Some people think CEOs are too tall
Some think they breathe too much oxygen
Of course he does, it’s Capitalism, which will always incentivize firms to get as many people as possible, to pay as much as possible, for as little as possible.
I’m so glad I feel no need to actually go to concerts.
I’ve been to 2 since 2017 or 2018. Rammstein for the show they put on (was a lot of fun and this was before the allegations; wouldn’t go see them now) and then there’s an Estonian hip hop band that got back together for a reunion tour, a decade after they were last active. So I went to see them, as their shit was actually good.
Now that I got those done, I doubt I’ll be going to another concert or festival anytime soon. There’s only a few artists I’d want to go see live and the biggest one is notorious for NOT doing world tours and another one already did my country this summer when I couldn’t attend.
Key part is I only want to see artists live whose shows are special, or childhood favorites that are still active.
Me too. I haven’t been to a show in 10-ish years. Don’t miss it at all.
Aren’t Live Nation the Astroworld guys? Yeaaahh not gonna give those guys any credence whatsoever
Not just Astroworld, they do most concerts in the US and a bunch outside of it.
Live Nation has been linked to at least 200 deaths and 750 injuries at its events in seven countries since 2006. From 2016 to 2019, they had also been cited for at least ten OSHA violations, fined for several more serious incidents, and sued civilly at least once for a concert incident.
Too many concerts are not about the music anymore, too many events are becoming overinflated. And thus overpriced.
I watched parts of a Katy Perry show on TV lately: with every song came different costumes, lights, fire and explosion effects, acrobats, lasers, smoke, vehicles, waterfalls, bubbles, confetti, inflatables, whatnot onto the stage… It was a total mess and utterly exaggerated.
Are people really all so numb that they need these extreme overstimulations to feel something?
Depends on the band. Popular trendy groups are going to have a lot of gee-whiz effects. I’ve probably been to a dozen shows over the last few years and seen zero fireworks, and the only costume change was a singer taking off a jacket after getting too hot on stage.
Meanwhile the local band is performing for 50 bucks and a couple of free drinks
With pop music, maybe. They arent written to be appealing in and of themselves. Pop music is a pretty strict style and structure with the same bass line and same few chords. Then they are played on the radio ad nauseum, so that when it’s first released you become familiar with the song enough to like it. As a batch of pop songs start to become old, another batch is released with similar style and structure. There’s hardly anything new.
In order to keep people excited about a pop song that went through that life cycle 10+ years ago, there needs to be more. Don’t forget that there are quite a few pop performers who rely on auto tune because they can’t sing in tune, so they are just lip-syncing on stage. I’m sure some of the spectacle is also to keep the performers going and energetic during performances of the same pop crap they’ve toured with for more than a decade.
This uh, is untrue.
There are pop acts that have very complicated music, and there are ones that don’t.
Just like with rock music or even rap music.
Auto tune is not a magical bullet that fixes being unable to sing. It can only correct tune.
Every music genre today has representatives who are subject to the maximization of capitalist exploitation. Not just pop music, even if this may be the pinnacle. Even so-called subversive music styles like punk or black metal are not left out in this development.
Of course you can still always find concerts in small venues and subcultures. My point is: when executives in the music industry claim that many events are far too cheap, it just means that their offers are already far too inflated and they still can’t get enough.
Ffs man, the prices are out of control for concerts. Live Nation needs to have their monopoly broken up.
This for sure. Once they consolidated everything, they raised the ticket fees and the venue fees for artists. They charge more and most artists makes less. Live Nation is a textbook example of a monopoly fucking over the consumer.
This timeline is weird
Thieves are just there out on the open bragging how they steal, and then just taunt people with saying that they’ll come back and steal some more
Yet he doesn’t get jailed?
I appreciate what you’re saying, but nobody is forcing anyone to buy tickets.
Stop going to arena shows! That’s it! It’s not even that hard, support small(er) local venues. If you have to miss massive band/artist, que sera. If the band doesn’t give a shit, then it’s not worth it anyway.
