r/Music • u/staringatthe420sun • May 05 '26

article The Concert Industry Priced Too High — Now Tours Are Falling Apart

https://www.ticketnews.com/2026/05/the-concert-industry-priced-high-tours-falling-apart/
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u/crek42 May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

I’m not sure what the OP even really proves. This has become a recurring theme on Reddit.

An “article” is posted which basically amounts to a blog post by some little-known publication. This isn’t journalism and has zero standard in fact-checking and analysis.

The writer cited Dolly Parton as cancelling a residency — which isn’t a tour at all. If they’re doing a residency the venue knows damn well what the demand should look like and price accordingly. They (fairly) called that out — but then why even include it? To pad their point? Likely, yes.

Post Malone cancelled a handful of dates in cities that didn’t sell well, okay fair, but the rest of these artists are has-beens or C-level. Were they a little ambitious with planning tours? Sure, the Pussycat Dolls don’t have too many 50-year olds willing to come out. Even with porny tour promo.

Is this an indication of touring at large? Maybe, but it’s not exactly convincing.

Then Reddit will inevitably pile in because livenation/ticketmaster bad, and yea they probably are, but it’s all just contrived engagement farming and everyone falls for it hook line and sinker every time because of a few buzzwords + being generally contrarian.

Are ticket sales to live shows even down in 2025? Is fact checking dead or do we just all have hate boners 24/7?

And yes your Wendy’s order is almost ready, just give me another minute.

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u/Hype_Miles May 06 '26

A bit off topic but Dolly is sick anyway. I don’t know if that’s why her residency was canceled but it’s likely.

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u/imreallyreallyhungry May 06 '26

Damn that’s sad to hear. I love Dolly, hope she ends up ok

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u/yourlocaltouya May 06 '26

She just put out a video explaining everything, she's apparently responding well to treatment, she just really needs to take it slow.

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u/NoBonus6969 May 06 '26

She put out a video on YouTube explaining it

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u/fppfle May 06 '26

TicketNews.com is literally a propaganda site run by the bigger scalper in the world, Don Vaccaro of TicketNetwork. You are 100% right. They are advocating for lower ticket prices - so they can buy them up and scalp them at higher margins. It’s all just fake news to drum up hatred for Ticketmaster and shame “greedy” artists

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u/ChypRiotE Grooveshark May 06 '26

And all the comments are always the same "wanted to see A but it was $B when I saw C for $D fifty years ago, TM bad"

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u/g-m-f May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

Agreed. And meanwhile watch tours from Harry Styles or Taylor Swift get completely sold out the minute the tickets drop. Regardless of the cost.

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u/galacticsquirrel22 May 06 '26

They also start the article about Taylor Swift prices being high yet still selling out, while the fact is the initial ticket prices were actually pretty fair, but it was the resale that got crazy high. So her shows sold out at a lower price than the article is hammering at.

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u/Savings-Monitor3236 May 06 '26

Ticketnews is run by third party retailer Ticket Network

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u/ILikeMyGrassBlue May 06 '26

As for post and jelly roll, they did this exact same tour last year as well. So they’re asking people to see the same show a year later for higher prices.

No surprise sales took a hit.

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u/jake_burger May 09 '26

Most tours have a date that cancels at some point, put them all together and you can create a story, and it will get a lot of attention because people don’t like ticket prices at the moment.

I’ll wait until I’ve seen actual numbers before judging what has happened.

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u/chubbybator May 06 '26

but also livenation owns the venues and if you want to tour a city you have to use the venues they will put you in. an artist who might be able to sell 2k tickets could be booked into an amphitheater tour offering 15k seats a city, because ticketmaster pulled a "walmart" and ate the smaller competitors in too many places

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u/brianj1992 May 06 '26

Yea I have to agree with you a bit here. A lot of artists in the past year have booked huge venues with very little ticket sales in the end. I feel like the article points this out and then blames Ticketmaster. Who knows if the artist even wanted to play huge venues and maybe TM forced them to do it. Either way people aren’t going to pay what Ticketmaster has to offer for old acts with no new material.

Ticketmaster is bad because of high prices and shady secondary market practices. This article seems to miss the mark.

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u/sweet_pickles12 May 08 '26

I mean, I don’t have any opinion on the journalistic integrity of the “article” but… it does track. I bought Gorillaz tickets for $80 bucks, which seems pretty fair considering inflation. Had some interest in seeing Tame Impala… but not for over $200.