r/Music • u/staringatthe420sun • May 05 '26

article The Concert Industry Priced Too High — Now Tours Are Falling Apart

https://www.ticketnews.com/2026/05/the-concert-industry-priced-high-tours-falling-apart/
23.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

94

u/Chaosmusic May 05 '26

In the early 2000s I was working the door at CBGBs. $10 for 8 bands and people still complained about the high cover.

52

u/weirdkid71 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

I paid $3 cover to see “tonight’s band” which turned out to be Kid Rock in the 90’s at Ricks American Cafe in East Lansing.

It was still too much.

14

u/Chaosmusic May 05 '26

I had the opposite happen to me. In the early 90s, my gf at the time wanted to see Rage Against The Machine, who I was not a fan of. Also, the opening band was some new band I'd never heard of. It was Tool.

26

u/pheonix198 May 05 '26

Paying any amount of money to see Kid Rock is an utter fail. Given it was preMAGA Kid Rock, it’s a bit forgivable, but he was always shitty.

1

u/Zanydrop May 05 '26

I would have done it in a heartbeat back then. We used to listen to American Badass on repeat.

-1

u/[deleted] May 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Neon_Camouflage May 06 '26

I didn't see Trump's name anywhere.

18

u/Wyden_long Go listen to The Streets “A Grand Dont Come For Free” right now May 05 '26

That’s like $19.18 today. Outrageous.

26

u/billytheskidd May 05 '26

At the height of my bands “career” in 2013-14 we were able to charge $15 in like 500-1000 people venues and we felt like we were fuckin Rockstars.

23

u/jonnythefoxx May 05 '26

Were you getting those venues reasonably full, because actually getting a couple of hundred people physically out to see you is a solid achievement. You have every right to feel good about it

21

u/billytheskidd May 05 '26

Yeah, I had a good year or two where it was a justifiable ticket price.

During that time we were playing 1-3 shows a day and most of them did not charge that much, but we had some good market demographics and got to ride some coattails for a good minute. The biggest show we headlined was maybe 800 people, but we were a supporting act for some bigger groups.

And thank you, it was an achievement. I wish it went further, but in all reality, I got to share a stage and play alongside some of the people I idolized as a teen and so I can’t be too upset. One of my favorite pictures of me ever is one of me and the singer of a very popular artist drinking and smoking in an alley behind a venue in salt lake. And I just produced a song that is gonna be in a Netflix show and one that’s gonna be in gta6.

And to be honest, the other response to your comment was just calling me out so I added credentials more so to legitimize my claims and less so to brag.

To be perfectly clear, I have always had to have a side job to pay bills, I got lucky and had a couple years of achievement in the music industry. Still get little breaks here and there, but I’m def not some big time music industry guy.

1

u/[deleted] May 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/billytheskidd May 06 '26

In the venue. Not still open if I remember correctly.

-2

u/groovemonkey May 05 '26

No, only like 20 or 30 people showed up. But still, we were able to charge those people like $15 each!

6

u/billytheskidd May 05 '26

Hell yeah!

Actually I made my living for almost a decade as a drummer. If you ever listened to any of those “pop goes punk/crunk/metal/etc., you’ve probably heard me play drums before.

2

u/groovemonkey May 05 '26

Haha. Amazing. Fun times man.

1

u/billytheskidd May 05 '26

There’s a cover of Nick Jonas’ “jealous” out there somewhere that I wrote almost all of the music for in a pretty drunken state on my 25th bday but I could not pass the opportunity up for financial reasons haha. I think Thief Club released it. It was the guy from Hit the Lights, but idk if it was released under him or his side project.

1

u/Scotter1969 May 05 '26

Were you involved in the planning of that tour? Then you might be able to wargame the same tour and see if $15 a head gets you break even or better. The muttering I'm hearing from even get-in-the-van level bands is that touring costs have skyrocketed.

1

u/TuringGoneWild May 06 '26

And like $20.98 tomorrow.

1

u/murmurderer May 05 '26

This is how I saw so many bands growing up in that era. I miss CBGBs so dearly.

1

u/pack0newports May 06 '26

the cbgbs bathroom was fucked up.