Do you live outside of the United States or something? Or just not go to concerts? Live Nation owns almost all of the small venues too. They’ve bought nearly everything out, and the few remaining independent venues are on life support. And if you’re a local band, good luck. 20 years ago, venues would pay you to play. But now you have to pay them like $200 just for the privilege of playing at a small venue with a 350 person capacity. In my city less than 20 years ago, I remember being able to walk downtown in the music district on any day of the week, and there would be over a dozen venues right next to each other all playing something different. It could be a Tuesday night. Music was everywhere, and tickets were $6-20. But there was also tons of free stuff. But after the venues all got bought out, that all stopped. There’s not enough big money in music 7 days every week. A lot of venues now only have shows as little as twice a month. And then they’ll want to charge $70+.
Why shouldn’t we be outraged? Music culture is being destroyed. Your “stop going to shows” solution isn’t a solution. Nobody is going to concerts several times in a week anymore. What there once was has been destroyed. Live Nation needs to die.
Do you live outside of the United States or something
Uh… Most people do, luckily
Why shouldn’t we be outraged? Music culture is being destroyed. Your “stop going to shows” solution isn’t a solution. Nobody is going to concerts several times in a week anymore.
Well clearly a lot of people are still going to a lot of concerts unfortunately. Maybe if your country ever gets a more sane government, there will finally be an anti-trust case against LN. But honestly that is so unlikely, y’all are just gonna have to start shooting more CEOs. Maybe someone will do this guy next.
Edit: So apparently there IS an ongoing anti-trust lawsuit that started in 2024, but now all he needs is to pay Trump the usual fee, so idk how it’s going to end up.
Outside of the US, stuff is at least not as bleak. It’s a bit harder to destroy things that have been established for so long. Like in New Orleans, things had been established for a long time and it took a natural disaster (Katrina) to destroy the independent venues. But there are no protections against late stage capitalism in the US. Often, taxes alone will destroy independent venues. And yeah, I don’t have any hope in the US government doing anything to help. It would sooner call all music a form of terrorism and make it illegal.
I was just in a hotel last night and a local band was performing for free.
Can you believe that? I didn’t have to pay anything, I wasn’t even a guest!
But let’s be honest, going to shows for most people is so that they can say they went to the show. It’s part of the culture of consumption and exclusivity where you need to spend money in order to be part of the conversation.
Fuck that attitude, its wrong, they’re a bunch of greedy fucks that are extortioning fans
This goes for grand arena concerts but also for concerts in smaller venues. Seeing your favorite band, any band, big or small, is already unaffordable for me, and I’m considered fucking upper middle class. Going to a concert of a small band that is even remotely known in a small theater costs 100-200 dollars minimum through any of these fucksites like ticket master which is just insane.
I agree with everything you said. How do you propose sticking it to them?
I’m going to check out a band in November, $30 a ticket, at Kung Fu Necktie in Philadelphia. Not a TM venue. It’s a band I really want to see and so it’s so much sweeter that it’s not a TM venue.
I try to find the “local” venues that are near me (90m away or less) and just see who they have coming to town. I see bands on the schedule and look them up and hope they’re just not bad.
I’m mad too though. It’s fucking bullshit. And it’s even more bullshit that bands that I like are playing arenas when they have no business doing so. I hate that we’ve somehow moved to everyone should play arenas now. I just don’t want to go to shows like that, I can’t support it.
Right, but don’t blame the victims. Consumer choice cannot bust monopolies. It does not work that way.
Yeah, I just can’t buy this being a victim thing. I’ll put the slider somewhere between nothing and victim, but you don’t need to see Taylor Swift. I’ll even accept that you need to see live music, but there is live music available at better rates and in smaller venues.
I do think the monopoly needs to be broken up, it I also think consumers need to be better. I swear, consumerism is such a problem in the US. They could literally write “Fuck You” on price tags and people would be like, well, fuck me I guess, as they buy shit they don’t need.
And I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t spoil ourselves, it’s all good, but if you complain about concert tickets and then go and spend 350-500$ on shitty seats in a stadium that sits 100k people, you need to do better.
Even victims’ lives go on, though. And many things are not “necessary” but still we used to break up monopolies, because they are a societal plague, not a consumer choice problem. So again, you are blaming people for not solving a problem that they cannot possibility solve.
Yeah, this ain’t food, or access to the Internet or some other utility. It’s concert tickets. And I agree they should step in to stop the monopoly, but at the same time consumers can exercise some modicum of restraint and not spend a fortune to go see shows. I’m not paying 500$ for tickets to see Blink 182, fuck that and fuck them for allowing it to happen. Cash grabs have become the norm for bands these days and I’m just not going to support that shit.
