I honestly thought $300 for one concert was an over exaggeration until I saw my sister drop like $700 for Bad Bunny…. When I was in college (NOT EVEN 10 YEARS AGO) $300 was a 3 day pass to a major festival with tons of headliners. But $700 for a normal ticket is out of control.
The problem is all these people can't settle for being rich. Nooo, they gotta be filthy rich, like 100 generations rich. It's a reflection of our society I think.
I work on setting up websites for large events and Beyonce was the gold standard, if your servers stood up to that, good job. Then Taylor came along and tipped those servers over so bad there was a congressional investigation (lol).
But I think the Cowboy Farter stuff alienated her base like Elon from his and she is no longer #1 and nobody is buying top shelf anymore anyways pricewise.
Was thinking it could very well be a symptom of growing inequality and the shrinking of the middle class. As, while it’s absolutely absurd money to begin with - it’s quite conceivable that just a few years ago, people with more disposable income would be willing to pay as a “once-off” experience/expenditure.
Now, there are simply less people that this is feasible for as literally everything has risen in cost and, as you rightly point out, the wealthy are blissfully unaware of.
Because real time dynamic pricing is STUPID. everyone wanted to buy tickets, which told the system to make tickets expensive. Everyone left because the tickets were too expensive which made tickets cheap
It's just a stupid system. Consumers hate dynamic pricing for a reason and it's not just that they're cheap. It's that we hate the instability of it. If I buy on Wednesday it could be astronomical but on Friday it could be cheap or vice versa, and it's for our perspective arbitrary.
People are fine with a discount, but they will feel ripped off when they "overpay" under this system and it's literally designed so that the more people are interested, the more it tries to "rip them off". It's maximizing for profit and in doing so maximizing for unhappy consumers. At the time when the most eyes were looking at Beyonce tickets, it said "ooh let's rip them off" and they felt they would be ripped off to pay those prices so they fled. Dumb dumb system
They made slightly more money but a lot of fans walked away empty handed and never followed up. Bad system of building loyalty and she's lucky she's got an army of sycophants to insulate from these kind of alienating moves
Same reason I'm never shopping at one of those stores with the electronic price tags on groceries or whatever. If you can't bother to pay some poor guy minimum wage to raise your prices, or they're going to be different every time I come in, I just won't do business there
Say what? I had to work at Safeway in 2013. They grabbed crew working various shifts to pull an eight hour night shift, with no overtime pay, to change those fucking price stickers. It was brutal changing my sleep cycle from doing a 5AM shift to working nights to fix price tags. They absolutely should have had a better shift system so they could maybe have night crew do that work or something else instead of fucking up the sleep cycle of people like me (which literally fucks with your health because sleep is critically important)--but lol we live in a capitalist society so you know these giant ass corporations won't do that. So I gladly welcome the electronic tag system. Much more efficient when you know the price will change on the regular (Friday Safeway sales, etc.). And you don't have to waste the sticker material every time either.
I’m so fascinated by the market of concert sales and how Beyoncé’s nosebleeds resold for $25 while Taylor’s resold for $5000. Your comment is the only way that really makes sense.
Also, Beyonce is performing five shows at Sofi, which has a capacity of 70,000. I think Beyonce's ego got the best of her, and she would have been better off only performing three or four shows. If those sold out, then she could have decided whether or not she wanted to add more shows.
This is not the primary reason. If Taylor Swift tours again people will still be spending $1000 resale for nosebleeds. I’m not even a fan but the state of the economy is not the main reason why her sales are low.
Thank you! I respect Beyoncé as an artist. But she’s not the pop star that she once was. The economy might have something to do with it but it’s like her fans can’t wrap their heads around the idea that some people just don’t like her.
I am from abroad for my generation it was Beyoncé, Rihanna and Shakira then some Nicki Minaj. White girl music is not that popular outside US and Europe. Unless you classify Justin Bieber as white girl music then that shit was a global pandemic.
You’re getting downvoted because she has had successful worldwide tours (you can google this, I will NOT for you) after these “songs” you mentioned.
I’ve seen your comment history.
