Are Concert Tickets Too Cheap? Link Drop
A round-up of the most important stories in music right now
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Today’s newsletter is link drop, meaning our monthly series for paid subscribers where I discuss art, news, and stories that have gotten me thinking and laughing in the last 30 days. This month, we talk about tiny vinyl, the return of nu-metal, some shady news from the streaming world, and so much more.
Are Concert Tickets Too Cheap?
Earlier this month, the internet was set on fire when Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said that concert tickets were “underpriced” and “had been for a long time.” I didn’t think this topic had the juice for an entire newsletter, but I wanted to talk about it a bit here.
First, are tickets underpriced? If you assume the true value of a concert ticket is what the highest bidder will pay, then yes. Secondary markets (e.g., StubHub, VividSeats) for much sought after concerts often price tickets thousands of dollars higher than the primary market. If Beyoncé sets her most expensive ticket prices at $800 and someone sells that same ticket for $5,000 on another market after the fact, then you could claim—as Michael Rapino does—that concert tickets are underpriced. At least the artist raising the prices means that they will capture the value rather than a middleman.
But let’s say we are not willing to accept that. I don’t want to live in a world where live music is a luxury good. But for the biggest acts, this is actually a hard problem to solve. There is tremendous demand for Taylor Swift tickets, for example, even with her playing multiple nights in each city and releasing the concert as a movie. With a limited supply of Taylor Swift and nearly endless demand, pricing isn’t a bad way to allocate the resource of Taylor Swift’s music. But how else could we do it to make things cheaper?
No Resale: You only let people resell back to the ticket vendor. The vendor can’t markup the prices. You cannot transfer tickets. This keeps things cheap but will not sate demand.
Lottery: You enter your name into a lottery. If you are selected, you can purchase a ticket with a capped price. You cannot transfer or resell it to anyone else. Again, this keeps things cheap, but will likely lead to more demand. Even if you’re not a big fan, why not throw your hat in the ring?
Proof of Fandom: You need to answer some trivia questions, provide some sort of streaming history, or go to a physical location to purchase. Again, you cannot transfer or resell your ticket to anyone else. This will likely lead to less demand by making tickets harder to get. The ease of online ticketing gets sacrificed, though.
I am not advocating a solution here but highlighting some tradeoffs. That said, I think focusing this discussion on the biggest stars is kind of silly. In most major cities, there are scores of live music experiences that cost next to nothing. Taylor Swift tickets are never going to be as cheap as we want, but many other tickets will be.
I’d rather focus live music initiatives on inspiring more people to check out smaller acts and capping ticket processing fees. Those eat into a much larger portion of spending for smaller acts.
News from Inside the Music World
“AI Artist Xania Monet Has Racked Up Millions of Streams. How Much Money Is That Worth?” by Elizabeth Dilts Marshall (Billboard)
Another AI-generated artist is going viral. The difference in this story is this artist allegedly got a multimillion dollar record deal. I’m skeptical of the validity of this story, but I think it is emblematic of things to come. I should have more on this in the coming days via my friend
’s newsletter.
“Introducing Instagram Rings: A New Award Celebrating Creativity” (Instagram)
Not music news specifically, but Instagram announced an award show for creators on the app. From MTV to AOL, many companies try to start an award show at some point, so this isn’t a huge shock. That said, I think award shows work better when they are controlled by an external body (i.e., The Recording Academy) rather than an internet platform or media company.
“LimeWire acquires Fyre Festival, asking ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong?’” by Rob Wile (NBC News)
A headline that reads like MadLibs, I love reading stuff like this because it’s a good reminder how media companies and brands get resold and repackaged in ways that are often unrelated to how they made their name. LimeWire, for example, was a file-sharing service that competed with Napster until being shuttered in 2010 for large-scale copyright violations. According to NBC News, “In 2022, Austrian brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr bought LimeWire’s intellectual property and turned it into an NFT service.”
