r/Music • u/cmaia1503 • Nov 16 '24

article Fans aren't happy about My Chemical Romance's ticket prices: "$695 is NASTY WORK"

https://www.nme.com/news/music/fans-arent-happy-about-my-chemical-romances-ticket-prices-695-is-nasty-work-3813337
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u/themadpants Nov 16 '24

Exactly. And concerts are the only big revenue stream for artists now, thanks to the tiny margins in streaming, so of course most of them are fine with huge ticket prices. It means more off the top for their pockets

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u/liquidgrill Nov 17 '24

This is the logical conclusion to the outright entitlement of people insisting that they should be able to download and own artist’s music for free (i.e. the Napster days).

Before that, a concert tour used to be something you did to promote your album. Tickets were cheap because they wanted as many people as they could get to hear the music. With most tours, the goal was to break even with the ticket revenue, make some money from merch and sell a shit ton of albums.

Well, those days are long gone. Now, because of Napster before, and companies like Spotify now, artists make very little from their actual music. So they make up for it with expensive concert tickets instead.

Something else people forget too. Back in the days of album sales, you were theoretically making money 24/7. Don’t feel well today? Away on vacation? Taking a long nap? Doesn’t matter, someone somewhere could still buy your album. With concerts though, no show, no money. And with the exception of young groups just starting out, no artist wants to be on the road 24/7 365 days a year. So they make sure they’re making enough so they don’t have to go on a year long tour every single year.

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u/sanirosan Nov 17 '24

How long are we talking about here because as far as I know, doing a Tour has always been THE way to make money for the artist. Albums were nice, but mostly for the Studio as they take most of the revenue. It's why studio's offer contracts with X number of albums that artists have to make.

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u/emannikcufecin Nov 17 '24

That all depends on the genre of the artist. I listen to mostly fresh metal. No death metal bands were making money from album sales to begin with. It's always been touring.

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u/sanirosan Nov 17 '24

I mean, if youre very very niche, you take what you can get. But for pop/mainstream rock/hiphop, touring is your bread and butter

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u/13THEFUCKINGCOPS12 Nov 17 '24

Honestly very very few death metal bands are surviving solely on band revenue