4 ms·

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willi

by nayuki 3y ago

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks). The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
> The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity. Imagine viewing a pricing scheme that allows more socioeconomic groups access to the arts as the core problem. We're experiencing a great decline and fall as social services are failing, wages stagnating, and common cultural experiences are being squeezed for profit, only enabling the richest among us to experience any kind of common social event. And of course, the response is "keep increasing prices until its unbearable", just like we're doing with rent and housing prices, and calling this efficient. Inflating prices until few can afford it isn't efficient, its just short sighted greed. Finding a way to suppress prices and remove scalpers is a net benefit for the artists, venues, and patrons.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Access to arts and culture is broader now than it has been ever before in human history. If I want to listen to any Olivia Rodrigo song, I can go to YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music, search for “Olivia Rodrigo”, and be set. Other than the price of internet access and a device that can connect to the internet, it costs literally nothing, unless maybe I want to pay extra to get rid of advertisements.
- amenhotep 3y ago
  Few people think it's good that this is how things work. It would be great if artists could set affordable prices for their concerts and anyone who wanted could come! The contention is simply that that's not how it works, that supply and demand is a law not a guideline we can opt out of if we think it's inconvenient. It would be great if we could all just flap our hands and fly wherever we wanted, but gravity has something to say about that just as economics has something to say about "irrationally" priced tickets. Inventing the aeroplane is a laudable goal but go into it with clear eyes, not wishful thinking, and don't think you can keep gravity at bay by shaming it.
- hackeraccount 3y ago
  I'm flummoxed by this view but at least empathetic when it comes to food and shelter. When it comes to Olivia Rodrigo tickets I'm legitimately confused. If Rodrigo decided to abandon her career and only do private shows for Bill Gate's who's business would that be but hers? I think there's room for either disdain or pity for the person who cares about nothing other then money but who's going to make that judgement about another person's motivations? And who would jump in take action on that judgement?
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  The core problem is reality. Scarcity is reality. Free market economics, supply and demand is reality. You can try to ignore the equilibrium price point, just as you might ignore gravity, but reality will assert itself. Scalpers will always exist to rebalance the supply and demand equality. If you want to make something available to more socioeconomic groups, increase the supply. Simple as.
  - chris_va 3y ago
    ... and clearly not viable. Do you think an artist can do 1000 shows a year?
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      Welcome to reality. You can't make a scarce good cheap by willing it harder.
      - chris_va 3y ago
        You can make a scarce good cheap, just not for everyone in the market... hence the entire point of the discussion.
armada651 3y ago
The problem with raising the prices is that people are willing to pay so much for a ticket exactly because they're difficult to get. If the tickets were actually easily obtainable but more expensive then paradoxically people wouldn't be willing to pay as much for the ticket because of a perceived loss of value. And as mentioned in the other reply, many people disagree with the "greed is good" philosophy, hence the /s.
- philwelch 3y ago
  The root cause of scarcity here is the number of seats available. The biggest tours routinely book stadiums and arenas with tens of thousands of seats, and despite the scalping and high prices these venues usually sell out. It’s not like they’re all playing tiny downtown clubs. So how exactly are you going to make tickets easier to get?
  - nayuki 3y ago
    Scarcity - exactly. Say that an artist is holding a concert and 20 thousand seats are available. But she has 50 million fans all over the world. How do you allocate these 20 thousand seats - who will get them? You can either satisfy the highest bidders, the first in line, or a random lottery. But you cannot choose to disappoint no one. Economics is all about making hard choices, and you can't simply wish them away.
whartung 3y ago
In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I paid more, and I paid for the convenience, but I don't think I ever paid more than 50% of the face value. I was a dedicated concert goer back in the day, having spent a lot of time in ticket lines. By time I started, "sleeping overnight" was pretty much over with as an hour or so before the sale, the staff would come out, hand out wrist bands, and then say "#123 is the front of the line" with the 123 being some (I guess random) number from the range of wrist bands they gave out, and everyone else would line up, with #122 wrapping around and being behind whatever the highest band that went out. The premise being there was no reason to show up much more than just before the onsale time, since your arrival time was no guarantee of line position. Similarly, at one venue, they simply handed out numbers, low number wins. After we picked ours up, there was a guy on the edge willing to buy low numbers. I was once first in line, but the tickets I got were underwhelming, which made me more cynical about the buying process. Then, there was that one time, my poor wife, bought us some tickets. There was no way she could have known. There was no way anyone, really, could have known. It was a typical amphitheater layout, and she got the last row of the middle section. When you buy tickets during the mad rush of the opening sale, you just get what they give you, there's really no time to pick or choose. Amphitheaters tend to be reasonably steep, with the seat in front of you lower, by, perhaps, a foot, so as to offer mostly unhindered sight lines to the stage. But the venue, at some point added a row of seats that were directly behind the row in front of it, with no offset, essentially offering NO view of the stage. It was just awful, and there's nothing she could have done about it. In the end, I just learned to use a broker for most of the shows I saw. It was a much saner experience, I could pick seats, I could judge value, I could apply intangibles. Thankfully, the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular, and the sports tickets I just buy from the stadium.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  > the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular This is the way. There are a ton of bands you've never heard of that are really good, they just aren't popular because only very few acts are ever popular. You can absolutely see good live music cheap.

