Staff Writer: Rena Danho
Email: rdanho@umassd.edu
Music is something that people love. For some, it is vital to their everyday lives. But along with music comes concerts. Artists will drop a new album and then announce a tour to perform for their fans.
However, when we see popular artists like Harry Styles, Metallica, and Luke Combs, we see prices at $300 being the cheapest and only going up from there.
A lot of people miss out on seeing these artists live because of the inaccessibility of their tickets. Although artists have tried finding a way around it by selling cheap tickets to fans who sign up for presale, scalpers still somehow find a way to buy the tickets and sell them for more than 10 times the price.
Fans are rightfully upset about having to spend so much money on seeing their favorite artists live. With fees, gas, parking, and potentially finding somewhere to stay after the concert the cost increases even more.
But, one band might have solved this scapler problem. And it could possibly turn into the future of how we sell concert tickets.
Paramore is one of the biggest bands in the music industry; stemming from emo music and slowly evolving to alternative and indie. Since forming in 2003, they have created a huge following behind them and are known for their shows; touring with the now-ended music festival Warped Tour, and even doing cruises called Parahoy (where you leave from Miami with the band and travel to a private island). Being in the music industry for so long, Paramore has had its fair share of seeing the prices of their shows go up and down like stocks.
Paramore is coming out with a new album in February called “This is Why”. After 5 years of not releasing new music, you can imagine how anticipated this album is.
Currently, the band is releasing tour dates for the album, and fans are anxiously waiting for tickets to go on sale. Hoping to get at least one ticket to see this band, and hoping to not get scammed out of tickets and have to pay way more than what the original sale price was.
Thankfully Paramore found a way to sell tickets and make them basically unprofitable.
A few days before Paramore put tickets up for sale you had to put in a ticket request for the shows you wanted to go to, limiting customers to 2 shows each. Right after, they ask for your payment information and that’s all there is to do for getting the tickets. If your request gets confirmed, you get charged immediately on the card you gave to the website and receive an email confirmation.
There catch with the tickets though. You cannot transfer these them, they will stay with you and only you after buying them, and if you are going to the concert with other people, every party member must enter at the same time with the person who bought the ticket originally.
If something comes up and you’re not able to make the concert the only way to “sell” the ticket is through an exchange program where they are sold at the original price they were bought for, including taxes and fees. Meaning, tickets cannot be marked up or down.
This is a huge thing for fans of artists who don’t want to spend more than double the original ticket price for an artist they love.
Music shouldn’t have to come at a cost where you’re spending sometimes more than $500 on it, especially when you’re buying from someone who doesn’t share the same love and appreciation for the artist as the fans do.
Hopefully, after Paramore does this, other artists will catch on and slowly begin to adjust to selling tickets through programs like this and care more about making the fans happy rather than making money.