Comment by iamalizard
3 days ago
I understand what you're saying but it still mostly an issue for the artist - building a fan base. Otherwise if you have X amount of tickets to be distributed, you'll get X people at the venue, at most. Since the same number of people will show up, it's a matter of distribution. What should the distribution be? You, and many others, say it shouldn't be the richest people, or more accurately those who'd pay the highest price for the ticket. What about the poorest people, if we're talking about fairness? Should we have a quota for homeless people, too? For people of certain ethnicities, political views, sexualities, etc.? That's what I see when you talk about fairness outside of market forces - we should try to include "everyone", whatever that means. Maybe it's the most hardcore fans? So first allow people with tattoos of the artist on their chest? Yes, it's a ridiculous example, but what is fair to you? What makes a fan that will only be able to pay 10 $ not less worthy than a fan who will pay 1000 $? Will they be more worthy to attend than a fan who can only afford 0.01 $?
To me it seems it IS an economics problem - the artist needs to make money and they need to decide whether they want to optimize for the profit from ticket sales or for the profit from merch or from a broader fan base. But it's an economic problem for the artist, it's not really a societal problem or anything more major.
As a disclaimer, I'm not rich and I don't care for concerts anyway. It just doesn't make sense to single out tickets for concerts as some special thing. As an example, I'm OK with not being able to buy some fancy ethically sourced gourmet food yet I still support the company that makes it. Or maybe I won't buy it often, but I'll save up and buy it once in a while. Many parallels to be made, but of course not perfect. Still, it's not a necessity, so it's strictly an economic problem (not a moral one), mainly for the artist. Whether they want to solve it and how they want to solve it is their issue. Whether it's non-transferable tickets or ID-bound tickets with a strict policy on how they're transferred or an auction or a lottery or whatever.
> What should the distribution be? You, and many others, say it shouldn't be the richest people, or more accurately those who'd pay the highest price for the ticket. What about the poorest people, if we're talking about fairness? Should we have a quota for homeless people, too? For people of certain ethnicities, political views, sexualities, etc.?
Geez. It is really not that hard to imagine a better outcome here.
A reasonable distribution distribution could be whatever is the result of the following: (a) each seat is priced by the artist/venue/whatever however they wish, and (b) everyone who genuinely intends to attend the concert themselves and/or is purchasing on behalf of another known person whom they believe would genuinely attend the concert themselves gets an equal opportunity to purchase the tickets at the time of release.
How you achieve such an outcome is an interesting question with lots of possible approaches, but what outcome would be adequate to achieve than the status quo really isn't some sort of unanswerable question.
People leave out that the first selection has already happened before the tickets are even on sale, by picking the cities where the tours will stop. The new trend is for artists to stay for longer, in fewer cities, which saves them a ton of money. Like mini-residencies.
Harry Styles is giving more than 20 concerts in Europe, but only in Wembley or Amsterdam.
Is that bad? It's economics. The artist likely decided they'll make more money that way. Hardcore or richer fans will be able to travel to Wembley or Amsterdam. Less enthusiastic and poorer fans won't.
I can't attend most of the concerts I would go to if they were in my city and cost nothing because they're far away from where I live org because they cost a lot. I still enjoy the recordings I can download. I treat concerts as a luxury, not a necessity or a right.