Midsize Concerts Get Squeezed

Concertgoers are, by and large, choosing to either splurge on major, superstar events or check out small, local acts on a dime… leaving the middle-class acts with inflated ticket prices struggling to fill venues.

Why It Hurts: The downturn in attendance for mid-tier artists is causing tour cancellations and decreasing earnings for once-stable acts. Meanwhile, the biggest musicians are commanding record-breaking tour revenue and soaking up all the media and social media attention.

Between the Sets: Artists you expect to be doing well on the road are struggling to fill venues that they sold out on their last tours.

• Ticket resale company Automatiq found that ticket prices in the $50 to $200 range — the cost to see most midsize artists — slid 23% while they were on sale, and 37% ended up selling for below their listings.
• Meanwhile, 40% of US concert tickets on StubHub are selling for less than $50, while 80% go for less than $100.
• That means people were lowering prices to get more people in the door. Case in point: you can find tickets on SeatGeek to see Kacey Musgraves in Texas for $33 or Justin Timberlake in Arkansas for just $10. Those are bargain-bin prices for those artists.
• But sometimes, ticket sales are so low that there’s no way the tour can recoup costs (which have gone up in recent years)… so they scrap it entirely. That’s recently happened to Jennifer Lopez, The Black Keys, and Animal Collective.

Encore: So, what does all this data illuminate about concertgoers? Concertgoers are only dropping the big bucks for their “bucket-list” shows, says Stubhub Head of Global Customer Service Operations Joseph Bocanegra. That’s because tickets are so high, and concerts so plentiful, that it takes a real standout cultural moment to get people to leave the house — a similar thing is happening in Hollywood and Broadway. While that’s a pain point for most artists, it may lead to a revival in clubs and amphitheaters booking bigger acts than in recent years.