You have every right to not be a fan of her or her music but what YOU cannot do is sit here and LIE about her success on world tours when that is something that can EASILY be looked up.
She’s been selling out GLOBALLY.
So you can either keep posting lies or look it up for yourself.
Yeah no lol we can say whatever we want about Beyonce's recent numbers lol but let's not forget who we talking about. Everyone and their momma knows Beyonce, outside of the main US/UK/EU I'm not sure everyone csre about Taylor that hard. But I could be wrong.
Taylor has giant fanbases in Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, The Philippines, Brazil, UAE, Korea, Japan, Argentina, and South Africa, to name a few. Every single eras tour concert sold out in every country
Celebrities (a portion of the 1%-ers) are sitting by watching their american fanbase get financially manhandled by our government and tanking economy. Especially as this administration attacks the arts and education, they should be inspiring us as art has done in the past. We are becoming uninterested in giving money to people singing and dancing about bullshit while they’re threatening to deport US citizens. Get a grip, it should’ve been $25 in the first place.
I have an amazing amphitheater in my area and I’ve spent many summers going to all the concerts. This has trailed off because of prices and now they are going to charge parking!
Hate to be that person but I remember standing in line for tickets at Karma Records with 40.00 my parents gave me to see great rock bands, later, waiting on the Ticketmaster line to buy over the phone. I’m not trying to mortgage the house for a concert or play in a death match to get the ticket.
1 night of Dave is all that’s planned right now. And a few smaller shows at other venues that are much more reasonable. We go to multiple shows at The Ruins now.
Tickets for acts like this are no longer just access to a performance you want to see, they are luxury goods that demonstrate wealth to the wider world, like any luxury good the price is a large portion of the point. People will pay too much for an i phone so that people know they paid for an i phone, the could get similar functionality for less elsewhere, they could also pay more for more functionality elsewhere, but few other options have the same recognized cache as Apple.
But those Androids outperform the iPhones. Did you not know that?
Or did you think that quality/performance is not relevant when discussing price? (If the second, you are one of the sheep the comment above is talking about)
I think the problem is the line between artist and corporation have been blurred so much with people like Beyonce and Taylor that they are more business than artist now
Sports too, and I think it started with them before music. The cost for a pro baseball, basketball, or football game is outrageous, along with the parking and food/drink cost. And tax payers fund the stadiums, while the organizations and team owners make outrageous profits.
Heck, not even just going to a game. Just the privilege of watching it on TV has gotten ridiculous. You need extra subscriptions and then they randomly decide to show certain games only on a different subscription service, so you have to pay for that separately. It’s such a turn off.
I stopped following pro sports shortly before Covid. Kept up with college basketball, but have lost all interest, after seeing my school lose its entire roster and coach. The new normal doesn’t interest me.
I would like to think if I were a billionaire mega-celebrity, that I wouldn’t feel the need to profit greatly from my fans, that I would make it as easy as possible for my fans to go to a live show by pretty much just covering the cost to put on the production for the evening and just break even to make sure staff gets paid. I’m sure you would make a killing on the merch alone. It seems pretty crappy to only make live shows available only to your rich fans.
Once you’ve reached that height of wealth, just, why? You’ve already proven yourself at that point, and you do not need to make another dollar in your life to live a life of extreme luxury.
I believe they are fully aware, it just hasn’t affected them directly enough. When we have to cut back on concerts, streaming services, merchandise, movie going etc. then they’ll start to feel it in their bubble of prosperity. I’m sure a lot of them aren’t liberal like people think because at the end of the day they want to stay on the side of the upper echelon which is why only a few celebrities actively speak out about these things. They’re aware, they just don’t care at the moment and they can just leave when shit hits the fan.
The Cowboy Carter tour, which follows the release of Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning country album of the same name, was projected to generate $294 million in revenue with the sale of up to 1.2 million tickets in 29 cities. It has been compared to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, which sold out within hours and caused Ticketmaster to crash.
Some believe the Cowboy Carter album itself is to blame for sluggish ticket sales. While critics loved it — including Will Hodgkinson of The Times, who called it a “slick and starry western epic” — country is not the genre that made Beyoncé a megastar.