If y’all keep paying them, they’ll assume you can pay more. Every big business takes a such as possible from you.
I go to a lot of live music shows but I haven’t purchased a TicketMaster or Live Nation ticket in forever. I don’t see huge bands because they are prohibitively expensive but I get to see a lot of really fun shows and experience a far more engaged crowd.
You’re doing it right. The way to deal with overpriced concerts and scalpers is to vote with your wallet. Don’t buy overpriced tickets. Don’t buy from scalpers. Nobody needs to go see a particular artist at a particular concert, I don’t care how much you “love” them, or that you might never see them on tour again, you don’t NEED that. Let it go. Let go of the FOMO. Step one of defeating scalpers is to remove their market. If they cannot make money, they will not exist.
vote with your wallet
This is kind of non-sensical, in this context.
The “huge bands” that the previous commenter was talking about are huge, because people already voted for them with their wallets. The smaller bands get “less votes”.
In what way is it nonsensical? Does the fact that other people spend their money in a different way prohibit you from changing your own behavior? Do you think I am trying to convince every Swiftie in the world to never attend another Taylor Swift concert? Do you think I imagine that is a realistic goal? Or am I talking specifically to you, an individual user on Lemmy with free will and perhaps self-control?
Place your vote where you want it, achieve the goals you personally find important. Change your perspective on what winning a vote means. This isn’t an election. You don’t have to be in the majority to win.
We tried something similar with convincing people not to preorder games. There’s a proven method to make things better but everyone loves to shit in their pants.
I understand your frustration, but I think you also have to keep in mind that it’s not a binary true/false success condition. Plenty of partial success can still be had in the gray area in between, and partial success has its own proportional rewards. Realistically we’re never going to solve 100% of the problem this way (or probably any way). But what we can do is shrink the proportions of the problem. Yes, there are always going to be people paying many thousands of dollars for Taylor Swift tickets and people preordering the next Assassin’s Creed game or whatever. But by shifting your own purchasing decisions away from such things, and hopefully with the cooperation of many other people also making the same shift, you start to funnel more money into the artists and games that don’t do that. You make that area of the creative space richer with your money, and then those creatives make their art richer with the money you’re supplying. As a result, we earn better future rewards for ourselves without having to participate in the behaviors we find objectionable. We are all working together, this is a collective effort, and even partial success is a perfectly appealing goal on its own. The more success the better, but I’ll take any success we can get, because every little bit counts and every little bit makes the situation a little bit better.
Very solid points. Well said. I was only thinking of the condition of stops or doesn’t stop rising prices and that needs x amount of the market to do so. The other half I didn’t consider. Thank you for taking the time
Nah this is some whack advice. I go to plenty of shows, small little ones that have 20-50 people or giant stadium tours.
If something is prohibitively expensive and you can’t afford it then that’s different. But going and seeing some of your favorite bands is a memorable experience and usually a social one as well.
Like when Radiohead played my city in 2018 that was the first time they played here since like 1996 or something. I doubt they will again within the next decade. I’m supposed to just go “I don’t like ticket sales practices so I’m gonna miss this opportunity all together”?
I guess if you want to feel special for going to local shows to “stick it to Ticketmaster” go ahead, but that’s a far different experience then seeing big acts. Ticketmaster is not even going to notice that you skipped a concert because you don’t like them. People aren’t going to every concert under the sun, only the bands they like. How well ticket sales do is going to be determined by how popular the band is. That’s all they’ll be considering when they look at sales vs venue vs marketing, etc.
Scalpers are another thing all together. I’ve never purchased one from them. If a show sells out, it sells out and becomes not worth it to me 9 times out of 10.
My friends book a lot of small DIY shows. The kind you pay like $5-20 at the door in cash. They’re usually very niche or underground artists. It’s just a fundamentally different experience.
If a band has any sort of notoriety and it’s at a medium sized venue the concert is almost always being booked by Ticketmaster or livenation anyway.
Honestly smaller local shows are so much better anyway. I’d go see some local band at the dive down the street over a stadium show any day.
My friend sometimes gets free tickets to bigger concerts and invites me. I saw ELO (or whatever the name is now) and Incubus recently and both were great in a different way. They’re too different to compare IMO, even though I do prefer smaller shows because that’s what the bands I like play
Ah, yes, the ole “it’s the customers fault they’re getting screwed.”
