Sarah McLachlan says Lilith sales "pretty soft"<\/a>)<\/p>\nWhat Sarah says seems reasonable, that only 300 seats or so out of 16,000 are $250, and that there are 9,000 that are $25, until you click through and try to buy some.<\/p>\n
At the local L.A. date at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre\/Irvine Meadows, the first Ticketmaster choice is:<\/p>\n
‘Lilith Universe’ – Diamond Package<\/p>\n
The price? $750 a ticket.<\/p>\n
Then we’ve got:<\/p>\n
‘Lilith Spirit’ – Gold Spirit<\/p>\n
The price is: $450 a ticket.<\/p>\n
Then there’s ‘Lilith Spirit’ – Silver Package.\u00c2\u00a0 Prices there are $300 a ticket.<\/p>\n
And then, fourth choice down, we come to "NEW FULL PRICE TICKET".\u00c2\u00a0 Where the options are: $252, $101, $71.50, $41.50 and $31.50.<\/p>\n
But it gets even worse.\u00c2\u00a0 After that, there’s a line for "Citi Cardmember Preferred Tickets".\u00c2\u00a0 And then, at the very bottom, we’ve got "Lawn 4 Pack Offer". Those are only $14.25 apiece, but after service charges, aren’t you just better off buying the ultimate DVD, which you can watch again and again in the privacy of your own home. up close and personal?<\/p>\n
In other words, first and foremost, we’ve got a perception problem.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how many super-expensive seats there are, perception is you just can’t get a good one unless you pay up, demoralizing potential attendees.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, no one on the bill is "hot".\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no GaGa that makes people NEED to go.<\/p>\n
And there you’ve got the modern concert business.\u00c2\u00a0 People either NEED to go, or they pass.\u00c2\u00a0 And no matter how cheap you make the tickets, most people won’t go if it’s not a hot show.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like Broadway, people will pony up for a few shows, and the rest close.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, "Shrek" may do decent business, but the non-Shreks will do even worse, because now movies are no longer entertainment on a whim, but expensive planned events, you don’t want to get ripped off and you’re no longer in the habit of going.<\/p>\n
Wow, we need to start over.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the best way is to build new stars.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s so difficult in a world where radio and TV mean ever less and no one’s willing to put in the time to build.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, it’s tough to build, no one wants to see you in the clubs!<\/p>\n
And then we’ve got to rethink the whole ticket-buying culture.<\/p>\n
In other words, it’s not about beating the scalpers, reaping the margin for the acts, so much as it is about getting the best tickets in the hands of fans for the cheapest price.<\/p>\n
Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t this the OPPOSITE of what everybody’s saying?<\/p>\n
Yup.<\/p>\n
In other words, if we continue to follow the movie industry’s lead, we end up with a smaller business, that excludes most people.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, Michael Rapino says the average Live Nation ticket buyer only goes to a show once or twice a year.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t you remember going once a month?<\/p>\n
And GaGa may sell out, but Eagles stadium dates are soft.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can even get tickets for U2.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems that other than GaGa, everybody’s affected.<\/p>\n
Except maybe for Taylor Swift.\u00c2\u00a0 Who insists that every ticket be cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 Putting forth an image of democracy, of we’re all in it together.\u00c2\u00a0 Wasn’t that how it used to be?\u00c2\u00a0 The acts and the audience bonded and were one?\u00c2\u00a0 Before there was a barricade built between the two, with the acts rich on one side, flying in private jets and riding in limousines as their customers feel fleeced?<\/p>\n
It’s great if you’re rich, but most people are not.<\/p>\n
Then again, they’ll pay for something they want.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the iPad or iPhone.\u00c2\u00a0 They garner premium prices, they’re hot.\u00c2\u00a0 But most music products are not.<\/p>\n
How do we make the events hotter?\u00c2\u00a0 How do we make people want to go?\u00c2\u00a0 How do we maintain the perception the average person can get a good ticket at a fair price?a<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This weekend you can go see "Shrek" for twenty bucks. Or maybe not. In the process of trying to maintain revenue, the movie industry is trying to squeeze every last buck out of its customers for special events.\u00c2\u00a0 By time they’re done, will there even be a movie business?\u00c2\u00a0 Or will it look more like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Lm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2937,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2936\/revisions\/2937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}