Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Concert Ticket Prices = Out Of Control

I just paid $100 for 2 tickets to see Wilco at McCarren Park Pool. This is getting crazy. For one thing, this show will probably be annoying because of the hipsters, but really- how is anyone supposed to afford that?
McCarren Pool holds an insane amount of people - JellyNYC (who is NOT producing this show, but do selflessly and brilliantly produce the greatest free live concerts ever known to man) claims that capacity is 5000+, which means that all told they (by 'they' I in no way mean JellyNYC, the producers of entirely separate yet incredible free live shows) stand to make at least $250,000 for this show, not including beer, etc.
wow.
I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of shows i've not purchased tix to for this summer because of the excessive cost. Wilco is probably the only band I would do this for (okay, Led Zeppelin too), but I'm forgoing seeing them multiple times this year because every single show is so expensive.
Just goes to show how the industry to trying to make up for the lost revenue of CD sales. Prepare to start paying much much more for every concert, except for the free shows put on by JellyNYC. Those shows will be free. And well produced. By 5 hard-working people that have 1 over-exuberant friend.

6 comments:

meinnyc said...

dear kitten,

please do your research before you post harmful, erroneous assumptions.

A) jellynyc is NOT responsible for the wilco show. all of jellynyc's pool shows are absolutely FREE. the ticketed show for wilco at mccarren park is being offered by AEG.

B) jellynyc is run by a tiny office of 5 people. they are my friends. they also all work mad hours and probably have less money in their pockets than you. i.e. after paying the bands (the $$$ of which comes from long scouted after sponsors, which ain't easy. you try arranging as much some time.), security staff, the venue, the city parks department etc....you'd be surprised at how little is left over with which to pay rent at the end of the day.

in short jellynyc busts insane ass to provide either FREE concerts or very cheap ones which make 1,000s of people happy, which is hardly worthy of any sort of complaint.

please revise your post!

: )

texplush said...

wow, looks like JellyNYC has a google alert on their name.

I in no way meant to imply that JellyNYC was producing the Wilco show. I was only citing them as my source for McCarren Pool's capacity. I recognize that my syntax may have made this unclear and for that I apologize to the legions of readers who, having been outraged by this post, are now undoubtedly protesting outside of JellyNYC's shantytown office.

Via Chicago said...

Wow, a robot reader AND ~controvery~! in the same week? We've hit the big time at last boys!

Seriously though, yeah, concert prices suck. Kudos to anyone, be it artist, venue, whoever, who makes a conserted effort to not screw the customers.

Eric said...

Well edited. I was gonna say, "What's up google alert?" Unless we really have become that big. Buzznet (which owns Stereogum and now Idolator) has expressed interest in acquiring us, but I say we hold out for Gawker media, so we can monetize the shit out of this online platform.

drischord said...

I know that we have readers beyond ourselves, but this comment is um... interesting. Please tell me none of you have Google alerts on your names. (Probably don't even want to know the answer. I'm looking at you Quinapalus.)

Eric said...

I have a google alert for the XYZ Affair, which, as you can imagine, gets a lot of false positives from history buff websites.