The Pain of Getting Concert Tickets
Concert tickets are becoming increasingly difficult to afford and reserve. Photo by Lilian DeFilippis '26
Nothing excites us more than when our favorite artists announce a tour. Fans begin to plan outfits, guess what songs will make the set list and decide who they’re gonna take.
The rush of seeing an artist live in concert is one many say is life-changing. Getting to dance around and scream songs in a crowd filled with fans is a very cathartic feeling. It's the thrill of the whole experience. But when the time rolls around for buying tickets, all those hopes go down the drain.
Concert tickets have become some of the hardest items to obtain. Between prices, “pre-sale” and selling out, fans deal with various components during the process that may even stop them from wanting to go at all. It's a very stress-inducing experience that fans endure for their favorite artist.
“Pre-Sale” is a method that allows fans to sign up to get early access to ticket sales. Fans are allowed to sign up, and from there, few are selected to get a unique code to enter the sale for the date they’ve chosen. This method is completely random and more secure.
Many artists have resorted to using “pre-sale” codes as a way to stop the chaos of ticket buying from happening on one day, as opposed to the general sale, where anyone can join the queue to purchase tickets.
We’ve seen the use of unique codes being used for concerts like Taylor Swift's Eras Tour or Olivia Rodrigo's The Guts World Tour.
But at recent concerts, unique pre-sale codes aren't being used anymore. Instead, anyone can have access to the sale, making “pre-sales” more like multiple general sales. This allows for websites to crash, scalpers to grab tickets and errors to occur. This is also why thousands of people are in the queue for certain shows. It's putting everyone at a disadvantage.
Ticketmaster is the end-all be-all of most entertainment events and basically all concerts, not leaving many choices for other options when it comes time to buy tickets. Fans have spoken out about their hatred for Ticketmaster, as it has caused them so many problems with various ticket sales.
Even after facing many problems with ticket sales and backlash, Ticketmaster continues to face these problems and never fixes them.
“Ticketmaster nevertheless allows brokers to post these illegally obtained tickets for resale on its platform, then profits from the additional fees and markups it unilaterally adds to the resale tickets,” according to the FTC.
Since Ticketmaster hasn't planned to address these problems anytime soon, concert sales will continue to be stressful and messy for all artists, especially bigger artists.
All things must come at a pretty little price, and concert tickets certainly aren't that pretty. It is truly like paying an arm and a leg to get good seats at concerts.
Resellers or scalpers are also very much to blame for these high prices. Since anyone can sign up for pre-sale and have access to the sale, scalpers will go in and buy multiple seats for face value, leaving slim pickings for fans joining the sale later on. Afterwards, once time has passed, scalpers will then relist these same tickets for hundreds of dollars more than the original price.
Recently, Harry Styles announced that he was going back on tour after taking a three-year hiatus from music and touring. With his return, he'll be having a 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden, making this his only U.S. show for the tour. Fans were able to sign up for regular presale as well as an Amex presale for all Amex cardholders. Joining the queue, fans were ready for the battle ahead of them for tickets, but when they got into the sale, the prices were appalling.
“I would finally get in, there would be lower bowl tickets left, and the cheapest I saw were $558, and that was just for one section. Insane prices,” said Camryn Maloney ‘27, voicing how even during the pre-sale, ticket prices were already through the roof.
Even after Maloney and her sister both signed up for 10 days together, they weren't able to get tickets due to the insane prices ranging from $500-$1,000 for Madison Square Garden.
“(It’s) just absolute insanity, exploitation of the fans. And after disappearing for four years and coming back and demanding these ticket prices on a pre-sale, a PRE-SALE, it’s just insane. Insane,” added Maloney.
Others wouldn't even budge at the prices since they were so absurd.
“Looking at Harry’s tickets, I didn’t even attempt. I feel like festival tickets are much more worth it now than one person/bands' concert cause the prices now are the same if not lower,” said Ava Moylan ‘28, offering an alternative to spending hundreds of dollars for one to two hours of a single artist and instead, putting that money towards festivals that host 20-30 artists.
But the main question here is, why are these prices so insanely high? Why can't artists lower themselves to accompany all their fans?
So much goes into a tour, between what we see on the stage and what happens behind the scenes. It truly does depend on the artist and what production level they’re bringing for the tour.
Over the years, going on tour has become so expensive for artists. They have to pay their team, workers and for their production, basically.
“When a ticket is sold, the majority of the proceeds from the ticket's face value goes to the artist. The promoter takes a small cut, and the rest goes to show costs, such as lighting, audio and permits, according to Ticketmaster,” said Ayana Archie in an NPR article.
This racks up a huge bill for the artists to pay, leaving some with the only option to raise their ticket prices in order to gain back that money. Artists aren't even able to tour anymore cause they don’t have the money to fund a project like this.
Certain artists will see how fans react to these prices and do nothing about it, leaving some to believe if they even care about their fans. Others, such as Olivia Dean, will fight back with Ticketmaster to ensure that fans are not only the ones getting the tickets, but that they are affordable to all.
Dean fought with Ticketmaster to “do better” when it came to their re-selling policies. In doing so, Ticketmaster ended up “refunding fans for any markup they already paid to resellers on Ticketmaster,” said Mark Savage of BBC, showing how artists have come to realize the problems with ticket sales and pricing. This offers a sliver of hope for the future of buying tickets.
Whether you have tickets or not for any upcoming concerts, or you’re just sitting back and watching the world unfold, the overall ticket prices are insane. We can all agree that the process of getting tickets has been absurd. It's something that ruins the joy and excitement we’re supposed to have when we picture seeing our favorite artists live.
I’ve dealt with trying to get tickets for so many shows and have been disappointed by the outcome. Hope is still out there that these problems will be acknowledged and resolved for future ticket sales to come. But who knows? Maybe I just want to believe that, so the next time I try to get tickets for an upcoming concert, it'll all go smoothly.