To those moaning about concert prices...

Moe_Zambeek

Gassage;548603" said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

The whole Ticketmaster / Getmein thing is scandalous. How that is legal is beyond me.



I have no illegal downloads either but I no longer care about ticket prices - I'm now of the opinion stadium shows are largely rubbish for the listener and you may as well watch on DVD. Anything bigger than Barrowland loses the atmosphere and connection between band and fan that makes live music a worthwhile experience...and you'd get 3 or 4 gigs at that scale for the price of an enormo show.













Go see Coldplay in a stadium....you'll change your mind

I don't like Coldplay at all so I suspect that wouldn't change my mind in any way.

Gassage

^ nor did I until I saw them.

Gassage

@randomhandclaps - one thing that's miiding from the DG argument is scale. He's doing a very small tour because the fans have begged him. The quality, as always will be stupendous and I can assure you, on 25 nights worldwide, he will make a massive loss, as ge did on the On AN Island tour...and one of the the reasons he toured that was to have fun with friends on the road. It's also worth mentioning anything at RAH loses all revenue from the boxes as they are deemed to be outside the contract of the gig and basically removes c 80k off recepts straight away

Drew_TNBD

Gassage said:

he will make a massive loss

I really doubt that.

EricTheWeary

Drew_fx said:

Gassage said:

he will make a massive loss

I really doubt that.

merchandise sales? Promotion of back catalogue? Even if there is a loss on the gigs I suspect Daveyboy's personal fortune will still increase.

Philly_Q

Gassage said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

The whole Ticketmaster / Getmein thing is scandalous. How that is legal is beyond me.

I have no illegal downloads either but I no longer care about ticket prices - I'm now of the opinion stadium shows are largely rubbish for the listener and you may as well watch on DVD. Anything bigger than Barrowland loses the atmosphere and connection between band and fan that makes live music a worthwhile experience...and you'd get 3 or 4 gigs at that scale for the price of an enormo show.

Go see Coldplay in a stadium....you'll change your mind

I'd be asleep.

But that's a cheap shot.  Apologies.

The bottom line seems to be that artists aren't making money on record sales any more so instead they make it on live shows - the exact opposite of how it was when most of us were young(er).  I've still never really got my head round the way ticket prices seemed to suddenly jump from under £15 to over £50 in the blink of an eye at some point in the 1990s.

But is the decline in record sales - or revenue from those sales - entirely due to pirating, or is it more due to changes in technology and consumer behaviour?  CDs got cheaper and cheaper, then we increasingly moved over to digital downloads, which by their very nature favour sales of individual songs over albums.  And anyway, vast amounts of music can be heard for free online without having to do anything illegal.  Artists record their own music in their bedrooms or home studios and make it available online.  Illegal downloading (which I've never done) played its part in all that but it's one of many factors.  It's a completely changed industry.

Personally, I must admit I rarely go to gigs nowadays but that's more to do age-related curmudgeonliness than ticket prices.  It hurts my back to stand around for hours, late night travel is increasingly irksome and frankly most gigs are too bloody loud.

John_P

I'm fairly sure that around the same time as downloading become possible,  lots of contracts changed to give artists a smaller cuts from the new revenue streams.   So it's easy for claims about illegal downloads being to blame when record companies are taking a bigger slice of a more diverse pie.

randomhandclaps

So he's only doing a small tour because he doesn't really want to but the fans have begged him so he's decided to cater for a only those fans who can afford him and pay for his standard of show.  He then further impacts on that by agreeing to a venue where even those who can afford to attend are subsiding richer cunts who can't be arsed to pay for a ticket.  Let's be honest for a man who is fussy about his tone he certainly didn't pick the RAH for it's historically famous sound quality.

The quality of the show is irrelevant because if you pay to see an artist you would presumably already like their output and occasions where shows by anyone are dire are really rare.  I've seen phenomenal gigs that cost me £19 and there was no point where I spotted band members on the exits asking for a bit more because "tonight was a good 'un".

The scale of the show is not the business of the fans.  Let's be honest if Gilmour did a gig with just him and a acoustic guitar in a warehouse charging £40 a ticket it'd still sell out.  Equally in Gary Glitter did a comeback gig in the RAH with a £40M light and firework show and tried to justify £200 a ticket he'd struggle to sell tickets.

As you know I love Gilmour but anyone who believes he is doing the shows and charging this amount for anyone over than the Gilmour machine is kidding themselves.  It's also contrary to what you stated as the original possible reasoning for exorbitant prices.  Time and again we've seen artists do free shows and make a fortune off the back of additional sales.  A gig or tour fall into one of there categories -

1. A money making exercise.
2. A promotional exercise.
3. Both of the above.

Either way the ticket prices are just subsidising a larger money making campaign.

