Neil Young (77) is the man to throw himself into an inflamed dispute about ticket prices in the United States.
Young is both disappointed and upset by ticket giant Ticketmaster’s high fees on concert tickets. On its own website he writes bluntly that it is no longer fun to go on tour in the US when fans have to pay an unfair amount to get to the concerts because of the company’s new, dynamic pricing system.
“It is over. The old days are gone,” he writes, and continues:
“I get a letter that owes me 3,000 dollars in tickets (around NOK 30,000, editor’s note) for a charity concert I’m going to give. That money goes neither to me nor to charity,” writes the Canadian rock legend.
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Several international media, including NME, has written about Neil Young’s outburst in recent days. Young’s post comes as a direct response to a similar reaction from The Cure and band manager Robert Smith (63).
Last week, The Cure released the tickets for a 30-date tour in the US via Ticketmaster. According to NME, the band was allowed to manage the ticket prices themselves, among other things to prevent black markets and that the tickets should not be transferable, so that the nominal price was retained.
The Cure were therefore pleasantly surprised when the response from the fans was overwhelmingly in favor of that ticketthe fees in several cases exceeded the ticket itselfthe price.
“Nauseating,” Cure CEO Robert Smith said on Twitter.
After a series of tweets and negotiations with Ticketmaster, The Cure reached a settlement to refund several fees that Robert Smith believed were “unnaturally high”.
Ticketmaster responded to Smith directly to calm tempers:
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing, i.e. that the tickets are constantly price regulated according to demand, has been the source of both conflict and heated discussions in the US music industry over the past year.
The criticism is, among other things, that the core fans do not get the opportunity – or the affordability – to see their heroes with this type of price system, which both Robert Smith in The Cure and Neil Young have seen tired of.
It is nevertheless Bruce Springsteen (73) who has come most into focus for dynamic ticket pricing, perhaps because he has defended the scheme, in a interview with Rolling Stone in the winter.
Springsteen fans raged after the statements, and the editor of the fan magazine Backstreets shut down the entire magazine after following The Boss closely for 43 years through Backstreets.
When Bruce Springsteen, who will come to Norway this summer, opened his first tour since 2016 in Tampa, Florida in February, there were free tickets in prime seats in Amalie Arena for $10,000, or NOK 100,000, due to the dynamic pricing.
And if you have plans for the Golden Circle, i.e. the standing places right in front of the stage, when Springsteen plays in Madison Square Garden in New York, you have to shell out 3,150 dollars – or 33,000 Norwegian kroner – for one ticket, according to Ticketmaster website.
Over NOK 5,000 of this is pure ticket fees.
Incidentally, the date for the concert in Madison Square Garden is April 1. The prices, however, are no April Fool’s joke.
