeling a little hopeless. I started at 175 ,000 in the queue. And as you can see, I'm going down to 82 ,000 now. This account has all of them between 160 ,000 to 180 ,000 in the queue. Okay? The demand is really high and the supply is limited.

4:35Astead Herndon:You know, I hear what you're saying, but supply and demand was true before the pandemic, too. Is it just that, you know, more people want to go to the concerts now? What exactly has changed to make this process so much more sticky? Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's always been a supply and demand issue, but people have figured out that there's a way to get in, to get in that queue, to jump that queue and make a bunch of money off of these tickets. It's become its own marketplace. So this is something that people do and make a ton of money because ticket resellers get in there, buy those tickets at a low price, and then mark it up as much as they possibly can for the secondary market, resell that ticket.

5:19And that's their whole profit right there. It's not that difficult to make a bunch of money off of these concerts.

5:25Astead Herndon:So we know that people have been scalping tickets online for years. But now we're seeing huge ticket prices from the jump, from the original seller. Places like Ticketmaster. Who sets that initial price for a ticket? And who should I be blaming here? That's going to be between the artist and the agent or the promoter. So they're the ones that are going to set the ticket price. To be honest, one of the big things that happened over the course of the pandemic is that we lost a lot of good staff, a lot of good crew, because they couldn't make money when concerts were shut down. And the price of everything has gone up.

6:01So the price of touring, so that could be a crew, that could be the price of supplies, literally everything, travel has gone up. And so that makes the price of the ticket go up as well because these artists have to recoup costs at some point. And when you're telling a fan it's going to cost you this much to get into the door, they expect a show. One, two, three, go!

6:28Welcome to the Heiress Tour!

6:40So on top of that, that means more rehearsal time. That costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of money for these giant productions. I mean, loading in and out of a stadium show is incredibly expensive. And so is, you know, hauling all that stuff across country, across oceans, etc. So there's a lot of costs that have made it more expensive just to be a touring artist.

7:04Astead Herndon:Is it also that artists are seeing these high resale prices and think, hey, you know, if people are going to pay it, might as well? Like, I mean, could this just be a case of artists prioritizing bottom line over fan accessibility? Yes, but also it's not necessarily that they're prioritizing the bottom line over the fan. It's that they know the fan's going to pay that price either way. so that money might as well go to them, right? So if you're selling a ticket for$200, but you know it's going to go for$1 ,000 on a secondary market, if you raise that ticket price to$500, it's a lot less profitable for the ticket reseller, and that fan was going to pay that price anyway, if not more.

7:49Astead Herndon:But I've also seen some artists pushing back, like Olivia Dean. I think concert tickets are overpriced. I think that people should be able to come to the show. And it shouldn't cost your arm and a leg. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah. She called on Ticketmaster to cap what people can resell their tickets for on their own platform. To support Olivia Dean's commitment to fair ticket pricing, Ticketmaster is capping all future ticket resale prices for the Art of Loving Live tour on its platform and refunding fans for any markup they already paid to resellers on Ticketmaster. So Olivia Dean was successful, but obviously a lot of ticket prices are still sky high and a lot of other resellers are out there.

8:34Astead Herndon:It seems like these artists using their public platform, their bully pulpit, haven't really moved the needle when it comes to these resale markets. Yeah, that's because these resale markets are entirely legal. Nobody's doing anything illegal. So what are you going to do? They're allowed to do this. But the more people who make their complaints heard, I think the better it is because people understand that that part's out of their control. There's nothing you can do about the secondary market. You know, Taylor, you're kind of bumming me out because it sounds like there's really nothing we can do and that this kind of high ticket price extortion is just here to stay.

9:12Astead Herndon:Like, what is the recourse for fans who feel like maybe, I don't know, that$1 ,000 for a live concert might be too much? Sorry to bum you out, but there's absolutely no reason to be this dismayed. There are things that can change.

9:31So one of the things that's happening across the country right now is that a bunch of different states are trying to implement regulations on this because it has gotten really out of hand. And so you'll see recently in California, in New York, what they've introduced are resale caps.

9:51Astead Herndon:A new bill called the California Fans First Act is taking aim at ticket price gouging. My bill, the Affordable Concert Act, caps all resale concert tickets at face value, among many other much needed reforms. It's time for state government to step up and protect fans. So when somebody buys a face value ticket, if for whatever reason they can't go, they can resell that ticket for no more than 10 % above face value. And what that does is take the wind completely out of the resale market. because if I buy a ticket as a ticket reseller and think I'm going to make a bunch of money off of this, but all I can make is 10%, that makes it so much less lucrative to be in this job, to be doing this for a career.

10:39So it's very possible. It's very possible. But only one state so far has passed the ticket resale cap, which is Maine.