Why do I have to think about market forces and corporate politics just to buy a fucking concert ticket? Can’t we just have a well regulated market that doesn’t constantly treat customers like a resource to be mined?
You don’t have to think about it. You just have to look at the price and decide if you want to pay it.
Why do I have to think about market forces and corporate politics just to buy a fucking concert ticket? Can’t we just have a well regulated market that doesn’t constantly treat customers like a resource to be mined?
Because the democrats keep voting against progressives, leaving us with republicans.
In short, it’s the culture we want because most us support the miners.
No, we can’t. Both are captured by cruel and selfish people who will keep taking until something breaks and they got to where they are because people kept voting for them on the ballot and in the store instead of supporting the people who aren’t trying to economically rape us into the grave.
Can’t we just have a well regulated market that doesn’t constantly treat customers like a resource to be mined?
Of course we can in theory, but the capitalists will call it socialism. And then people will say we don’t want that. So we go right back to free market capitalism.
I get this argument for something people actually need but going to a Taylor Swift concert is the very definition of a luxury.
Not with Democrats or Republicans in power
So, I think we, as a seaciety, need to start waluigiing ceos.
If to Luigi someone is to kill them, then to waluigi someone must mean that we create someone. As life is the opposite of death, so too is waluigi the opposite of Luigi.
Therefore, it is time we start impregnating the wives of CEOs.
I mean from an economics standpoint if people are willing to pay higher prices on tickets being resold then they are underpriced. The price people are willing to pay is the “true” value of the thing. Personally I think concerts are too expensive even at list prices but artists are consistently selling out venues at these prices and even higher because people are paying more for tickets on secondary markets. Obviously there are people for whom seeing Taylor Swift is actually worth over a thousand dollars, and to be honest, if that’s how much it is worth to them there’s not much you can do to stop them from going, and I’m not sure I even want to. I might go see Taylor Swift for $40 a ticket just for the experience but is that really worth denying it to some super fan willing to pay 10x that? I won’t get nearly as much from the experience as they will, and it’s obviously not worth it to me.
Your economics argument assumes competition where there is none. Alas, it is unsound.
I am not assuming competition. The fact of the matter is that people are paying these prices for tickets regardless of who is selling them. Nobody needs to go see Taylor Swift to live (in spite of how some people feel) and yet they are still shelling out for these absurd markups on resale tickets. That’s what I am saying here. People are willing to pay what these tickets are being sold for, so that is their value.
So by “value” you mean “extorted value” and not “fair market value”. Right? So it’s bullshit. And look, many things are not “necessary” in life. Bit that doesn’t mean we should let scammers steal our money. It doesn’t justify their massive theft & fraud operations… At least, those are my values. What are yours? Do you think corporate scams should be unregulated, because fuck the poor suckers who fall for them?
Who exactly is being extorted of they decide they want to spend over a thousand dollars on a ticket to see Taylor Swift? Someone has sold an item at a specific price, and someone else paid it. I’m not a fan of the practice, but if it were like food or shelter I would be a lot more sympathetic. This is a thing nobody needs and it’s not like they’re holding a gun to your head saying “Pay a thousand dollars for a Taylor Swift ticket or I shoot!” Extortion implies you don’t have a choice in the matter, but there is an extremely easy choice here- don’t pay and don’t go. That so many are paying implies that to them, the economic transaction makes sense and that is what they are willing to pay. Do you complain that jewelry sellers are extorting people by selling expensive gold jewelry for more than they bought it for? It’s a scarce luxury good and people are willing to pay what they are paying, and have the option to just not pay that. Does it suck? Yes. But if there are people willing to pay that much for tickets someone is going to find a way to make it happen, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.
It’s 2025 and people can’t boycott a company that over sells tickets, saying “I can’t miss Taylor Swift”.
Well I think he’s stealing too much of our oxygen & should be stopped.
I agree.
Charge concertgoers as much as they’re willing to pay.
Underpriced for who? 😑
Personally I rarely go to concerts any more, part of that is life circumstances part of it is I just can’t justify the prices.
The thing is he’s probably right, people are buying the tickets, people are scalping tickets and making a profit, therefore there are people willing to pay more than face for the tickets, on that basis he’s right.
Doesn’t make it fair, doesn’t make it morally right, doesn’t make it healthy for the industry.
Well I think live nations CEO could use a bullet in a non non vital area to make him rethink his position