Relatedly, Napster is technically still around too, but it is now a legitimate streaming service. After being shuttered in the early-2000s, the Napster IP was sold off to Roxio, a software company. After Roxio bought PressPlay, a digital music store initially run by the major labels, they slapped the Napster name on it and turned it into a streaming service. Fun stuff.
Music History to Write Home About
Given our earlier conversation about Taylor Swift and concert ticket prices, I wanted to mention that I was lucky enough to see her on her record-setting Eras Tour. Despite ragging on her latest record, the Eras Tour was awesome. As the stadium shook during “Cruel Summer,” it was a good reminder that there is nothing like experiencing live music with 60,000 other fans.
During maybe the nadir of his popularity, Bob Dylan appeared on Letterman with a band he would never perform with again. They played “Jokerman,” the reggae-inspired opener from Infidels. Dylan did not go reggae that night. He was closer to an unknown punk act fighting for his life. It’s one the great live television performances, especially as he roams the stage unable to find a harmonica in the correct key.
One of the best things to come out of the internet over the last few years is Track Star*. Hosted by
, the show features people listening to songs and trying to name the artist. They get $5 if they get the first one right, then the money doubles every additional artist they get right. Though the show initially featured random people, they’ve had more musical legends of late. This episode with the inimitable Jon Batiste is a joy to watch.A Lot of News about Spotify
“Spotify founder Daniel Ek stepping down as CEO, company names co-CEOs to replace him” by Jaures Yip (CNBC)
Daniel Ek, the Spotify CEO that gets blamed for any problem that anybody has with the music industry, is stepping down from his position. After two decades at the helm of the streaming giant, Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström will become co-CEOs. Ek will remain on the company’s board.
“Spotify Embraces Creative AI While Cracking Down on Fraud” by Ashley Carman (Bloomberg)
Spotify finally released a statement on AI-generated music, and the response was generally positive. Here’s what they said in their press release:
At its best, AI is unlocking incredible new ways for artists to create music and for listeners to discover it. At its worst, AI can be used by bad actors and content farms to confuse or deceive listeners, push “slop” into the ecosystem, and interfere with authentic artists working to build their careers. That kind of harmful AI content degrades the user experience for listeners and often attempts to divert royalties to bad actors.
In addition, they said that they will strongly enforce rules against using AI for voice cloning and impersonation. They will also remove all AI-generated music that is engaging in spam or fraud efforts. Of note, they said this year they’ve already removed “75 million spammy tracks.” They also noted that they will allow people to disclose which music was created with AI. Given that this last point is opt-in, I expect nobody to use it. But the other stuff is encouraging!
“Spotify scraps shuffle restriction for users of free tier” by Murray Stassen (MusicBusinessWorldwide)
If you’re on Spotify’s paid tier, you wouldn’t know that the ad-supported tier has limited functionality. In fact, most lists of songs can only be played on shuffle. This was to incentivize people to upgrade as subscribing users generate more revenue than ad-tier users. This has changed.
Spotify has scrapped their shuffle restriction for ad-tier users. This is likely to better compete with robust ad-supported services, like Audiomack and SoundCloud, around the globe.
“You can now connect your Spotify account to ChatGPT: Here’s how to do it” by Lauren Forristal (TechCrunch)
In a post-SEO world, Spotify is making a play for discoverability by integrating with ChatGPT. Now, if you turn on the integration, all music related requests from ChatGPT will return Spotify links and playlists. This is in addition to the fact that Spotify already has in-house AI-playlisting tools within their app.
Online Posts That Gave Me Life
If you enjoyed this piece, consider ordering my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. The book chronicles how I listened to every number one hit in history and used what I learned during the journey to write a data-driven history of popular music from 1958 through today.
story we’ve seen a million times in all fields. people underrate basic supply and demand. everyone wants their demand to be subsidised and no one wants to ration supply. the predictable backlash to high prices or dynamic pricing is completely unreasonable and just means scalpers capture the upside instead of the artists! let artists charge the actual value of their concerts and everyone needs to chill out about it