Harry Styles: Together, Together Presale, Major Pop Stars Pricing Out Fans, & the Unintended Positive Effect It May Have on Smaller Indie Acts
The dreaded artist presale. A bloody and violent affair that could only be likened to the trenches.
Today was the first day of what’s to be an entire week of tweets from fans screenshotting the prices for the tour that if we’re going by his newest single “Aperture” will be more akin to a club floor than his previous shows.
With lower bowl platinum tickets at MSG reaching upwards to $1k and some nosebleed tickets being a little less than half that the conversation surrounding artists out-pricing their fans is being brought up once again from Harries, including from some fans like myself who’ve been supporting Harry for 10+ years.
During Harry’s last tour “Love on Tour” I saw him four separate times with each of those times being lower bowl. Even if you combined each of those ticket prices it wouldn’t even reach the $1k being charged for some tickets at MSG.
Further just this past year I saw both Oasis and Beyoncé, inarguably two of the biggest stars on the planet, and was GA for both and those two tickets combined were nothing close to a grand.
Obviously these exuberant prices being charged by major pop stars like Styles is nothing new. We saw the mess with Taylor Swift’s “Era’s Tour” and we see it time and time again where loyal and devoted working class fans are completely priced out from their favorite artists. This is done mainly through these major ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster who use things like platinum and dynamic prices to make the largest profit.
And I and I’m sure many fans are sick of it. They’re sick of stressing over a presale, waiting in a queue in anticipation with card in hand, and once getting through seeing prices for the show being close to how much they pay in rent every month. It’s maddening.
As we get further from the monoculture we used to live in pre-social media explosion, ticket prices for these artists from that specific time will and continue to be insanely priced. You have to remember many of these stars are the last of the “household names”. And their teams, their labels, and these ticketing platforms know all of that and know that there will be fans who’ll literally take out a whole new line of credit in hopes they can snag an overpriced ticket to see their fav in person.
What this is doing though and what I hope is an unintended consequence on this practice is people are more willing and open to expanding their music tastes.
Yes, if you’re trying to see a major top 40 pop star in this day and age you will be expected to pay an insane amount of money. And that’s morally wrong. But in my experience it’s nothing like that with smaller budding artists.
This past year I went to numerous small indie gigs in LA paying no more than $40 for tickets each time. I was able to see some really sick Aussie acts in intimate venues and at each of these shows have an amazing time (and had the peace of mind that I’m not even more in debt than I already am).
Yes touring right now from both the artists side and the fans side is for lack of a better word, shit. Inflation has raised prices on everything, American visas for artists can be hard to come by, and if people are spending their entirety of their “concert funds” on these major stars there’s nothing left for these smaller acts coming to their town.
It’s a cycle!
Cheers,
Dev
Real. No one should pay that much for a 2h show
Concerts shouldn’t be a luxury