I have absolutely no issue with any fan or hipster who is willing to pay that price.  My personal reticence comes from both the reasons in my original post plus the fact that for the vast majority of people in this country (and as follows the vast majority of Gilmour fans) surviving in life is all about value judgements.  If for instance I was single, childless or my kids had left home, despite secretly hating myself for it I might think 'what the fuck?' and grab one. 

Both my boys are mad about guitars and mad about sports.  Baring in mind what a large part of both my wife and I's life Floyd have been it would be a phenomenal opportunity to pass on access to the genius that is Gilmour.  It would have been another generation that may have been inspired by an old man who can still coax pure emotion out of an instrument.  For the four of us, despite being fortunate enough to live in London and a short train ride from the RAH, it would have been over £420 to start with.  That's fine as I am also fortunate enough to have that.  The problem is they want to go and watch Liverpool at Anfield at a similar expense.  My problem with both those options is not only am I feeding the machine of the rich but being kids they also want to go to Disneyland and when one night out is touching the price of a family weekend in Paris I start to get a bit narked.

As I repeatedly say with sports, if teams came out to empty stadiums then owners would have to rethink ticket prices allowing more kids and working classes to attend, the same goes with gigs.  Unfortunately it will never happen because richer fans and more sadly those Made In Chelsea-a-likes who are desperate to be seen (and seem to occupy about 80% of all big matches and gigs) will not only be willing to pay the price but the absence of riff raff makes it even more appealing. 

The thing with Gilmour and the like and all the equivalent sports giants is that if they want to comes out to stadia where only about 20% of the crowd have actually heard Comfortably Numb more than once in their life or can recall the team line up two years ago then good luck to them.  For me, it's just not very rock n' roll.

Gassage

Everything costs these days...funnily enough I have a lot less of an issue paying this than I would for paying 3 quid in a bar for a glass of coke.

underdog

Gassage;548725" said:

Everything costs these days...funnily enough I have a lot less of an issue paying this than I would for paying 3 quid in a bar for a glass of coke.

£100 is a lot though, I'd say say, typically, most gigs are half that price, I think I paid £35 for one in December, and 40 or 45 back in the summer. Both big bands, with a huge following.

Danny1969

If you get value for money then there's some justification in some ticket prices. See'ing Waters do The Wall at Wembly stadium wasn't cheap but the sound was glorious, he had spent a fortune on the PA to get it like that. I've paid less than half that to see other artist who cut cost by unspeccing the PA and I've felt more cheated by that. Charge me for a ticket but make sure the sound is good or at least as good as the shortcomings of the venue will allow. If you need more boxes for the coverage then get em but don't let the sound suffer. I never went to the Eminem gigs at Wembly but friends did and they said the sound was so bad you couldn't even tell what song it was. 

axisus

I don't steal music. The most I've ever paid for a ticket was £40. The most I will ever pay would be £50.

jonnyburgo

Its all corporate bollocks now isn't it, gigs sponsored by Barclaycard and shit like that, rich kids with home counties accents twiddling about with their twee faux folk, Ellie Goulding and Ed fucking Sheeran bland shite, or the latest bunch of skinny jean wearing pricks with Telecasters and nice hair pimping their carbon copy generic music out to adverts on the TV, How fucking rock n roll.

Somebody please kill me now. Don't get me started on the sea of fucking iphones held aloft filming gigs either, cunts spending half the gig looking at a tiny screen

Other than that I'm all for it though.

jellyroll

£100 is a chunk of money....but it's what you pay for a ticket to the West End theatre or a Cup Final. Bloody hell, I believe its about £25 to go up to The Shard and see the theatre roofs.....

Fortheloveofguitar

Ten years ago I'd be on the road all year round going to gig after gig.

Sometimes seeing my favourite artists 3-4 nights on the same tour. Soaking it all up, they were great times and only £15-30 per ticket tops.

I can count on one hand how many gigs I've been to in the last 5-6 years.

The greed machine fucks me off something cruel and I simply won't pay upwards of 1/3 of a weeks wages for a ticket before fuel, car parking and refreshments on top.

I did look at seeing Whitesnake on the last tour before Aldrich left as I'm a huge fan. £70 including booking fee for a basic to ticket. The front ten rows were nearer £100 all in. A fucking piss take.

I've got no time for it anymore. These greedy fucks have killed it for me. I just buy the album and wait for the DVD.

holnrew

I've bought my first gig tickets for years recently. Twilight Sad and Stornoway, both under £20 in small venues.

iseverynamegone

Last gig I went to was Rush, tickets were £50 but the set did last longer than Autumn.

randomhandclaps

Respect to Rush, they put a lot of effort into ensuring Geddy's vocals are always higher than their ticket prices.

iseverynamegone

They charged double on the hemispheres tour. Prices been falling since then ..

ThorpyFX

£100 is a lot to pay, but of you are an uber fan I can see the need to pay it. I'm so grateful for this years download lineup- £170 gets me a ticket to see Slipknot, muse and KISS as well as Mötley Crüe, slash, etc etc including camping!