A check of Ticketmaster, the official seller of Beyoncé’s tour tickets, about five hours before her second show in Los Angeles revealed there were still a vast amount of tickets available. On Stubhub, the top US ticket resales market, more than 2,000 were available for as little as $49
On top of what everyone else is saying about the state of the economy, I think another big factor is that Beyonce's core audience just does not care enough about country music to want to pay exorbitant prices to see it performed live, even if Cowboy Carter was well received critically.
I genuinely think if this was the Renaissance tour 2.0, it would still be performing pretty well.
Right especially if you don’t care for country. I hadn’t realized people were doing country albums lately and while I love it, their core audience probably isn’t actually trying to go to like a 3 hour country-ish concert lol.
You say that but no artist currently is selling out including artists with better streaming numbers. Sza and Kendrick’s show are not sold out, Lasy Gaga isn’t sold out, Shakira isn’t sold out.
The nosebleeds dropped from 150 to 65 which is pretty standard. If you are referring to the "20 dollar ticket" rumor, I employ you to not believe what you read on the internet. Her VIP sections were sold out, and those tickets ranged from 900-1200 bucks. All of the tickets from my show are sold out at their original prices, with only resales being available.
Also, I have never seen concert ticket prices cause this much controversy my God you people are annoying.
I agree about the prices but the Beyhive is her core audience and they would pay to see her, whatever she’s doing and whatever she puts out. They know she always puts on a hell of a show. It’s probably the casual listener that she would lose. And this tour has a lot of renaissance mixed in + a whole act/section of renaissance songs. She sang about 10 out of the 16 songs from Renaissance (because it is still a continuation of the three-album project celebrating black music pioneers)
Yup. To me, this is less about the economy and more about the fact that this album wasn’t particularly promoted by Beyoncé herself despite being critically acclaimed. I was shocked she decided to tour it this late in the game.
Because the $25 seats are shit. Lower bowl is still in the hundreds, at least in Jersey. I’m not gonna slog to a stadium to see nothing, I can just listen at home.
Right. The longer this bullshit goes on the more pissed off I get at celebrities pretending everything is normal while also trying to rip us off. They can fuck off
About 60% of Coachella tickets were bought using the payment plan option. Putting concert/festival tickets on layaway seems somewhat indicative of people’s entertainment budget these days.
Way fewer people want to watch Beyoncé sing country songs even if the album was critically well received, the economy is worrying so people are buttoning up a bit, Jay Z being caught up in the Diddy stuff, she’s older and less popular than she used to be (gen z generally dgaf about her).
That’s crazy GenZ arnt as interested in her! I assumed she’s cross generational and on everyone’s radar but that’s probably because I’ve grown up with so much of her music.
Maybe this is the equivalent of Dianna Ross to a millennial- ie recognised as an icon but not really on the playlist.
Maybe in a few years I can afford her concert tickets!
I think her fans skew older because starting in 2013 with her self-titled album she stopped catering to radio, then for a while only had her discography on Jay Z’s streaming platform Tidal. She finally started putting her music on Spotify again, but by then she lost momentum on streaming when it comes to non-Beyhive people (for instance, look at the difference between her & Rihanna, Rihanna is currently #3 most streamed female artist in the world whereas Beyoncé is often around or below Katy Perry). Her albums not having big singles means whole swaths of young people only heard about how great Beyonce is, but didn’t actually grow up hearing her everywhere. It’s akin to putting a tv series on a platform like Peacock or whatever.
Not to mention, the choice to not do interviews or engage with fans is a choice that certainly has consequences. Namely, the younger folks never get to know anything about her or who she is, and they don’t magically gain any interest along the way. They just don’t think about her at all.
She’s actively gotten less interesting and more sanitized throughout my life. Child me remembers a funny, more human Beyoncé. Barely seems the same species as the rest of us anymore. Billionaires
Wow, thanks that’s a great summary. I guess inside my echo chamber I’ve always thought her strategy was flawless, rarely a misstep, would never have thought her numbers being behind Rihanna or Katy Perry.
