Comment by arnvald
3 days ago
Fewer people go to concerts, fans can’t afford the tickets, less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall.
Artists lose, even if they get paid and all the tickets technically are sold out. Fans lose. The only people who win are scalpers who just abuse the system.
Sounds more like problems with an industry built on a million awful business decisions. Scalping is only profitable because they haven't priced the tickets to match the demand. Scalpers aren't buying beer in the venue and re-selling it outside. They've also decided they should get to choose exactly who buys what they're selling, which is obviously dumb.
> Fewer people go to concerts
Scalpers don't buy tickets and not sell them. The most scalped concerts are obviously the most attended
> fans can’t afford the tickets
See above. I assume what you are upset about is that rich fans are the ones going.
> less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall
I think you need to explain your logic here.
If I bought 100 tickets, sold 20 of them at 10x the value I paid for them, and then ate the rest as a loss, I'm still making a tidy profit, and the artist/venue/etc. still make the same amount of money as if 100 individuals bought them and attended, but there are now 80 fewer people in the audience (edited to add: and potentially 80 people who could have afforded the original price but not the absurd upsell).
I don't have the data to say whether this happens or not (edited to add: and the numbers are obviously made up), but the logic is perfectly sound; nothing would stop it from happening today.
> the artist/venue/etc. still make the same amount of money as if 100 individuals bought them and attended, but there are now 80 fewer people
No they won't. The venue now has 1/5th the people buying booze. They're gonna HATE that night.
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> See above. I assume what you are upset about is that rich fans are the ones going.
I'm upset that artists make the tickets affordable for different groups, and their fans want to see the concert. You have 2 sides that are in agreement. Then there's a 3rd, independent side that decides to abuse the system to make profit, hurting 2 other sides.
Imagine that you pay road tax and the government builds highway. Everyone's happy. Now there's a militia that sets up checkpoints and takes a toll for driving on the highway. Unrelated 3rd party tries to benefit by abusing the system.
> Scalpers don't buy tickets and not sell them. The most scalped concerts are obviously the most attended
If you buy 100 tickets for $100 and sell them for $300 you need to sell only 34 tickets to break even. The concert hall could be sold out and half empty at the same time. Of course there are concerts where scalpers will sell 100% of what they got, but they don't need to.
Not OP but - I think one could make the case that if tickets were sold via a lottery and non-transferable, the average lottery participant would be a bigger fan of $ARTIST than the average person who can afford the scalped price for a ticket today.
Arguably if rich people are just buying the $1000 concert tickets just to flex and take pictures for IG, that's a seat that could be going to a 17-year-old who loves the band's music but can't afford more than $100. The 17-year-old meanwhile may never get to go to a show of any of their favorite bands due to this situation, meaning they miss out on this meaningful chance to connect with the music in a personal, in-person way.
Basically the case hinges on the assertion that the richest fans are not the same as the most serious fans.
> The 17-year-old meanwhile may never get to go to a show of any of their favorite bands
Back in my day 17-year-olds, especially those who would want to attend concerts, were interested in discovering music. Some of those discoveries would absolutely be artists selling out stadiums where tickets can sell for 10x face value, sure. But some of those discoveries were artists relegated to playing in dingy bars where a cover charge would be unthinkable. One might not have been able to see all of their favorite bands (i.e. the most famous among them), but seeing some of those artists would be quite realistic.
Does what you are saying imply that music fans today have converged on listening only to a small group of superstars despite music discoverability never being easier?
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