Live music is making a comeback. But fans are reeling from the shock of the poster.

Ellen Rothman still speaks with awe of the first time she saw Bruce Springsteen perform, at a “sleazy little blues bar” in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974.

“It was like the roof was going to blow in place,” she recalled recently. “I have never experienced anything else like this in my life.”

Rothman, 75, said she’s attended about 180 Springsteen concerts, but has been skipping his most recent tour. For decades, Springsteen has kept his tickets at bargain prices, cementing his reputation as a man of the people. But for his current tour with the E Street Band, a good portion of the seats for each venue have been sold through “dynamic pricing,” allowing their cost to rise and fall with demand; Some have gone for as much as $5,000.

“We feel somewhat betrayed,” said Rothman. “I don’t have a problem with an artist living a decent life. But at what point do you feel taken advantage of?”

This year should be a giant for the concert business, with headlining tours by Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Drake, Madonna, Morgan Wallen, Metallica, and others filling stadiums and arenas. The music industry is now largely free of the restrictions that hindered touring during the Covid-19 pandemic, buzzing On whether box office records will be broken.

But for the average music fan, the simple act of buying a ticket is now too often a frustrating mess of soaring prices and surcharges, worrisome pre-sale registrations, rampant speculation and overwhelming competition for the hottest shows.

“Nowadays, it just sounds pretty awful,” said Evan Howard, 24, a musician and Pilates instructor in New York. “It’s this whole task that you need to devote a whole day to.”

Swift’s failed pre-show in November, when Ticketmaster’s systems were overwhelmed with demand from both fans and bots, was the most notorious problem. This led to a Senate judicial hearing in which senators from both parties argued that Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, are a monopoly.

Since then, tickets have only intensified as a political issue. In his State of the Union address, President Biden said “we can stop service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events,” and called for all fees to be disclosed up front, something Live Nation said it supports. (The Justice Department is also conducting an antitrust investigation into Live Nation.)

But the high prices may be here to stay, at least for the big events. Industry insiders say this is a result of increasing costs everywhere, as well as artists acknowledging that resale platforms like StubHub have exposed the true market value of a top-tier concert ticket.

in interview Last year with Rolling Stone, Springsteen endorsed that view. “The ticket broker or someone will take that money,” he said. “I’m going, ‘Hey, why doesn’t that money go to the guys who’ll be out there sweating three hours a night for it?'” “

For the first leg of the Springsteen Tour, which goes on sale in July, about 11 percent of the seats are designated “Official Platinum,” which is priced dynamically, according to Ticketmaster. The average price for all tickets at the time was $262. Ticketmaster and Springsteen’s Camp declined to release any recent data; Springsteen’s reps also declined to comment for this article.

The cost of tickets for the tour led to heated debate as to whether the bond between artist and audience was broken. Backstreets, the leading publication for Springsteen fans since 1980, runs a Fiery editorial Last year he said the new prices “violate an implied contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans.” In February, Christopher Phillips, editor and publisher of Backstreets, said he was closing publication in protest.

For concert-goers across the board, it’s been the season of sticker shock. Beyoncé, who had a smoother sale than Swift, was selling dynamically priced seats off the floor at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey for about $1,000 apiece, according to receipts from an attendee. At Madison Square Garden, you can pick up a pair of Madonna tickets for $1,300; “Platinum” seats in the same division are now approximately $1,000 each.

When all three of Drake’s shows at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center sold out last month, “standard” tickets, listed at $69.50 to $329.50, were snapped up almost instantly, leaving fans to bargain with dynamic prices of up to $1,182.

Some Springsteen fans said these price increases happened on their way out. “It’s like going to Wal-Mart and putting a TV in your cart for $399, and you go to the register and they say, ‘Sorry, that’s now $1,000’,” said Roberta Facinelli, a New Orleans fan.

