It's no secret that ticket prices are out of control. In fact, if we look at the issue on an industry level, the live music scene has been suffering from massive inflation for decades, thanks in part to unchecked corporate deregulation, and, well… greed.
Here in the United States, some toothless legislation has passed; for example, a law passed in New York last year essentially requires the consumer be made aware of how hard they're being fucked up front, as opposed to later on in the scheme. Yeah, thanks for that help, Albany. Truly.
In the UK, however, one study conducted by polling specialists YouGov has shown that fans are telling the industry to sod off, in the local parlance, as about 50 percent of concert-goers have stopped going to shows entirely.
Ultimate Guitar is reporting the following particulars from the study:
- More than half of UK's music fans have missed at least one show in the last 5 years due to prohibitive ticket prices.
- 18% of the surveyed population claimed that they had been "regularly" priced out of live shows, while 44% thinks that going to concerts became in general "very expensive"
- When questioned about a fair price for a concert ticket, around half of concertgoers answered about $50, but the overall majority admitted to paying more than double that.
- The poll also addressed Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing models, with 71% of the surveyed population being against the concept.
That's brutal, folks. But also not too surprising. Especially considering Ticketmaster here in the US is currently under investigation for screwing over the consumer.
But in all seriousness, there is evidence that the bubble is on the verge of bursting back home in the States. There's too many bands on the road at the moment, forcing die-hard fans to make choices they wouldn't have to in a normal environment. Some of that is pandemic related, but frankly, the industry should be on the back end of that overload by now.
