It's kind of been a music themed week on StrangeCulture talking about Music Residencies, and then Justin Bieber.But I thought I would gripe a bit about the high cost of live music concerts.
There's certainly concerts and artists whom I would be interested in seeing, but at a certain cost I quickly become interested.
Maybe I'm cheap, but if the cost for a live concert gets much more expensive then the cost of buying the live album, I'm out. That pretty much makes me not a candidate for the live concert market.
I wouldn't be surprised to get a comment or two that brings up the fact that artists don't make there money from the albums, it's from the concerts, and more specifically the merchandise, which has lead to high cost concerts, with $40 t-shirts, making a trip to see a live concert for a big name artist comparable with the cost of taking a family on a trip to Disney World or a cruise.
Is this really the right cost for live music, or are these artist getting greedy?
I've been looking at PollStars midyear review of the biggest North American Tours, and thought I would share some of the top 100 tours, which artist have the highest average ticket price.
Are there any of these you'd fork over the dough this much dough to see?
Here's the top 10 average prices from the top 100 Tours so far in 2010:
1. Berry Manilow $145.24
2. Paul McCartney $129.55
3. Cher $127.04
4. Elton John/Billy Joel $119.27
5. Eagles $119.18
6. Bette Midler $110.32
7. Van Morrison $110.01
8. Mariah Carey $102.00
9. Peter Gabriel $100.87
10. Eric Clapton $97.44
Highest Grossing Tour...
And the highest grossing tour for the first half of the year (01/01/10-06/30/10) was Bon Jovi with 52.8 million dollar tour (average ticket price $94.12 per ticket)
Data from PollStar; Bon Jovi image from Your Ticket Market; Barry Manilow image from Get Me In.
4 comments:
Is it just me or did it get a LOT more expensive in like the last 5 years? I remember seeing Springsteen a few times on The Rising Tour, but then come the Magic Tour I was leaving it because it was way to expensive. And this is a guy who is the voice of the disenfranchised, the voice of the working classes.
It is VERY expensive. I can understand Miley Cyrus being expensive, when she hires a hundred dancers and has fireworks and a drug addiction (joke), but when it's Elton John, he just needs a microphone and a piano. It'd be nice if he was accessible to all. That doesn't seem to be the case.
So yeah, live music is getting VERY expensive.
We have at least one Barry Manilow album that you can have FOR FREE!!
I know you would rathe go to one of his concerts, but the cost...
I would not pay that much to see any of those artists. I guess I can enjoy their music at home or in my car a lot more knowing I didn't pay that kind of money to see them with thousands of others...
According to the news yesterday, Rolling Stone magazine just did an article on that very subject, how many artists are cancelling tours due to low ticket sales...Rhianna in Denver included. Maybe this singers will take note?
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