Recently, concerts have quite literally taken over the world. It seems that every artist has gone on tour within the past year; the question is, is it worth it? If you follow the music industry, you most likely know about the tours of big names like Drake, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Brent Faiyaz, Beyonce, etc. However, as concerts gain popularity and artists get bigger, shows are becoming more expensive and tickets are harder to come by. Furthermore, performers are starting to put more and more effort into their performances through lighting, costumes and dancing. People are no longer paying for just the music, but the experience as a whole.
Two incredibly popular artists currently on their “It’s All a blur” tour are Drake and 21 Savage. These two musicians fall into rap and R&B genres of music. Drake started his journey to fame in a the early 2000s as a teenage actor on the popular teen drama “Degrassi.” A couple of years later, he started his music career, which has grown immensely through the years. This started a solid fandom that has expanded over time and has been patiently waiting for him to go on tour for the past 5 years. Combine that with the fact that he is touring with one of the most famous feature artists in this generation, 21 Savage, it’s no wonder that these tickets were next to impossible to obtain. The desire for these tickets, which started at around $100-$200, made it easier for re-sellers to bump the price up to an average of $400-$600, sometimes even reaching $1000+.
Similar to Drake, famous female pop artist Taylor Swift went on tour for the first time in over 5 years. Her, already large, fanbase and listening has been growing exponentially ever since she started re-releasing her older songs. Taylor has been part of the music industry for decades and her music brings several generations together. Her songs are quite nostalgic for most, so when people caught the wind of the Eras tour and her setlist, old fans, along with new ones, were in line for tickets. She has always been known for being an amazing performer, but after the first couple of shows on this tour, videos of her performance and setlist went viral, which seemed to increase her popularity. The shows quickly sold out. Taylor’s show is 3 hours of pure nostalgia as she sings around 2-4 songs each of her 10 albums. She amazes her fans with her performance, changing her outfit 13 times in one show and whipping out some crazy choreography. She is making her show totally unique and simultaneously bumping ticket prices up to $600+ just for the nosebleeds.
Lastly, Queen B herself, aka Beyonce, hasn’t been on tour since 2016. Her fans, the “bee hive” are loyal and adamant followers who have waited 6 years for new music. Instead of giving up as a fandom, they gained more and more support through those years, only to completely blow up her new album Renaissance when it came out in 2022. Beyonce is obviously a household name as everyone has heard her name at least once throughout their lives. Her music is known for reaching many different audiences and bringing them together. Beyonce’s music career took off in the 2000s and hasn’t seemed to stop since then. On tour, she is known to sing a few of her older, classic songs and the effort she puts into her 3-hour long setlist is incredible. Beyonce’s performances are not just concerts, they are incredible experiences.
A struggle all these large fan bases share are unrealistic ticket prices. Due to the popularity of these artists, it is quite hard to obtain tickets at face value and fans often compete with 30,000+ people to get tickets before they sell out. If you aren’t on your computer or phone the second the artist drops their tickets, your chances of getting face value are very low. The main issue with purchasing tickets is the reseller pricing, they will take a $200 ticket and make it $1,500.
However, if we’ve learned one thing from these concerts, it’s that though the pricing is obscene, sometimes the money is worth the experience.
