http://www.urbanhonking.com/digest/archives/burger3_small.jpg

that's a ridiculous rationale for the raising of prices. Artists have always relied mostly on touring for their income (since they make so little from the cd sales). So it's not like they're the ones taking much of a hit from the lack of cd sales.

I'm sorry but whoever this "Krueger" guy is so full of doodoo its probably coming out of his ears right now.

the subways and hard-fi have both dropped from coachella

as far as i know, this is true. tours have mostly ever existed for album promotion, which is where the clams were at.

glad this article is making the rounds. i found the hypotheses extremely thought provoking.

....well, that would be a valid argument if the money that an artist made from the sale of a record hadn't dropped to a pathetic level well before downloads became prominent.

out of curiosity--on average, what percentage of a ticket goes to the artist?

"Over time sales of recorded music has dropped and illegal downloads, he says, and the connection between recorded music and live concerts is gone."

Damn, what a poorly written sentence!

"Krueger found that female bands command the highest prices in the concert industry..."

Assuming he means all-female bands and not female solo artists, he must be on crack. Then again, something may have gotten lost in translation due to this Coolfer person's poor writing (see above).

Alan Krueger is a VERY prominant Princeton economist, who normally does very good work. I have read a couple versions of the paper and was a bit shocked by how clueless Dr. Krueger is about the music industry. A few things should be pointed out.
1) Alan Krueger is not a music fan, and admits that he is out of touch about this subject.
2) The data he used are all obtained from Pollstar. This is really important, and largely explains many of his results. Most of the bands and shows mentioned by BV wouldn't even register in his database. Dr. Krueger isn't talking about small scale shows, in general he is talking about shows put on by major promoters. The effect this has is that it skews the results (although he does realize this problem).
3) His discussion of the effects of downloaded music is totally BS! Not only did he never test these effects, he didn't even know it was possible. I find the discussion in his paper, and the repeating of these conclusions in the popular press to be completely baseless.

In my opinion, the real story here is a generational thing. Old people have money. Old people can spend $200+ dollars on Billy Joel tickets. Young people cannot and will not. The inflation in ticket prices is mostly seen at the top of the spectrum not the bottom, thus those Barbara Striesand, Stones, and Billy Joel tickets are what is mostly being discussed here. 35-45 years ago, our grandparents didn't go to shows, but our parents did. Now that the baby boomers are getting older, and have tons of cash, they have the ability to shell out huge sums of money for their "once a year" concert experience, where as there was nothing comparable a generation ago. In my opinion, this is what is driving "ticket prices" up.

% of ticket sales that go to artists varies based on costs of putting shows on , needless to say the smaller the club the more % goes to the artist (especially at bars) In the larger venues less goes to the artist..though the larger the venue ,the higher the tickets & the more revenue theres is ...so while the overall % from sales is less, theres a larger gross to to draw from....
but on the average its about 70 to 85 % at smaller venues to 50% or less at larger venues

bthirsch: So who bought those very expensive tickets to Madonna at MSG?

Has the paper been published in a journal yet? I'm really curious to read it, as I was gonna do my senior thesis on concert ticket pricing, but at the end I opted for something more mundane. Any links, or citations would be appreciated.

I don't think 12 year olds were shelling out $350+ for madonna tickets. I imagine the average age of the audience will be 35yo+.

The paper is not online as far as I can tell, and will not be in the future because it is a book chapter. If you send me your email, I can email you a pdf of the 2005 version.

Who's paying $350 for Madonna ?...Industry moguls for their wives, girlfirends daughters, clients, etc also rich gay men & businesswomen re-living their teenage years

this is kind of dumb. as an economist, kreuger should know that raising ticket prices doesn't make people more money, just like making coke $8 a bottle won't make the coca-cola company more revenue. the truth is that tickets are intentionally UNDERPRICED, and that's clear from the fact that $15 arctic monkeys tickets sell for $200 a pop on ebay.