Is anyone here still into live concerts these days?


Concert Ticket Prices Are Expected to Keep Rising in 2025 and Beyond

keeps me wondering if it's even worth it anymore (smaller live music venues excluded as they don't typically charge as much)

tippydi
Post removed 

  "F that!  I do not use that phrase lightly."

That proves how adamant you are about it! Tad out of character for you...

I don't tend to go see popular music so ticket prices aren't so much an issue for me. I typically see Phish 3-5 times a year they keep their ticket prices sane and mostly smaller club shows jazz mostly.

You betcha ….but, very selectively for class acts only.

in March 2024, I paid the StubHub asking price for killer floor tix - front and centre ninth row from the stage- to see THE EAGLES live.

In August, it was BLUE RODEO in an outside venue,

In November, it was for great tickets to see DIANA KRALL live.

I now have CHRIS BOTTI live in concert tickets coming up in a couple of months.

TAKEAWAY:

” Price is what you pay….. Value is what you get …”

- Warren Buffett,

 

I rarely go to large venue (20,000 seat and larger) shows. The disconnect between seeing the band playing is just too much. Don’t get me wrong, I went to plenty of them in the decades past, from Pink Floyd, many Grateful Dead shows, Phish, Widespread Panic, Paul McCartney, The Police, Sting, Neil Young, Steely Dan, and more recently, Goose.

But always for more bang for my bucks, I loved going to smaller "bar" or "warehouse" shows, venues holding between 150 and 5000 people. They were always cheaper and now, a LOT cheaper, and you felt like you were actually seeing the band and had some interaction with them.

My favorite venues are the Ramkat in Winston-Salem, the Orange Peel in Asheville, The Visulite in Charlotte, The Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh, and Pisgah Brewing Co, in Black Mountain. All these venues are open to audience recording too, which is a hobby of mine.

Prices for seeing bands at these venues ranges from $30 to $50 and are well worth it. I mainly go to see rock jam bands (think Spafford, Eggy, moe, lespecial, Aqueous), Americana, or jazz, and a few singer-songwriters. These places have the sound quality dialed in very well, and most don’t blow your ears out either.

I won’t say I’ll never go to a "large, expensive" show again, but it would have to be someone I really, really liked.

I haven’t been lately, but I went for about 20 years to a 4-day Americana festival called Merlefest, that has about 10 stages going, and everything from straight ahead bluegrass to rock. For the price, you get to see many, many artists.

To show the disconnect at large shows, some YouTubers recorded some of the songs as presented in commercials or videos from Taylor Swift’s recent live tour. They found that on most of the songs, she wasn’t even singing live. They were canned "prerecorded" vocals. No thanks. I mean I guess her fans don’t care and they just want to see her dance around the stage, but I can listen to a record for nearly free via Tidal and pop my own popcorn and get beers a lot cheaper.