This is the preferred hobby of many old people. Traditionally these sentences also tend to continue on with a diatribe against smart phones, a condemnation of modern morality, or, most commonly, a comment on how something was once purchased for only a nickel.
We get it, old people, things used to cost less money.
The official sponsor of the baby boom.
As irritating as it can be, however, the elderly do have a point. Things have gotten more expensive due to a process called inflation. Inflation is defined as "a sustained increase in the general level of the prices of goods and services." Basically, inflation changes the way our purchasing power works. A dollar back in "the good old days" could be a pretty exciting possession (I mean, that's like 20 whole nickels), but now a dollar is not as exciting, because while it's still the same dollar, what you can get with it has changed drastically. So while a nickel may have once covered a whole grocery trip, the primary purpose of the nickel nowadays is to have something to dump into the tip jar at Starbucks so you can fulfill your good deed of the day. Thanks inflation.
One of the most inflated goods of today is concert tickets. I know we've all been there: there's a concert that you are just dying to see but a ticket costs more than your car, so instead you listen to Spotify (with ads) and eat Ramen noodles. Sometimes ticket prices are just insane. For Adele's upcoming concert at American Airlines Center in Dallas, some of the cheapest tickets are still more than $200, and the most expensive listed price for a ticket to this show is $9495. For comparison, the net value of a year of tuition at University of Washington, Tacoma, is $9,123. You can literally get a year of college tuition for less than a ticket to an Adele concert.
Rumor has it if you play an Adele song backwards,
you can hear yourself getting screwed out of all your money.
As old people love to point out, it was once possible to see the Rolling Stones for $6, which is a low price even when adjusted for inflation. So what's the deal? Why are concert tickets so expensive now? Well, first of all, there are two different methods of buying tickets that make prices pretty unregulated and outrageous. There's a primary market for tickets, where you buy straight from credited sources, or the secondary market, where you buy tickets from people who bought tickets from the primary market in order to flip or scalp them. We'll get to the cost issues within the primary market in a second, but first, let's examine the problem with scalpers.
Not that kind of scalpers.
Crazy high inflation tends to happen in the secondary market because of supply and demand. For someone to turn to the secondary market, it's a pretty good sign of desperation. There will always be a scarcity of tickets for any given show because there's a finite number of people that can fit in a space. Scalpers love to buy hoards of tickets from primary sources so that supply goes down and people are unable to get tickets to a certain show. Demand won't have diminished for that show, so as long the demand is there, people can then sell their tickets to interested buyers with way inflated prices. And because Adele has somehow become an necessity instead of a luxury, people continue to buy tickets at the high prices, driving prices up even further. Now, Leonardo DiCaprio I would understand, but Adele? Eh.
Regrettably, there is also a scarcity of Leonardo DiCaprios.
However, the solution to finding cheaper concert tickets is not just buying tickets from primary markets, because those prices are also inflated. If some tickets were still $6, it would be much harder to convince people that an Adele ticket on a secondhand market was worth thousands of dollars, even if the show were sold out and someone was really, really in the mood to sob and drink white wine. There are two main reasons that all concert tickets have gone up in price: people's continued willingness to pay more for concert tickets and the fact that concert tickets have become a main source of revenue for many artists.
As we know from our lessons in supply and demand, if demand is high for something, price is going to go up. Tickets for lesser-known or relatively unpopular artists are still pretty cheap. I've gone to concerts for $20. However, companies know that certain artists are in high demand-- people want to see certain artists for the experience and, often, for bragging rights -- allowing tickets to be expensive under the stipulation that people will still buy them. Older artists like the Rolling Stones may have more limited opportunities to tour, so tickets can be expensive because of demand and the expectation that in the future, there may be no supply of Rolling Stones tickets at all. Immensely popular artists like Adele also can have higher prices because she is at the height of demand for her: people want to jump in on the craze while they have the chance.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at an upcoming show.
Additionally, tickets are also more expensive now because many artists no longer make money on album sales. While artists get paid for their music to be licensed and played, so much music is now readily available illegally online that musicians can no longer rely on album sales to make money. Concert tickets are now a vital source of income for musicians, so the prices have been raised to compensate the lack of music sales.
With overall inflation raising all prices and lowering the purchasing power of money in general on top of the specific reasons that concert ticket prices are going up, it seems concert tickets will continue to be irrevocably expensive. Oh well. There's always Spotify and Ramen Noodles.
The official sponsor of being too broke to have fun.
For more information on ticket inflation, click here.
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