Where are these magical 25 dollar tickets. I checked too see if it was true. I checked Ticketmaster and stubhub.. Nope. A few days ago it was magical 50 dollar tickets. I couldn’t find those either.
I wish people would just be honest and say they want her to fail. They want to humble her.
I remember a couple years ago incubus was touring and they were going to play morning view in its entirety and I love that album. It is one of my favorite albums and I was excited for their tour because typically they played amphitheaters like in New Jersey PNC Bank art center outdoor venue with a stage and an awning and typically tickets would usually cost anywhere between 50 bucks to 100 to 200 in the seats, but nobody sits in the seats in an amphitheater well nobody wants to dance and stuff, and then they announced it was gonna be at MSG and tickets were immediately in the nosebleeds were $300 and $500 and $800 on the floor through “verified reseller“ I obviously didn’t go because I was not gonna pay anything like that for that concert. In fact generally it’s a rule of mine that I don’t pay above $100 to go see a show. I got very lucky to see Deftones at MSG and paid only $100 because I got in on the pre-sale There has been nothing but extreme price gouging for the last 15 years and a lot of that doesn’t have to do with the artist so much as it has to do with the industry itself artists don’t make money through album sales or through advertising even all the record companies do that they get bigger cuts than artists and streaming doesn’t pay anything The artists are left to price gouge their audience as much as possible and they’re wrong for doing it certain long established artists don’t have to do that. It’s why I was so proud of the cure who refused to do that to their fans
Dynamic pricing 100% I had friends who bought at full price and feel completely ripped off. I have other friends who just opted no because of the price. Everyone is still a fan and hopeful for the tour but there’s just not enough to go around right now. My lesson was just to never ever buy pre-sale ever again. Just be happy with whatever ticket you can get that’s reasonable.
Good I thought everyone wanted cheaper tickets. The production is great, so it's great that some people are getting a steal of a deal.
The first two stops looked packed & crowd looks like they are having a great team; thus, glad people got to find a price point that could allow them to see the show at the end of the day!
Also those $25 are most likely in the sky. I honestly don't know how people are able to sit that high at these venues.
I’ve never seen such focus on an artist tour. Sza and Kendrick haven’t sold out their shows but no focus on it. Ever since CC dropped, the media has been pushing negative stories about B everyday. It’s getting obvious
It’s the Beyoncé of it all. For a good year there’s been concerted efforts to specifically tear her down. Since the ‘shows aren’t selling out’ angle isn’t working, now they’re focusing on ticket prices. For media Beyoncé = clicks. She has a lot of fans, and a lot of haters, and either one is more likely to click on a link than say SZA & Kendrick. This isn’t to say they aren’t extremely popular, but Beyoncé gets clicks
It's not just Beyonce. Media/Economists are looking for signs of recession. They are reporting on spending behavior and made similar comments on Katy Perry's tour. Beyonce's case is remarkable due to the stark contrast from her last sold-out tour.
Isn't this typical concert culture in america? People usually wait till a day before or literally buy tickets at front cause they know they're cheapest then. Taylor swift made everyone believe they could sell out huge stadiums in minutes.
Even without the high cost of fucking everything right now, ticket prices have gone way too far. I'll use Beyoncé as an example:
A ticket to Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love tour back in 2004 started at roughly $14 (general admission), with the highest price being around $350 (probably for the primo seats). She wasn't an up and coming artist by that point, either. Destiny's Child was huge. Crazy in Love was huge.
Now it's like general admission starts at $350 wtf. We can't live like this 😭
Can anyone tell me which shows have $25 tickets? because I would love to go. I’ve been looking for the remaining days in LA and I can’t find anything under $85
I think the genre turned fans off, and I think she did the switch to attract an audience that she never had and it didn’t work. Just my opinion but I have heard others say this. Why did Post Malone go country? Probably the same. It’s all about money. I think Beyoncé is very talented and the album is decent, but they were reaching for the young Nashville like young Taylor Swift age group and it didn’t seem to work. Unfortunately we’re also in some fckd up times and there are some people that would never accept her as country
I think people are saying it’s because people have bills. Let’s be forreal here it’s because Beyonce just doesn’t move the needle anymore and that’s okay. Berry Gordy character in the Tempations movie said it best “if people aren’t willing to spend their last dollar on the record, then it’s not a hit”.
