Imagine that you have paid $400 for a concert ticket and … wait, WHAT?!?! I can’t even get past THAT! Last year both of my sons wanted to go to concerts so I went along – and tickets were $55 for Kid Cudi and $25 for Skrillex. Bruno Mars was part of our NY State Fair package, and my last show was the $40 per ticket for Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion tour. But looking at the image above courtesy of DigitalMusicNews shows that what I paid for 4 Metheny tickets wouldn’t gain admission for ONE of us to many shows this year!
Good news: fans are still willing to pay outrageous amounts to see their favorite acts live, and that includes hefty surcharges. Here’s a round-up of the most expensive August shows, with average ticket prices quoted. It comes courtesy of Dashlane, a company focused on quick, pre-loaded and encrypted transactions on the web.
But I do know many folks willing to pay $300 for an all-access pass to Lollapalooza who make it an ‘event weekend’, and that is fine. But the amazing thing about this news is that the top priced show – Madonna – comes from someone who is in a PR mess yet again for a dismal show that didn’t even last an hour!
French fans took Madonna’s “Express Yourself” lyrics seriously on Thursday night when they booed and expressed anger at the singer for cutting short her show at famed Paris concert hall l’Olympia after about 45 minutes.
After Madonna left the stage, fans remained in their seats booing and yelling insults like “salope,” the French word for “slut.”
Madonna took the stage at about 10:15 p.m. and finished around 11 p.m.
The concert venue was filled mostly with big Madonna fans since the tickets for the show were available only to members of her official fan club before being released for sale to the general public. The concert was broadcast live via YouTube.
The concert was added to the singer’s tour just last week and sold out after just a few hours, with Material Girl devotees paying from 80 to more than 280 euros for the limited seats. Hundreds of fans gathered outside several hours before the show to fill the Olympia’s 2,700 seats, and many slept on the streets overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. After the show, many fans gathered in the streets in front of the theater and yelled “remboursez! remboursez!” (“give us our money back!”).
Here is the video from the end of the 45-minute show … when it is clear that the road crew is starting to dismantle and pack things up – and the crowd is NOT pleased!
What do you think? Have you been to a concert this year? What are you seeing for ticket prices?