Excessive pricing is a phenomenon largely confined to a limited number of star tours. It was the average ticket price paid for one of the top 100 North American tours last year $111while it was the average ticket on Broadway last season $126. Try telling that to a Depeche Mode fan whose only options for this month’s Madison Square Garden show are tiered seating ranging from $302 to $1,220.

Even the bargain hunters felt a tingle. Alexus Bomar, a 27-year-old from Detroit, found two Beyoncé stadium tickets for $330, and used a payment plan to cover the cost. But she was dismayed to see that Drake was charging about $500 a pair on the upper floors.

“I saw a tweet saying they would never spend more than they did on Beyoncé to anyone else,” Bomar said. “That’s kind of how I feel.”

Then there are the fees, which have been increasing for years. In 2018, the Government Accountability Office is found That fee added an average of 27 percent to the ticket order. This year, the American Economic Freedoms Project, part of an activist group calling itself the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition, said its research showed fees added 32 percent, on average.

The accusations frustrate artists as well as fans, as explained by The Cure’s Robert Smith, who for the past several weeks has been tweeting his way through one ticket hurdle after another for his band’s North American tour.

The group did its best to keep prices low—they were just $20 for some places—and frustrated speculators by making seats non-transferable outside of the online “face value ticket exchange” operated by Ticketmaster. However, when tickets went on sale last month, fans found that for some of the cheaper seats, the added fee exceeded the face value listed, more than double their final cost.

On Twitter, Smith amplified fan complaints, pressuring Ticketmaster to solve outrageous issues such as seats at a face value exchange that were nonetheless advertised for many times higher prices. In response, Ticketmaster agreed to refund some of the fees—a rare privilege that has raised eyebrows across the industry.

“We don’t want to take anyone out of the show,” Smith said chirp this week. “Any major artist can do the same. But we can’t control the added fees.”

A Ticketmaster spokeswoman noted that artists set the face value of their tickets, and usually keep most of that money, while “most fees are set and kept by the venues”.

Ticket Master Verified fan The programme, a screening system aimed at identifying buyers who are more likely to use their tickets, rather than their scalps, has been a double-edged sword. Some fans, like Bomar, credit her with giving them a fair chance. “That’s the only good thing I can give Ticketmaster,” she said.

But the system has also baffled customers, with decades-long followers of acts like Springsteen and The Cure saying they were trapped. Arusha Baker, who has watched The Cure 120 times since 1986, said she got the credentials but was then “permanently on the waiting list”.

Scalpers have discovered some innovative ways to resell Cure tickets – one method documented on the tech site Motherboardwhich involved transferring Ticketmaster accounts entirely – as Ticketmaster struggled to adjust these issues.

To non-fans, Smith might be known for his unruly hair. But his crusade for fairer, more affordable tickets has made him something of a folk hero, even as Springsteen risked some of that reputation with his latest tour.

“Every step of the way, this guy’s only goal is to fight the scalpers and keep the tickets in the fans’ hands,” said Baker, who has spent more than 20 years making documentaries about Cure fans.

Other musicians, frustrated with the ticketing status quo, experimented. Zach Bryan books a tour to avoid Ticketmaster’s affiliated venues, using a competing ticket seller, AXS, and takes steps to rein in fees and stop scalpers. On Thursday, Maggie Rogers announce She was selling tickets in person for an upcoming show, “Like it’s 1965.”

However, the industry shows no signs of lowering prices. Many executives and talent agents say the shock to fans may be a necessary adjustment to a world in which the most popular events cost the most – especially if expensive shows continue to sell out.

The business is “in transition,” says Jed Weitzman, head of music at Logitix, which uses data from the secondary market to advise artists on how to set their ticket prices.

“The reality of the market economy is that things cost more,” Weitzman added. “Artists want to make money and do a great product, and I’m all for it. It’s not 1975 and tickets aren’t $8 anymore.”

It could be cold comfort for fans like Ellen Rothman who built their relationship with Springsteen through the show, with prices that for years have stayed at around $100 but are now often several times higher.

She said “it’s not worth it”. “Even to Bruce.”