Concert Tickets do you feel ripped off

I agree man , even if US dollar is really high in our country ( 3.73 pesos= 1U$$) International and even local artists try to rip us off.

I won't pay the prices anymore, nor do I wish to support Ticketmaster, who have helped to ruin the true concert experience of the old days.   Now I'm happier with a live DVD in my living room.  Cheaper, no parking nonsense, no security, no Ticketmaster. 

June wrote: Yeah, I do feel ripped off.   I've only recently realised that smaller venues and "obscure" bands are the way to go to.

Here in the US is terrible... For big-name concerts like Metallica the tickets (the better ones) are sold out minutes after they are released and then you have to buy them through companies curiously owned by Ticketmaster like Tickets Now.... I purchased tickets for said concert at about double the value because I couldn't buy them in the morning of a saturday (I was working) and at night the only remaining ones in Ticketmaster were the terrible helicopter-view ones.... So i had to go through Tickets Now... the re-sell website owned by ticketmaster

Yeah ticket prices are really ridiculous. I wanted to see The Who this past winter and the only seats available were nosebleed seats for close to 60 dollars. The funny thing is though, I paid about 54 dollars to be down on the floor section of the same venue and closer to the stage when I saw Nine Inch Nails last summer!

And don't get me started on service charges...

Aussie ticket prices are screwed these days.
That's why I pretty much never go to gigs. It's not that I don't want to go to gigs, I really do, but I can choose between saving up for recording gear/guitar gear or gig tickets, I can't have both on my pay unfortunately.
For well known bands, 100-120 bucks a ticket really adds up. 5 gigs, 500-600 bucks, in Aussie terms can buy me a recording interface, another guitar on the used market or 1/3rd of the way to a good, high end guitar effects processor.
The bands that have stupid high prices are the well known acts anyway. I figure from now on I may as well go to the cheaper, lesser known band gigs, and help those bands stay alive since the well known acts are already kept easily afloat by those that can regularly afford the expensive tickets anyway.




Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - May 01 2009 at 01:07

I think the last big bands I went to see were Dream Theater at Festival Hall, North Melbourne (West Melbourne technically, but it's basically near North Melb station) and Iron Maiden at Rod Laver Arena. IIRC, one cost 100 bucks, the other 120. Maybe that's kinda fair since Dream Theater aren't massively well known like Maiden, but come on, Maiden sold out a whole arena sized venue, it's not like they are going to be any well less off if they charged 10 bucks less. I'm sure the amount of Merchandise they sold got them some money in the pocket (I bought a shirt for the Somewhere Back In Time tour, another 50 or so bucks to the total cost of attending the gig, I think the Dream Theater tour shirt was about the same, give or take 5 bucks).

Finnforest wrote: I won't pay the prices anymore, nor do I wish to support Ticketmaster, who have helped to ruin the true concert experience of the old days.   Now I'm happier with a live DVD in my living room.  Cheaper, no parking nonsense, no security, no Ticketmaster.

Agreed. It also sounds better, and comes with volume knob and pause button!

vuh wrote: Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: it's not like they are going to be any well less off if they charged 10 bucks less.   5,000 X $10 = $50,000.00

50,000 X $10 = $500,000.00

He said "Arena".

Don't get me onto online 'booking fees' to 'cover administrative costs'

When we saw Rush a couple of years back I bought 6 tickets (which weren't too bad at £35 a pop) on the net in about 3 minutes... each one of them came with a £3.75 booking fee; I don;t see this as Rush's fault, more the venue itself (maybe Wembley have to pay high costs to maintain that marvellous echo from the back of the hall...)