Three shows I\'ll be skipping only because of the price:
Dead @ DCU Center 4/18-4/19 $95.50 / $108.50
Stanley Clark and Victor Wooten @ House of Blues 6/11 $43.25
Matisyahu and Umphrey\'s Mcgee @ BOA Paviliion 7/7 $52.35
hmmmmmmmmmmm
Turning down shows just because of the price is a new thing for me. I never used to miss any shows because of the price, and ironically that was back when I made relatively little money. As I look over all my old stubs, I was always paying $12-$25 for shows very similar to these. That Clarke/Wooten show would have been $15 10 years ago. And yes, Phish @ DCU Center (Worcester Centrum) was $25 straight up no fees from mailorder in 1998...now The Dead get $108.50.
(On a side note, you have to give props to Phish for the $63 tickets to every seat, every show. Out of curiosity I checked Aerosmith @ Mansfield. Aerosmith ends up at $233 a seat face falue for the entire pavilion, the same seats Phish ends up at $63 each for, and Phish is in higher demand. Phish is leaving so much money on the table it\'s not even funny.)
I understand inflation, but inflation has not gone up 300-400% in the last ten years. Inflation is only up about 10% as expected. So how did attending concerts become just the greatest flipping thing ever? Do people really like concerts and sporting events that much more than they did ten years ago? What changed?
Methinks the internet his highly responsible. There\'s no denying the fact that the rise of the internet has coincided precisely with the rise in ticket prices. The internet-driven explosion of the secondary ticket market has led to a world of ticket prices driven by false demand from both professional and amateur resellers. There are many, many people making a lot of money by getting to tickets before fans do, and not all of them are agencies either.
As I\'ve written before, I understand that most event tickets are now the playthings of the privileged. They\'re like a fancy car or dinner at a top restaurant. I understand and accept this as fundamental socio-economics and I accept that it most often won\'t work out in my favor. I\'m grateful that I\'ve been fortunate enough to be able to dabble in a couple of high-end tickets on occasion. However, I find it interesting and obviously a bit disheartening that from age 17-26, when I had far less money, I never even had to consider the price of shows... if I wanted to go, I went. Now even acts like Victor Wooten and Umphrey\'s McGee, who aren\'t exactly mainstream, pull more than a weekly grocery bill. It\'s quite a change, and the internet did it.
