Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ticket Prices
Posted by tim tunes on 18 March 2011 - 10:22am.
The Decemberists this week cost £17.50
Just had a look at getting a ticket for John Mellencamp, £75 for the same venue, same seat
...and at 9am, as the tickets supposedly went on sale, the best seat was Row W in the stalls
Of course it is well-established that bigger acts can charge premium prices and this is Mr Cougar's first gig here for 20 years so they will be able to get away with it. It's just good old supply and demand and at least the artist gets the premium rather than the touts.
Maybe but it certainly stopped me buying a ticket
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I've come to the conclusion......
....that now (not necessarily the case in the 50s and 60s) but, now, 2011, the more money you spend on something the less worthwhile it is likely to be.
See: premiership football.
See: clothing.
See: pop music.
Or simply consider the benefits of a day at a county cricket game (£10 at The Oval with bottle of £5 red wine) versus the hemmed-in, stop-and-search nightmare of a Test Match at the same venue (£90 apparently, food and drink ridiculously expensive and, unlike the county game, you can't decide to go simply 'cos it's a nice day).
Of course best of all is a day watching local cricket (cost: zilch).
Nothing will ever replicate the thrill of the England World Cup win in '66 and so the vain pursuit of something like that that you know will be tainted by sponsorship etc in the unlikely event it ever happens.....and paying £1000 for the 'privilege'.....is nuts.
Cheap Clothing.....
False economy in my experience. Nothwithstanding any debate on child exploitation and working conditions in India/Sri Lanka/China, the quality of cheaper items in your local supermarket or Primark* (other retailers are available) is generally shocking. Possibly great for small kids who grow out of schools clothes term by term but a good suit, a nice pair of jeans and shoes will last you years and years.
I share your sentiment
about spending more and getting less out of it.
It's been a long, cold and uneasy Winter but last Sunday the sun came out for a few hours and you could really feel its warmth and heat. That alone was priceless, my wife and I could both feel something change for the better inside of us just by the way our skin tingled with the warmth and how the sky seemed that little bit more rich in blue. The Bisto family had gone swimming and we were now just mucking around in the park, having a picnic and feeding the ducks. We walked through the woods (where I was the obligatory troll demanding money with menaces at every footbridge and stile) and then eventually came home to plate of spag bog, a Bakewell tart and Nanny MacPhee and The Big Bang.
This morning the eldest asked at breakfast if we could do it again this weekend. Obviously I had to disabuse her about the vagaries of the English weather but a bit more sunshine came through just by her asking.
I wanted to go and see Roxy Music at the beginning of the year but there was absolutely no way I could justify £75 per ticket. I'm not calling it a rip-off but I'm not interested in topping up their pension fund and I'm not convinced I need to see them live to sustain my nostalgic appreciation of their music, not at £75. I've genuinely only had really thrilling live musical moments when seeing bands in small venues anyway, often without a clue about what I'm letting myself in for, so ultimately I realised that I would probably only derive any significant lasting pleasure from attending the gig by telling anyone listening that I had done so. But in doing so I could picture myself actually spending more time relating the expression of my levels of enjoyment in rather over-stated and slightly contrived terms in order to make myself feel less guilty and more enthusiastic about the whole event despite having spent an inordinate amount of money just to sit there and tell someone else about it.
I suppose you can put that down to reaping the rewards of experience and finally having sufficient maturity at last to "just say no!" Either that or I'm a Scrooge who's forgotten about the joys of spontaneity.
Bah humbug.
The long-term view
I can see why the old-boy acts charge the ludicrous prices. They can get away with it, the audience will pay it - or enough people to fill the hall. But what they are doing is discriminating based on price and hence also largely on age. They won't build any new market or listeners or drive any recorded sales off the back. Maybe they don't care...take the money and run.
I went to the Roxy gig. The joke was..after the ticket prices and the ridiculous array of silly over-priced merch...they delivered a far-from greatest hits set. It was great - well-produced, good sound - but appealed to the hardcore. A hardcore that largely weren't there - there was a noticeable number of disgruntled early leavers.