by nayuki 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

> The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity. Imagine viewing a pricing scheme that allows more socioeconomic groups access to the arts as the core problem. We're experiencing a great decline and fall as social services are failing, wages stagnating, and common cultural experiences are being squeezed for profit, only enabling the richest among us to experience any kind of common social event. And of course, the response is "keep increasing prices until its unbearable", just like we're doing with rent and housing prices, and calling this efficient. Inflating prices until few can afford it isn't efficient, its just short sighted greed. Finding a way to suppress prices and remove scalpers is a net benefit for the artists, venues, and patrons.

philwelch 3y ago
Access to arts and culture is broader now than it has been ever before in human history. If I want to listen to any Olivia Rodrigo song, I can go to YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music, search for “Olivia Rodrigo”, and be set. Other than the price of internet access and a device that can connect to the internet, it costs literally nothing, unless maybe I want to pay extra to get rid of advertisements.
amenhotep 3y ago
Few people think it's good that this is how things work. It would be great if artists could set affordable prices for their concerts and anyone who wanted could come! The contention is simply that that's not how it works, that supply and demand is a law not a guideline we can opt out of if we think it's inconvenient. It would be great if we could all just flap our hands and fly wherever we wanted, but gravity has something to say about that just as economics has something to say about "irrationally" priced tickets. Inventing the aeroplane is a laudable goal but go into it with clear eyes, not wishful thinking, and don't think you can keep gravity at bay by shaming it.
hackeraccount 3y ago
I'm flummoxed by this view but at least empathetic when it comes to food and shelter. When it comes to Olivia Rodrigo tickets I'm legitimately confused. If Rodrigo decided to abandon her career and only do private shows for Bill Gate's who's business would that be but hers? I think there's room for either disdain or pity for the person who cares about nothing other then money but who's going to make that judgement about another person's motivations? And who would jump in take action on that judgement?
Ferret7446 3y ago
The core problem is reality. Scarcity is reality. Free market economics, supply and demand is reality. You can try to ignore the equilibrium price point, just as you might ignore gravity, but reality will assert itself. Scalpers will always exist to rebalance the supply and demand equality. If you want to make something available to more socioeconomic groups, increase the supply. Simple as.
- chris_va 3y ago
  ... and clearly not viable. Do you think an artist can do 1000 shows a year?
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    Welcome to reality. You can't make a scarce good cheap by willing it harder.
    - chris_va 3y ago
      You can make a scarce good cheap, just not for everyone in the market... hence the entire point of the discussion.

armada651 3y ago

The problem with raising the prices is that people are willing to pay so much for a ticket exactly because they're difficult to get. If the tickets were actually easily obtainable but more expensive then paradoxically people wouldn't be willing to pay as much for the ticket because of a perceived loss of value. And as mentioned in the other reply, many people disagree with the "greed is good" philosophy, hence the /s.

philwelch 3y ago
The root cause of scarcity here is the number of seats available. The biggest tours routinely book stadiums and arenas with tens of thousands of seats, and despite the scalping and high prices these venues usually sell out. It’s not like they’re all playing tiny downtown clubs. So how exactly are you going to make tickets easier to get?
- nayuki 3y ago
  Scarcity - exactly. Say that an artist is holding a concert and 20 thousand seats are available. But she has 50 million fans all over the world. How do you allocate these 20 thousand seats - who will get them? You can either satisfy the highest bidders, the first in line, or a random lottery. But you cannot choose to disappoint no one. Economics is all about making hard choices, and you can't simply wish them away.

whartung 3y ago

In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I paid more, and I paid for the convenience, but I don't think I ever paid more than 50% of the face value. I was a dedicated concert goer back in the day, having spent a lot of time in ticket lines. By time I started, "sleeping overnight" was pretty much over with as an hour or so before the sale, the staff would come out, hand out wrist bands, and then say "#123 is the front of the line" with the 123 being some (I guess random) number from the range of wrist bands they gave out, and everyone else would line up, with #122 wrapping around and being behind whatever the highest band that went out. The premise being there was no reason to show up much more than just before the onsale time, since your arrival time was no guarantee of line position. Similarly, at one venue, they simply handed out numbers, low number wins. After we picked ours up, there was a guy on the edge willing to buy low numbers. I was once first in line, but the tickets I got were underwhelming, which made me more cynical about the buying process. Then, there was that one time, my poor wife, bought us some tickets. There was no way she could have known. There was no way anyone, really, could have known. It was a typical amphitheater layout, and she got the last row of the middle section. When you buy tickets during the mad rush of the opening sale, you just get what they give you, there's really no time to pick or choose. Amphitheaters tend to be reasonably steep, with the seat in front of you lower, by, perhaps, a foot, so as to offer mostly unhindered sight lines to the stage. But the venue, at some point added a row of seats that were directly behind the row in front of it, with no offset, essentially offering NO view of the stage. It was just awful, and there's nothing she could have done about it. In the end, I just learned to use a broker for most of the shows I saw. It was a much saner experience, I could pick seats, I could judge value, I could apply intangibles. Thankfully, the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular, and the sports tickets I just buy from the stadium.

SoftTalker 3y ago
> the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular This is the way. There are a ton of bands you've never heard of that are really good, they just aren't popular because only very few acts are ever popular. You can absolutely see good live music cheap.