Music is important in my everyday life. I listen to it while getting ready, on my walk to class, when I am doing homework and many more times throughout the day. However, listening to music and liking artists has become an expensive hobby.
Streaming has changed a lot of things in the music industry. People have easier access to musicians from across the world. Although there are a lot of positives such as easy access to music, for artists and fans, streaming has had some negative effects.
With streaming music, of course, comes ads, thus the consumer has to pay for ad-free services. Almost all streaming apps have the price for an individual plan at approximately $10. However, very little of this money is going to the artist. If a musician is not at a Beyonce or Taylor Swift level of fame, they are not making much money off streaming. In 2020, Business Insider reported artists could make “as little as $.0033 per stream, with other sites reporting upwards of $.0054.”
While many artists make little from music streaming nowadays, they rely more on touring revenue and merchandise sales, which drives up prices for concert tickets and merch.
In 2023, the average price for a concert ticket was $252 and prices for attending concerts will likely only go up. With added fees to tickets and the introduction of dynamic pricing, going to concerts is more expensive than ever. Dynamic pricing, for example, is “the strategy of adjusting prices in real time in response to market forces.” Oasis is the most recent victim of this phenomenon. However, artists can turn off this feature on Ticketmaster. Artists such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran have turned off this feature for fans.
Ticket fees are also a problem. When going in to buy a concert ticket, many people don’t end up buying the first ticket price they see. In 2018, the Government Accountability Office found that “primary and secondary market ticketing companies charged total fees averaging 27 percent and 31 percent, respectively, of the ticket's price.”
Although dynamic pricing is a problem, ticket resellers are also to blame for the rising prices. Ticket reselling has gotten so bad that the U.S. government has stepped in to help the problem. The “Fans First Act” exists to aid Americans in the price gouging that happens with ticket reselling.
Musicians have also stepped up more to stop price gouging with tickets. Notably when Ed Sheeran was on his Mathematics tour, he canceled tickets bought by resellers and stopped them from raising prices when reselling.
Merch sales are another way musicians can make money. Buying merch online or in person at a concert can easily turn into spending at least $40 for a t-shirt. Looking at Sabrina Carpenter's merch website, the cheapest items are listed at $20 not including taxes or shipping.
At concerts, merch can cost even more because venues take a cut of the merch sales. The amount venues take from merch sales can drive up the cost of merch for artists to be able to make a profit off of it. The amount venues take can range from 10%-40%. If artists are already upcharging to make a profit on their merch sites, they may have to upcharge even more at venues to make a profit.
Being a fan of an artist isn’t a cheap hobby, with consumers needing to pay to stream the music and get concert tickets and merchandise. The cost of listening to music has gone up and isn’t going to go down anytime soon.
Cassie is a junior studying communications at Ohio University. Please note the views expressed in this column do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk to Cassie? Email her at cb086021@ohio.edu.
