The rise in the price of live music

Next time you see one of those nostalgic posters advertising a Deep Purple gig, check out the price. What’s that?! £4? Maybe Deep Purple weren’t big enough to charge more back then? They were. They were bigger. Maybe the pound strength has dropped since then? It has, but even back in the day £4 was nothing compared to how much we pay for gigs and festivals today. The plain fact is: live music came cheap.

Continuing on the Deep Purple example, where they could have charged £4 a ticket back in 1970-something, they now charge £20 or £30. With their best work behind them, most of those paying are avid fans who remember paying £4 to see them back in the day. And don’t get me started on that Led Zeppelin reunion gig…

Music is becoming more of a business. Drawn by anything with potential popularity, businessmen come skulking out of their hives to take a juicy bite out of a fertile scene. But we can’t blame businessmen alone for rising prices. It seems bands shrouded in classic appeal, the golden oldies, draw more money per ticket (again I reference that Zeppelin gig). Perhaps it’s because they have an older, wealthier fan base. So why do the youth have to fork out £20 for this month’s big thing? I blame festivals.

As soon as a band hits a certain rung on the reputation ladder, waiting festival organizers snatch them up and embed them in their line-up along with other semi-big names rising out of the uncharted swamps of unsigned music. Playing a few summer festivals trounces the idea of a year long tour from the band’s point of view (unless they actually enjoy playing live), and kills off the idea of the single gig.

Long story short: big bands don’t need to gig to make money. They get enough from festivals.

Looking at this year’s Reading Festival line-up, I’m sure thousands of people forked out £155 just to see RATM reform and play. And if asked, I’m sure they’d say “I only wanted to see Rage. And £155 is how much you’d pay for the headliners anyway. And plus, you’re paying for the atmosphere”.

The atmosphere... People pay to camp in a field with hundreds of thousands of like minded folks. From one of the numerous hippy festivals scattered about England, to the chaotic airing out of the id Reading encourages, camping in large numbers is a desired break from reality that fetches high prices.

As much as people are willing to pay for a weekend of chaos/peace and healing, it has left the vibrant, cheap music scene of yester-decade in tatters. With the retina scanning, voice-recognition tickets festivals sell, Woodstock (the good one, I mean) will never happen again. And with ‘classic’ bands charging triple figures for tickets, get used to seeing small and unsigned bands or paying megabucks for the big ones on the rare times they venture beyond the festival walls.

But an empty wallet forces those with a passion for live music to dig deeper into the mysterious realm of the unheard and the unsigned, and see some real gems before the museum curators snatch them up, stick them behind six inch thick glass, and charge a bomb to see them.



ADAM STONE