Originally published at: Maggie Rogers' fans buy tickets 'like it's 1965' | Boing Boing
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The best part of buying concert tickets back in the day was camping out overnight in the ticket line. It was a badge of honor to be towards the front of the line not to mention a sign of true fan dedication. Plus, it was a lot of fun.
Also, tickets for major concerts were, like, $10 bucks and the service fee was $1.50.
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It seems even more amazing to find there is still a venue for which TicketMaster hasn’t already locked the exclusive contract for selling seats.
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It’s less common with smaller venues (though I’m not familiar with this artist and don’t know the size of the venues she’s playing). Ticketmaster seems to have a lock on mid-sized and above venues.
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"fuck bots + fuck fees.
Ticketmaster too!
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Methinks that’s exactly who she meant.
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I mean… inflation is a thing. Very little costs the same as it did in the late 70s… Today, few artists in the mid-range can live off tours if each show is $5 a pop… There is a reason why people in punk bands playing shows are able to charge a low amount of money - because they probably all have jobs to pay the bills (or they’re rich). We really need to start treating artists like people who need to eat and pay rent rather than magical beings whose only there to entertain us…
Also, $10 in 1970s dollars is like $70 today… so not that cheap, actually.
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Tickets for current shows at SPAC (GA lawn seats) vary around $35 - $70 (including LiveNation fees) which is surprisingly close to:
Right? There are plenty of artists (including the one in question) who are touring for a reasonable price, because they’re able to opt out of the whole ticketmaster BS since they tend to play mid-range or smaller venues.
Not every artists worth seeing is at the level of Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen!
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I might be weird, but I don’t even want to see an artist, even one I love, in a giant packed arena. I’ll take a small venue any day.
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Yeah, not nearly as much fun as seeing a band at a smaller location. I saw TMBGs recently in a nice mid-sized venue and that’s about my limit, I think. It was small enough to be a bit intimate, but big enough to accommodate the crowd! Much bigger than that would have been much less fun…
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I mean - I couldn’t afford concert tickets back then. Only went to a few. Small venues with a couple of buck covers or lugging friends sound equipment was the way.
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Also, $10 in 1970s dollars is like $70 today… so not that cheap, actually.
A little more accurate date than what others used would be:
$10 in August, 1978 would be $45.58 today.
@ KathyPartdeux
Using more a accurate date, it’s about $45.58 today.
You are right – I’m very surprised it’s roughly the same today for comparable seats even with the fees. Who’d have thought?!
I’m not quite sure the acts are comparable as the Doobies and Fleetwood Mac were at the top of their games at that time. I have no idea where TLC and Shaggy would be in comparison. 
None the less, still not “cheap”… maybe you had far more disposable income than others… And that’s about what many will pay for a mid-sized touring act now a days and even some more well-known artists… Tickets for the Cure are about $60, so not much more than that and the cure are about a comparable band in terms of fanbase…
Looking at a local mid-sized venue, it seems like it’s closer to $50 for a relatively well-known artist (Les Claypool). Tickets for Carolyn Polachek is about $40. Jinx Monsoon is $55… Doesn’t seem like more of a “rip-off” to me…
But then again, the Cure went out of their way to ensure that the cost was not bumped up by Ticketmaster unfairly. Other artists have not done so… in this case, the artists seems to be trying to get her fans a fair price as well.
But yes, big, mainstream artists like Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen who are playing large arenas have a major problem with ticket pricing that IS a rip-off, in part due to the monopolization of large touring acts by Ticketmaster/Livenation.
You were the one who called shows today a rip-off. 
So were shows then a rip-off too?
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This isn’t school, buddy, there’s no assignments and no “cool kids” table.
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Up until 2019, I bought basically all my tickets from a local ticket shop, called appropriately “Bristol Ticket Shop”. They sold tickets for pretty much every venue in the city (and some nearby cities), the prices were the face value of the ticket, and if you shopped online, they’d charge £1.50 for postage and that was it. No ‘booking fees’, or ‘security fees’, all of their charges were part of the ticket price. As they covered basically all the cities venues, I could go onto their store every month or two, and check out a list of pretty much every gig going on in the city, and buy tickets (and that £1.50 postage was per order, not per ticket). I rarely went into the physical shop, but for some gigs or festivals, there would be an overnight queue. They used to be one of about four places you could by a Glastonbury ticket from, way back when.
Alas, in 2019 they finally ran out of money and had to close, although if it hadn’t been then, covid would have definitely finished the business off. Now I have to get tickets from a variety of different outlets, most of which delight in adding about 30% onto the face value of a ticket. It sucks.
So thanks Bristol Ticket Shop for being the cheapest and easiest way for me to see so much live music over the years, you are still missed.
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