I saw Roxy at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 2005...
... and they pulled the same trick there, pretty much every track they played being from the first 2 albums, with "Jealous Guy" as the encore. I loved it, but the crowd was definitely against them.
Was their set-list
known before the tickets went on sale? I can understand how people would feel cheated if they fork out a shed-load of money and then find it's an incarnation of the band they're either not familiar with or not wanting. I like all versions of Roxy but I'm sure my wife would have been far less interested in haering The Bogus Man than The Main Thing.
Buyer beware I suppose but at those prices is it too much to ask that the band make known what music they're playing particularly as there are no obvious reference points like a new album to plug or a great big headline on the adverts declaring "See All The Hits. Live!" and then a long list of them.
Roxy
did call the tour For Your Pleasure and intimated that they would be mainly 'doing some old', so I think there was sufficient warning that it wouldn't be a greatest hits set.
See your point
..a small footnote though, one place where the ECB have got it right is the price of children's tickets - even for test matches its £10.
I got 2 tickets for the saturday at Lords for Eng v. India - mine was £80, Tunes Jnr a tenner.
I had a proper sulk
a couple of years back when Yazoo reformed for a tour. I grew up on early 80's synth so I rushed to book a couple of tickets. £106 including booking fee to see an 80's revival act! I couldn't do it. However much I liked them had I payed I'd have just felt ripped off.
I don't think it's anything to do with being "bigger"
I think the Decemberists could sell more tickets than John Mellencamp nowadays. The difference is that the Decemberists fans are seen as being youngish people who don't have that much disposable cash and the band are on their way up therefore they don't want to push the price too high. John Mellencamp's fans, on the other hand, are seen as being older and more affluent and therefore somebody has made a calculation that they will pay a lot more. And I know this doesn't always square with people's traditional view of looking at the music business, the likelihood is that person was John Mellencamp.
Only about 5,000 people spent £6 quid (or whatever) on his last
couple of studio albums, yet they hope for what, 20,000 tickets at £70 ?
Adds up but doesn't make sense.....
I did a similar kind of maths...
... last time The Stones toured. I figured for the price of two tickets, plus travelling, I could buy every album they'd ever made, top up with a few DVDs, plus a chinese takeaway and a 6-pack of beer... I couldn't justify it and didn't bother.
He doesn't have much
of a fanbase in the UK, does he? Will he really sell many tickets at those prices? I'm usually wrong about these things but I don't think he will.
I saw that John Mellencamp
was 'touring' the UK and was almost interested until I saw that the date in the southern half of Britain clashes with Devizes Beer festival. £6-ish for a ticket. No contest I'm afraid, Mr Mellencamp, much as I would like to see you before you or I die.
Bargepole was also interested
until saw the ticket prices, plus travel costs !
Llikewise for Roger Waters upcoming shows.
All punters can do is vote with their feet - not that it will make the slightest difference in the grand scheme of things.
Dilemma
Thanks to The Blog, spotted the tour dates and immediately alerted a friend who I knew would definitely be interested. He rang tonight to thank me, then complain about the ticket price, then to say if his wife doesn't want the second ticket he booked he would give it to me (he knows I won't just let him give me it and he pretty well knows she isn't going to go).
Now am I getting older, but not very affluent. I would have leapt at the chance of seeing Mellencamp 20 years ago - in fact I have seen 3 of the last 4 gigs he's played in the UK and Hammersmith Odeon in 1988 was THE best gig I have seen (stop sniggering at the back, it was & I've seen a few) but haven't really followed him for well over a decade now. The ticket price is ridiculous - don't think I've ever paid more than £30 before - and think these crazy prices are a sure sign we're going to hell in a handcart. On top of everything, the tickets are for Hammersmith and I live in Durham!
I think I'm in, God help me. How do I sell it to Mrs Ghost??
You're going to
Helena Handcart? Does she know?