We have a greed, with which we have agreed...
and you think you have to want more than you need...
until you have it all, you won't be free.
Everyone has limits. If you want to make it in the music industry, you must build an army of supporters. Without one, you'll live album to album, tour to tour, hand to mouth. The rules of the game have changed in the last few years and in light of recent economic changes, this affects everyone. AC/DC and Metallica get it. Heavy metal has never been about the mainstream and even when Sharon Osborne (god bless her) started increasing the prices for Ozzfest, attendance shrunk dramatically. She tried giving the tickets away for free, but didn't turn a profit and now Ozzfest is back to being like any other festival, a weekend one.
The average human can't spend more than $100 on a concert ticket...and if they spend $100, it better be a damn good seat for a damn good show. I saw R.E.M. earlier this year with Modest Mouse and the National as openers and the top ticket price was $85 which one of my friends said was "in line and fair". Well, when I showed up to the arena and there were less than 10,000 people there (the arena could hold up to 17,000 in their configuration), I thought to myself, "they misjudged how much people would pay". R.E.M. is more of a college band...people tended to discover them in college and as a result of their educations, these individuals have more money to spend on tickets. So if R.E.M. fans can't charge $45 to $85, what will other acts do?
Bruce Springsteen has a decently priced top-tier ticket ($95)...but he needs a ticket below $50 and not just in the south, but at every show! I have no issue paying $95 for a Bruce show, but once again, the tickets better be great. It was announced yesterday that Bon Jovi had the top grossing tour of 2008...for which I applaud them, it must be a great and rewarding feeling to them. But did they overcharge? Leaving the fan club completely out of it, many people I spoke to after shows in person, on the phone and via email quietly expressed to me that the band seemed "tired" and that the price of the ticket in comparison to their seats wasn't fair especially compared to prices and performances from previous tours. Most shockingly many expressed the doubt of ever paying that much to see them again. Bon Jovi fans are more in line with Metallica and AC/DC fans than people may realize. Both have fan bases that are largely blue-collar and the day you make a pair of tickets out of the reach of the average consumer is not a good one. Bruce Springsteen only sold-out about a third of his US shows on his 2007-2008 tour and while many of the shows were 95% filled, this is a far cry from the 1980's or even the 1999 reunion tour where tickets were impossible to find (and where the price topped out at $67.50). Once a pair if tickets passes $150, people stop caring and when they stop caring, they stop listening to your new music and well, they get a bad taste in their mouth. If your core base leaves you...then you have to work twice as hard to lure those casual fans to your shows. Why take such a risk?
Look at what happened to Metallica earlier this decade. Was there a more hated act in the world? I'd dare say more people hated Metallica than they hated Creed. Then they released St. Anger and that hatred grew ten-fold. But the band had two aces in their pocket. First things first...their ticket prices (while not cheap) are affordable (usually between $50 and $80) and their live shows always leave you wanting more. No matter how bad an album may be, when you enter an arena and the band pummels you for 2+ hours with a set-list structured for the fans (and where on average 9-songs were changed up nightly), you tend to forgive them for a bad album {Review link here}. Secondly, there was the magnanimous Some Kind of Monster film which took you inside a band breaking at the seams. You saw it all-ego, love, hate and lives changing. SKOM wasn't just a great Metallica film, it was a great music film and ultimately it was a great film...period. It was the best film I saw all of 2004 and I saw around 200 that year. Fans saw their vulnerability and saw that despite having everything any person could want, they were still human beings that feel pain like you and me...and who want to make music that entrenches itself inside your soul. Fans forgave them after that...and the band spent years making Death Magnetic {Album Review link} and guess what, it largely exceeded expectations. The band then put tickets on sale for their tour and they were $5 more than what they were in 2004 and if you bought through the pre-sale, you will get a free-download of the concert in the weeks after the show. Plus, Metallica has an in-the-round stage which makes even the worse balcony seats good ones. While they may not have a $20 ticket, their have fairly priced tickets.
Ditto AC/DC. Even at $89.50 per ticket, it is viewed as a deal because they haven't toured in 7-years and this is a band whose absence has only made them stronger. If you want to tour every 2-3 years, you can't charge $100+. Look at Dave Matthews, he tours every year and the highest priced ticket is $75 with many affordable tiers as well. Dave knows he has a younger fan base who may stick with him for 20 or 30 years. Could Dave sell the best 1,000 seats for $150 or $200...easily. But he would alienate his core fans and that is the worse sin any act can commit. This is why Metallica fans felt Lars was off his rocker in 2000. Yes, Napster was illegal, but guess what, Metallica fans grew into them through cassette dubs of their albums and when Lars fought to shut Napster down, many fans felt "Hey, if it wasn't for those cassette dubs, I never would have spent the time with your music and fallen in love with it". Metallica has made amends, but how will other acts like Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, KISS, the Eagles, Bon Jovi and even Bruce Springsteen manage the changing economic climate? Will 20,000 fans pay north of $100 for a few hours of music?
If you raise your price significantly tour to tour you must improve and give the fans more. Or you can have a steady increase and even if you're not at your best on a given night, people will be less forgiving. If you spend $25 on a show and the band calls it in, you walk away disappointed but not steaming. If you spend $150 on a show that doesn't deliver, you may lose that fan for life. Why? Because the stakes are too high to risk it again. If you went to a restaurant and spent $100 per person and the service was bad and the food didn't deliver, would you go back? I highly doubt it.
About 5-years back I found myself backstage at a concert with an artist I respect beyond words. I even got to spend time with them. As I was talking with a few industry people, I accidentally started speaking with one of the promoters of the show. He expressed his disappointment to me that the show (which was a exquisite experience) did not sell well and that they had inexplicably added a second show that the promoter was losing his shirt on. What was shocking is that the artist had a ticket price of $130 for the majority of the seats and even some of the cheaper balcony seats being $60 and $85. He was stressed and expressed his disappointment in sales. I asked him why they decided to charge north of $100 for an artist who at their peak was really a large cult artist. He told me that the only way for them to turn a profit was to charge that amount because the artist had such a large "guarantee" that hovered around the seven-figure mark. I asked that if an artist charged $75, $50 and $25, would the promoter and artist would still turn a profit and the promoter looked at me and said "A huge one". He explained to me that the lower the price of the ticket, the more willing they would have been in giving them a portion of the concessions, a higher merchandise split (an artist only get about 50% of the merch sold at the arena) and that they may have even negotiated for part of the parking. If 18,000 seats had been sold at $75, $50 and $25 the act would have grossed $900,000 in ticket sales alone. When I asked said promoter why more acts wouldn't lay it on the line for a cheaper ticket (which would most likely move swiftly) he looked at me, smiled slyly and uttered one word..."Greed".
Eddie Vedder-"Society"
Oh it's a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed...
and you think you have to want more than you need...
until you have it all, you won't be free.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
When you want more than you have, you think you need...
and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place...
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,
but if less is more, how you keepin' score?
It means for every point you make, your level drops.
Kinda like you're startin' from the top...
and you can't do that.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me
Society, have mercy on me.
I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.
Society, crazy indeed.
I hope you're not lonely...
without me.
