Featured image: Leire Ribeiro

I remember a time in music when a VIP concert ticket bundled with a meet-and-greet and early entry would not cost more than £150. Today, we have artists like Harry Styles selling tickets for £725 with no soundcheck and no meet-and-greet, the only bonus being good visibility at the show, which is, arguably, the bare minimum. The clip of Kurt Cobain being outraged at £50 tickets comes to mind time and time again. This sudden increase of ticket prices was not only surprising because of Styles’ own words – since in a recent interview with BBC Radio he stated that the album was done from the perspective of an audience member and how he wants his fans to dance freely – but also because of how much higher these prices are from his last tour.

During the second round of his popular Love On Tour (2022-2023), Styles performed across Europe and America, with ticket prices ranging from £70 to £200 and no VIP options. Now these prices seem tame in comparison to the current Together Together tour, with prices reaching up to £800.

Styles still appears to be chasing the sense of community he built in previous tours. It is ironic, however, that he is using the phrase “We Belong Together” as the main marketing tool for his upcoming album, using fans’ commitment to the last tour for promotion, when most middle-class people wouldn’t even be able to spend this amount of money in one go. For fans, it does feel like a stab in the back to those who have supported him all these years. 

But Harry Styles is not the only one with shocking prices. Recently, the most famous K-pop boy group in the world, BTS, made a comeback, announcing an album and a worldwide tour. Fans all over the world bought online memberships (of £15) to have a chance to buy BTS Arirang Tour tickets at the presale. The cheapest ticket option was £70, and with dynamic pricing on, some fans have spent thousands of pounds on a single ticket. The comeback hype was used to justify all of this, and many fans fell victim to it. The result was fans celebrating overpriced tickets at the back of the stadium with little visibility, simply because £70 was all they could afford. We should also realise that many of these fans will have additional costs, like travel and accommodation, to attend these shows. This is particularly relevant in the case of Styles’ residencies, as his only European shows are in Amsterdam and London.

Personally, the idea of paying just to access a presale feels dystopian. Not only do you still have to wait in long Ticketmaster queues and pay inflated prices in full, but you are not even guaranteed a ticket. In Harry Styles’ case, access to the presale simply required signing up via his website. Some argued that the presale should have been more exclusive – limited to those who have purchased the album. However, I would argue that is the only thing he did right, as it avoided reinforcing the divide in access between fans with money over those with less resources – even if this approach was largely shaped by UK legislation.

Ticketmaster has become the mortal enemy of many fans, myself included. The platform’s sins such as dynamic pricing and platinum tickets make it impossible for lots of people to see their favourite artists. Nevertheless, the real betrayal comes from those artists not denouncing this and stopping Ticketmaster from changing the prices depending on demand. More than once I have felt obliged not to go to a concert because of the unethical prices, and it is insane to think that some people are willing to go into debt to attend a show. This should never be the case. A concert ticket should not be the same as our monthly rent. We should not normalise attending a concert taking up some people’s entire paycheck. 

Live music is a beautiful experience, a way to enjoy art collectively. The idea that we are arriving at a time where these community-building experiences might become a luxury for an elite takes away the point of music altogether. Today, concerts are filled with influencers who are not impassioned fans, but simply want to take part in the ‘event of the year’. Soon enough these spaces will be filled only with these people, and the average person will not be able to afford the experience altogether.This might not only be the death of music as an art form, but the death of live music; without genuine fans, the atmosphere will be empty.

I am aware of the costs of producing a performance for thousands of people, but I am also aware of the profit these artists make. The prices we are currently seeing for Harry Styles’ new tour are unjustifiable. Compare it to a production like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which had a three-and-a-half hour set with multiple costume changes, a band, back up vocalists, dancers, pyrotechnics and more – all for half the price as Harry’s current VIP tickets.

Thankfully, we have artists like Louis Tomlinson, Yungblud and Olivia Dean actively speaking up about these issues and making sure the prices are fair and accessible. As fans, we should hold artists accountable. Popular artists owe their success to their fans; they would not exist without us, not the other way around.