By Christian Schneider
Thursday, October 23, 2025
The new album by indie darlings Geese sounds like a bag
of squirrels being thrown down a laundry chute, which fully explains why the
nation’s musical cognoscenti are lavishing it with such praise. In The
Atlantic, for instance, a critic called the album “miraculous” for “suggesting a future to
look forward to.” (The album, which is the band’s third, uses many of the same
cacophonous, genre-contrasting tricks perfected by artists like Beck and the
Flaming Lips in the 1990s, meaning the future evidently took place three
decades ago.)
But now that Geese (not to be confused with the band
Goose) has been deemed the Act You Must See, their fans are growing frustrated.
Resale market tickets to see Geese at small venues around the country have
spiked to well over $300 apiece. Want to see the band in Boston? Better have upwards of $800 lying around.
Naturally, the scenesters are up in arms over the recent
price spikes, growling about having to fork over a week’s salary for shows they
could have seen for 20 or 30 bucks just a few years ago. And, of course, their
first shots are always fired at businesses selling the tickets to the end
consumer.
Take YouTube music critic Anthony
Fantano, who decries the “disgusting levels of greed” shown by companies
jacking up ticket prices. In a nuanced video titled “F*** TICKETMASTER,”
Fantano complains that the ticket seller has allowed the resale market to buy
too many tickets, which they then flip for huge profits. He concedes that some
“morons” might argue it’s just “capitalism” at work but claims that the
resellers are working on too big a scale and are ripping people off. Well.
Typically, people who work in the arts and people who
understand economics are so far apart on a Venn diagram that they can’t even
see each other with binoculars. And that is certainly the case here. Blaming
Ticketmaster for people willingly purchasing more expensive concert tickets is
like Elizabeth Warren blaming the “sandwich mafia” for forcing lunchgoers to pay more at
Subway.
The reason Ticketmaster and other resale companies can
raise ticket prices so much is that people are willing to pay the higher
prices. Ticket-selling companies aren’t charities, and they are allowed to
charge whatever the market is willing to bear. No amount of profanity-laden
YouTube videos will change this fact.
The primary reason for escalating ticket costs has
nothing to do with the tickets themselves. Years ago, new music-streaming sites
like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music allowed fans to pay a monthly fee
equivalent to the cost of one compact disc in order to gain access to virtually
every song ever recorded. Quickly, album and CD sales ground to a halt for all
but the biggest names.
Gone were the days when bands made millions of dollars
selling physical music, and given that streaming services pay artists paltry
sums to host their songs, musicians had to find a new way to make up for the
money they had lost.
They and ticket sellers quickly began to realize that
demand for tickets was far more inelastic than they had considered. Higher
prices did not significantly change demand. Soon, Taylor Swift was charging
thousands of dollars to see her Eras Tour. That trend continued into the summer
of 2025, when people routinely paid $500 per ticket for suboptimal seats at
stadium shows featuring acts like Morgan Wallen and Coldplay. (For those who
pay $500 to see Coldplay, the natural assumption should be that they can bring
nine friends with them.)
Think of all the times you’ve been to a show and thought,
“Wow, that was so good, I would have paid four times the ticket price.” Well,
now you are. And if enough people won’t, ticket prices will come down. (This
actually happened earlier this year: When Beyoncé tickets weren’t snapped up as
promoters had expected, the prices dropped, leaving people who paid the original
higher prices miffed.)
Nonetheless, the politically popular move is to go after
the ticket sellers for “gouging” consumers, as if people who want to see Miley
Cyrus have a constitutional right to do so. (Rumor had it that James Madison
was much more of a Lady Gaga guy.)
Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission has already sued Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live
Nation, alleging a number of unfair practices. Of course, if these companies
are employing monopolistic strategies or deceiving consumers, then by all
means, go after them. But legal action won’t accomplish much in the way of
holding down ticket prices. If courts squeeze Ticketmaster’s per-ticket profit,
the musicians will certainly raise the cost of their shows’ tickets to fill that void,
now that they know consumers will happily fork over the cash.
The alternative — using price controls to hold down the
cost of tickets — would be ineffective and cause shortages. Think tickets to
see Oasis are hard to come by now? Wait until they have to be sold at well
below market value. That will hurt the bands’ bottom lines and flood the market
with buyers, making it more difficult for the biggest fans to see their
favorite artists’ shows.
Prices, after all, are the best way a society has to
distribute goods. Artificially holding down the cost of products causes
shortages — just ask anyone who sat in long lines for gas in the early 1970s during the energy
crisis. High demand to see, say, Pearl Jam in the early 1990s forced people to
camp out for days for tickets, with no guarantee they would be able to get
their hands on them. Later, the chances of seeing a show were dependent on how
quickly you could click a mouse over and over.
With internet purchasing and more dynamic pricing, those
days are all but gone. You’ll almost certainly be able to see your favorite
band; you’ll just have to pay more to do so.
Nonetheless, progressives always see governmental action
as a way to punish companies for setting prices at a level people will
willingly pay. Last week, Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson interrupted her
band’s show in Madison, Wisc., to lecture the audience on the economics of the
music industry, complaining that there is no “governmental body” to guarantee
income for musicians and set ticket prices. And the complaints over ticket
prices aren’t limited to the music world. The likely next mayor of New York
City, Zohran Mamdani, has already made more affordable tickets to the World Cup soccer tournament next
year a central part of his “affordability” plans for the city.
Now that bands and resellers have seen that people are
willing to pay exorbitant fees for tickets, the old system of cheap tickets for
concerts is never coming back. But there is some good news for music lovers.
For one, streaming services are a godsend for fans and save them hundreds, if
not thousands of dollars. You may be paying a ton to see live music, but the
cost of listening to recorded music has dropped to near zero.
And with that availability of cheap music, it gives bands
a better chance than ever of being discovered. In the past, a band had to make
it to the radio or have a video played on MTV for people to hear their music.
Now, if a friend or a music website suggests a band to you, their music
inhabits your headphones within seconds. And that helps bands build fan bases
that will happily pay to see them when they tour.
It may be cold comfort for fans to know things have
changed forever, but being a music fan can still be a fulfilling experience.
There are thousands upon thousands of small bands around the country dying for
fans — read some music websites, listen to some podcasts, and discover new
bands you can call your own. Tons of these musicians are making challenging
music that’s far better than the big names drawing high ticket prices — find
them, go see them live, and buy their merch. (Some of these small bands end up
being big bands: In 1995, I walked down to a local bar and plunked down ten
bucks to see a new band called the Foo Fighters. Seeing them now
will cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.)
One final note: Accusations of “greed” on the part of
millionaires and billionaires is always situational. There is nary a word from
any Democrat complaining about Taylor Swift being a billionaire or purchasing
her music rights, over which she now has a monopoly. Whether you’re a good or
evil billionaire depends on how many booties you can start to shakin’.
Some big names, like Olivia Rodrigo, have vowed to sell cheap tickets directly to their fans. If
that works, then great. But while ticket resellers are generally loathed as
parasitic profiteers, they merely operate in the same market as every other
business, and there is no reason to crash the supply-and-demand party. Such an
action would represent economics so grotesque it could be mistaken for a Geese
album.
No comments:
Post a Comment