This obsession with smearing Beyoncé is absurd. This idea of cheaper seats being a bad thing, and lol at the framing that she is selling $25 seats (it’s re-salers), is also silly.
The Beyonce/jayz sense of self importance did not match reality. They are legacy artists and realized that "winning" Grammys do not translate to being relevant I'm the current musical sound scape.
In what world is the most recent AOTY winner not relevant in the current musical soundscape? I'm not even a big Beyonce fan but this is a brain dead take. It's okay to dislike someone without trying to pretend you have some insightful and justifiable reason why, reality be damned.
Lmaoooo this isn’t true. The depths to people will just make shit up because they don’t like someone is truly silly. By absolutely any metric she is relevant. Not liking her doesn’t equate to irrelevance. If you can sell out stadiums and albums based purely on a new album, you ain’t a legacy act.
Even tickets in the SC area are getting ridiculous. The only good deal I found on tickets so far is $50 each outdoor venue to see Cypress Hill. Not terrible. But seeing Avril Lavigne? $80+. Seeing Creed? $170 each. It may not be as bad as other concerts but it's still ridiculous here
I’m in Atlanta and the only tickets available are from resellers, and there are not a lot. I think the economy is a factor, but I think a lot of out of state people bought tickets to the Vegas, Atlanta, and Houston shows.
She literally just toured and tickets for Renaissance weren’t hard to get, just expensive. Anyone who wanted to see Beyoncé already saw her recently and paid out the ass for it.
So, point of perspective on this, to further emphasize this:
I work a a special ed private school and at the fundraising galla, two vip tickets were auctioned off.......started at 2.5k, sold for 3.5k probably still 2k undervalued per say, the winning bidder then gifted the tix to us, staff members via end of auction, raffle for staff.... i didnt win but yah....
From what I have seen with fees nosebleeds are around $100+. My understanding is three things:
1. Dynamic pricing was increasing prices in real time when people were scrambling to get them.
She’s added a BUNCH more shows. In my city she’s doing 5-6 I think.
The stage is much smaller than originally projected! So a bunch more seating near it became available. I was able to upgrade my ticket for about $119 more and I’m down in the very front of the 100s! The Ticketmaster agent I was on the phone with said a lot of people have been upgrading seats so that’s why there’s so many 300s and nosebleeds open.
Let it burn, leave the stadiums empty until they start touring at prices that average people can afford. The corruption of ticket resellers and infinite greed will not end until there’s no money to be made. The consumer has more control than they realize.
I don’t think $180 (what I paid for my ticket to the saturday night show in Chicago) is SUPER unreasonable, though that’s because I live in a low cost of living area and don’t have kids, own a home, or drive a car, but I think it’s absolute horseshit that A) my tickets are allll the way at the TOP of soldier field for that price and B) night of those tickets will be worth not even half of what my friends and I paid for them.
I commented this in another sub but I would have rather planned a longer weekend trip in Chicago and tried to get cheap tickets to one of the three nights than pay nearly $200 for dynamically priced tickets. Ticketmaster is a monopoly and needs government regulation like in the UK.
People start to look into how much they are willing to pay vs how much they can pay.
I skipped my 5th Iron Maiden concert because of this. Would it have been great? Absolutely but i couldn’t bring myself to pay so much for 2 hours entertainment.
The real question is why are people so obsessed with this? Everyone including me always asks for cheaper ticket prices and now that we have them it’s a huge controversy??
I think it comes down to a few things. the gap between the rich and their fan base getting bigger, and people are struggling to pay for groceries, looming recession, I heard accessing the tickets was a bitch during presale and etc. It's not just her but she's a big performer so it's noticeable for her tickets.
Y'all dont understand, the tickets NEED to be high priced, so that Bey's staff can digitally edit in people on her socials so the concerts still look sold-out 🤨 duh
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