Downloading keeps show prices up

Although concert tickets have risen in price drastically over the past few years, fans don’t seem to notice.

This fact may sound counterintuitive, but concert attendance shows no sign of declining in the near future.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the average concert ticket price has risen to $61.58 from $25.81 in the last decade. However, the average is often far surpassed. When Prince released his album “3121,” tickets for floor seats were just that, $3,121.

While these prices may seem outrageous, due to the trend of downloading music illegally online, bands are relying quite a bit more on touring rather than album sales as their main source of income. Some bands even force their album onto people who attend their concerts by including the CD in the ticket purchase. On Cute is What We Aim For’s 2008 summer tour, ticket holders were given the incentive of receiving a wristband to meet the band members along with a CD purchase.

High prices, however, aren’t stopping fans from going to the shows. The fastest-growing category on stubhub.com, a secondary ticket-sales Web site, is concert tickets. This category reached more than $100 million in sales by the end of 2007, nearly double the previous year’s figure, with Hannah Montana’s “Best of Both Worlds” tour outperforming sales of renowned acts such as Van Halen and Bruce Springsteen.

“If I want to see a band enough, I will pay to see them,” third-year geography/environmental studies student Manuel Urrutia said. “As long as I place value on the cultural entertainment and social value (the band) carries, then I would buy the tickets.”

Artists’ shift in income from recorded music to live concerts comes largely from the easy accessibility of MP3s and online music. When CDs were a new technology, it was much more exciting for people to go out and purchase one to bring home and listen to. Now that they are less common, however, music-goers are looking for more interactive ways to enjoy songs.

“There are more options for listening to music now. Before it was either buy the album or listen to the radio, but now people are exposed to a lot more music,” Urrutia said. “Web sites like lastfm.com allow people to type in the names of their favorite artists and hear music that sounds like it.”

Some fans, however, are just looking for a way to support their favorite artists, and they do this by attending concerts even though they may not be paying to listen to their recorded music.

“Fans know that most of the money from CD sales goes to the record companies,” second-year undeclared student Alexa Friedman said. “Bands get more of the profit from concerts than they do from record sales, so in order to support our favorite artists we have to go to their concerts.”

Judging by pricing trends, concert tickets aren’t going to be getting cheaper anytime soon, even with tours becoming much more frequent. With the shift from digital media to live shows, however, the demand for tickets is increasing along with the price.

Start saving up, music lovers.

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