10:53Astead Herndon:So I guess my question is, Do you think there will be a tipping point where fans may say, hey, we had enough and this kind of road we're on for live music as luxury only reverses course or at least slows down? Yeah, I definitely think if we're not there yet, we're getting very close because I think people are really tired of it because it keeps happening. It's not slowing down. It's only getting worse. And so I do think that this legislation is really going to tell us where we're at because we've had almost 10 states introduce this, these resale caps. And I would say even just a couple of years ago, you couldn't even get those bills discussed because there's so much lobbying money against it.

11:40So I think if we see more states able to pass this, I think that should tell you right there that the tide is turning. I mean, you want to see your favorite artists succeed, right? You want to see them play bigger venues, have a bigger crowd. Everyone really appreciate them. But, you know, with that obviously comes a more expensive ticket and a bigger room. But also, like, how exciting that you get to see that, that you got to see them in that small room. And then you get to see them in a big arena or stadium. and the energy you can get in the stadium when there's thousands of people excited with you over one artist, that's also an amazing experience and it shouldn't be just for the select few.

12:37Astead Herndon:Taylor Mims is an editor at Billboard. Coming up, if you want to see one of those big stadium shows this summer, You'll probably have to travel to get there.

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17:01Astead Herndon:Robert Levine is based in Berlin, and he writes a column for Billboard. It's called Follow the Money. And it's basically about the music business and often the economics of the music business, all the dull stuff that doesn't involve celebrities. Well, not dull at all, because I just learned so much about just how concert ticket prices are changing, and it helped really explain to me the sticker shock I've been experiencing as someone who loves and enjoys concerts. Now, I'm based in New York, so the news of Harry Styles' upcoming tour really perked my interest. He'll be here for a 30-night residency, and he has no other U.S.

17:37Astead Herndon:shows on his tour. I found that kind of interesting, and it felt to me like a signal of something changing in the music industry largely. Can you explain to me the business of Harry staying put like this? Why has this become a thing for artists? What do we think this tour represents? Sure. What's interesting is all the writing, all the talk about the concert business focuses on the money that's going in. Hardly anyone thinks about the money going out.

18:11Just as always, they have crew, they have musicians, they have expenses. The most expensive part is getting it all around. So imagine if you could minimize that expense and make the same amount of money.

18:24Astead Herndon:So is that why we're seeing someone like Harry Styles sit for 30 nights at MSG? Is it to lower travel costs? Well, look, I mean, I haven't talked to Harry Styles, so I'm just making an educated guess. But yes, I think so. And, you know, there's the sort of capital R residency that he's doing. He's declaring this a residency and he's making an event of it. But if you look at the concert business in general, you are seeing a trend. And sometimes people don't notice it. toward playing more shows at fewer venues. The same kinds of economic forces are changing the nature of what we might call regular tours.

19:00Now you're seeing more two-night stands, more three-night stands, more four-night stands. And this isn't economics, but there's also like lifestyle considerations. You know, all those classic rock songs about the romance of being on the road, like, I think it turned the page by Bob Seger where he's talking about how burnt out he is. When you're riding 16 hours and there's nothing much to do. And you don't feel much like riding. You just wish the trip was through. There used to be a romance to being miserable, and now there's not. Rock stars on tour, the crazy bus, all of that stuff. We're coming to your town, we'll help you party down.

19:41Now you have to come to them and help them party down. And it's just like, I think people realize, I mean, a lot of the performers are getting older, they might not want to move around so much. But also remember, when Elvis was in Vegas... You know, this is not Elvis, the teen sensation who wouldn't be filmed below the waist. This is Elvis, the middle-class performer. And in Vegas, he could stay in a really nice hotel.

20:09Astead Herndon:I want to ask about the New York piece, though, when we think about Harry Styles specifically. Because, you know, I think back to the fame... I don't have to go all the way back to Elvis for kind of famous residencies in Vegas. Think about Celine Dion. So in here, it's quality sound, quality time. You got your own stage built, custom. Every seat is the best seat in the house. More recently, folks like Adele or even Usher. Well, being able to be here in Las Vegas has given me that opportunity to find more balance. Because I got kids that are going to school, babies that are learning how to swim, and I want to spend that time.

20:39So Vegas had an advantage in that a lot of people were there with expense accounts always. That's probably less the case today, but it was, you know, it's still a convention in a conference town. If you're charging people that amount of money, it doesn't just need to be a great show. It needs to be part of a great weekend. It has to be a city with a lot to do. It has to have great air connections and a lot of hotel rooms. New York scores on all of those. Two summers ago, Adele did a series of shows in Munich. They actually custom built a 70 ,000 seat venue for her. They built a little fairgrounds around it, Adele Spritz's instead of Aperol Spritz's.