*their

I regret standing up for you

To return to the OP, this is not a new thing. I haven't been to gigs for about fifteen years now, even more, and when I did go you had to jump on tickets the moment they were announced on sale. Even if the gig was a year in the future (I like travelling to the future a lot) you had to go NOW, because they would sell out in often hours, sometimes minutes, depending on the popularity. A lot of them got block-booked, and if you went in with an intention to buy later you were ****ed.

When I was younger, you'd go to HMV (record store) queue up and get your tickets, go home and keep them ready. Try doing that today and you'll immediately be told "sold out". I remember one of the guys at work wanted to go to see Springsteen, but couldn't even get through on the ticket line, so for two or three hours we all took turns, hitting the phones like crazy. Eventually he got his tickets, but that was typical of the struggle to get tickets. I had given up long ago.

Oh, and if you don't have a credit card, good luck getting tickets.

Yeah, I remember having to physically go to a box office or music store to buy tickets. The fact that you can almost always buy them online now makes it way more convenient than it used to be.

I just want to know who pays £500 to see a concert where the original tickets costs £70 though?! Maybe it's different in the US, but here people seem to pay whatever on the secondary market.

I get supply and demand, but who's buying at these prices? Wonder what the most that anyone on here has paid is...

And yeah, it kind of puts it into perspective when you can go to a gig for $16 without any of the hassle!

And for what it's worth, I never really saw what the fuss was all about with Muse either :rolleyes:

Ticket resale sites are always going to be price gouging. Just buy from the venue.

I'm not sure I've ever gone to a show that cost $90 (£70). Expensive tickets like that usually mean it's at some awful venue where you can barely see the band. Most shows I go to are in the $10-$25 range.

I would pay $75 if it's a band that I feel I really must see live, like King Crimson. Otherwise it's usually at around Janzs's range.

Well it is and it isn't. When you had to buy physical tickets there was a whole lot less of the block-booking, and even then, they kept a small supply of tickets back. I remember my boss telling me that he was in line for (I can't remember, but he was a Bowie fan so let's say) a Bowie concert. The guy in front of him bought like ten tickets or something. Springsteen was playing as well but sold out. The guy says "I've just given you like a thousand quid (or whatever) over the counter: you got any Springsteen tickets?" The assistant reaches under the desk and takes out two tickets and lets him buy them. You just couldn't do that online. I guess that's the power of bulk buying, and it multiplies exponentially once you get to online ticket sales. As I said, these days if you don't get your tickets within a max of an hour after they go on sale, you're SOL.