Gigs

dindude

Even before lockdown hadn’t really been to a gig for a long time. Just looking at tickets for Wolf Alice playing early next year and prices are anywhere from £80 to £140 for a standard standing ticket depending on venue. Cricks, is that standard fair these days? I wondered why they were still playing relatively small venues but I guess the model is limit supply a little and charge more, better business for them than playing a 10k seater and charging £30 a go or having any risk of it not being full.

I guess it stands to reason that if the recorded music is pretty much given away these days then this needs to be the money maker. I don’t begrudge it, just showing my age, this used to be what I spend on a Glasto ticket! 

Caffeine_Vampire

Not been to a gig in years, the bands I like all priced me out. I'd rather go to the local and see a pub band tear it up.

Jonathangus

Ticket prices have gone up ever since streaming took over and bands stopped making money from record sales.
Although I've just got Darkness tickets for only £35 a pop.

Grangousier

At the risk of appearing snarky, I got a more realistic understanding of a lot of these things when I started to put figures into an inflation calculator (guitars, for example, are a lot cheaper than they were forty years ago). That said, gigs have got a lot more expensive - Pink Floyd The Wall at Earl's Court in 1980, the stalls tickets were £8.50, which is about £45 in modern money. 

Cols

Different business model these days.

Bands used to tour in order to promote an album, and then make the real money from album sales.

Nowadays there’s very little money in actual music sales, so concert ticket prices are higher in order for the bands to turn an overall profit.

Last major band I saw was Alice In Chains in 2019, for the princely sum of £60.

Philly_Q

My active gig-going years were the '80s and early '90s, after that it became a very occasional thing.  But even then, it seemed like there was a time when ticket prices went up very abruptly, and that was long before record sales fell off a cliff and live shows became the money-spinner.  And then they shot up again.

I think I would be prepared to pay these prices for something I really wanted to see, but to be honest I don't really enjoy the whole experience any more

UnclePsychosis

Gig prices have gone through the roof in the last decade. I saw some bands charging £30 to watch a streamed live show during lockdown, so god knows what they're asking for the proper experience. 

Thankfully most of the bands I like are playing the toilet circuit so it's still cheap. If you like anything remotely mainstream or popular then prepare to get shafted. 

DefaultM

Cols said:

Different business model these days.

Bands used to tour in order to promote an album, and then make the real money from album sales.

Nowadays there’s very little money in actual music sales, so concert ticket prices are higher in order for the bands to turn an overall profit.

Last major band I saw was Alice In Chains in 2019, for the princely sum of £60.

That's pretty expensive for a tribute band, especially one who put in some of their own stuff as well.

Danny1969

There's some bargains in the smaller festivals, like Rambling Man where you can see 4 or 5 great bands over the course of one day but in general yeah tickets are well expensive. 

The shows we do are around £20 a ticket and that's for a tribute, not the real thing so I can't complain about real bands charging £60 ish 

EricTheWeary

I have two lots of gig tickets bought for later in the year both around £50 per ticket . Two people, add in car parking, a couple of drinks, maybe food, T shirts etc and it gets to be a lot of money ( for me anyway). On the other hand they will have had very little off me via streaming so it's probably okay. But when I was younger I was seeing middle ranking bands pretty much every week and wether that was just different priorities or they were cheaper I don't know but I think cheaper. 

I still like live music but don’t really have a gig buddy so will go to anything anyone else expresses interest in. Does mean I see a bit of variety over the years - Black Sabbath to Frankie Vaughan. I don’t mind festivals, has to be something genuinely interesting as days or even a day of a single genre isn’t all that interesting to me. And I will watch all the acts, MrsTheWeary gets annoyed that I won’t go look around the stalls selling tat because I’m trying to watch some pensioners playing traditional Gallic folk tunes. 

DefaultM

I remember thinking Bjork in 2009 for £45 was a lot, but it included a donation to charity. That's apparently equivalent to £60 today, which I would pay to see her again.

A lot of the most expensive gigs I've been to are older bands like Fleetwood Mac, Floyd solo members, The Cure. They always give a show that would be worth the money, but unfortunately the audiences are made up of 90% knobs. People who see it the same as a night at the pub. Turned away from the stage talking, constantly push past to get more beers, then they hear a song they recognise from an advert on TV and suddenly WAAAHEEEYYYYY!!! Falling in to each other and me, singing so loud I can't actually hear Robert Smith anymore.

https://i.imgur.com/dlgO3gn.jpg ;

ArchtopDave

I'm really looking forward to going to live gigs again. I've got 3 in October - a real mixture of artists and prices .. .. The Slow Readers Club (postponed from 2020), Courtney Marie Andrews, and Richard Thompson. In November, I've just booked to see Madeleine Peyroux, and next year Jeff Beck ( postponed from 2020 to 2021, and then again to 2022) and ARQ (postponed from earlier this year).

duotone

£80-£140 does seem expensive. But you either take it or leave it. Prices are unlikely to go down, so you may as well go if you really like the band.  In 5 years time we will be moaning that the £80-£140 tickets are now £110-£170.

Gregory Porter was around £65 at the Royal Albert Hall 4 years ago. His next gig there will probably be £100+

Whitecat

I've got some tickets for 3 gigs next year, two of them are holdovers from last year... (!) - none more than £35 a ticket. A band I would like to see just announced a series of November dates this year but I feel like that's too early for me. Psychologically just can't do it yet.

bobblehat

The most I've paid was £75 to see Kiss a couple of years ago. Didn't mind that too much as I knew it was pretty much guaranteed to be a great show. Its the smaller gigs where prices seem to be getting out of hand. £35-£50 seems to be the going rate even for minor artists in poor venues.
 

richardhomer

Paid £40 each for tickets to see Richard Thompson in October - he’s playing a solo acoustic set.

I saw him three years ago at the same venue (with a band) and tickets were under £30.

People at his level must have had close to zero income during the pandemic. You can’t blame them for wanting to claw some back.

stickyfiddle

I think we paid about 100 each for U2 in Mumbai, which is fairly standard for U2 seats, but *really* expensive for anything in India. Mind you a big chunk of the crowd had flown in from elsewhere, so I guess the ticket was a small proportion of the total cost. 

Redlester

There comes a point where the ticket price relative to the overall quality of the experience is out of proportion, an example being when I saw tickets on sale for Jeff Beck at the RAH. I think the tix were up in the gods, which is not the best bit of the RAH to be in, but still at or around the 80- 100 squids mark. 

Aerosmith- I've been listening to a lot of 70s Aerosmith lately, and as a kid I got into them around the Pump period. They play the 02 next year. Had tix been 40- 50 or so I'd have gone, but I'm not paying over a ton, which is what the standing tickets are going for. Plus I have to shlep out to the O2, which is not my idea of a good time. 

I do wonder where we'll be in ten years or so. All the old fart 'rock royalty' will be either dead or incapable. Of those who came after, there aren't as many 'massive' stadium fillers because said old farts hogged the public attention so long. I do hope that on one level smaller venues and festivals will proliferate, where less  big name artists- but decent gigging pros who really know their stuff- can play and make a decent living.