I'm gld that most of these tours are tanking. They all suck. I mean, if promoters think that someone is going to pay 50 bucks for a ticket to see Jessica Simpson, or some other garbage like that, then they need to learn the hard way that they're dead wrong.

I hear that a lot of Madonna shows are half full and that the reason she's "successful", is because of the high ticket prices.

Prince knows what he's doing. The ticket price really isn't that out of line when you consider the artist. Not at all really. AND he throws in his new CD! That's just good business sense. Prince knows what he's doing, and he takes control of all of his business. That's smart.

It cracks me up when promoters and other big wigs are sitting down contemplating questions like this:
"How many $300 concert tickets can the average fan attend over three months?"
How about ZERO!
Any moron should realize that $300 a TICKET is way too much! What the heck? For $300, I should be able to go to Madonna's home for a 'HOME COOKED MEAL'!

Promoters and execs need to understand that the music out there these days totally sucks ARSE! Most of the Top 40 is the biggest pile of crap that there has EVER BEEN in the history of recorded music. "Hmm, I wonder why people aren't buying CDs and going to concerts...duh...must be the gas prices..." What a bunch of dumb-ARSES!

onenitealonelamont said:

Yeah, Madonna hating is so new and original.

And Re-Invention doing well because of SEX? Whatever -- obviously you don't know what you're talking about.

I have seen the photos and headlines for Madonna latest tour in the UK Newspapers. The most interest point about the tour appears to be her ability to contort her body.

I saw Madonna last tour in Berlin. This was at the height of Ray of Light/ Music etc. I must say I found the whole event a let down.

Credit where credit is due - Madonna is a great Media personality, a good entertainer, is the most successful female artist ever and has created some of the most memorable pop music. A great musician?

In the end it all depends on what you expect from a concert. If you go to worship a goddess then you will not be disappointed.

Spunky said:

My sentiments exactly. She's a good entertainer but a very popular personality. She gave good interviews and great Head!

I can remember in the mid-to-late 80's when concert tickets were between $13.50 and $18 -- and those were the top acts. Hell, I can remember when the Jackson's charged $30 a ticket for their Victory tour, and there was a huge uproar over that.

Now concert tickets for the top acts average around $50 for the cheap seats. The good seats go for anywhere from $100 to $500 ("Gold Seating," or whatever the hell they choose to call it). Sure, the 80's were a different era. But the thing is, inflation has not gone up THAT much where the best seat in the house used to cost you $18, and now it can cost you upwards of $500.

I've long been interested in this thing with concert prices, and I've done a lot of reading up on it. I have my own ideas on why prices have gone through the roof. First of all, the concert business used to be controlled not by one or two mega-corporations, but by independent promoters. Every major population center in the U.S. had a promoter that controlled that market. And the thing is, the promoter was usually someone who was in it for the love of the music, and was a fan himself. For example, in the Bay Area we had Bill Graham. Graham started out promoting small shows in clubs in San Francisco, and he grew to be the regional power, putting on all the major shows in arenas, ampitheaters, and stadiums. But he was also friends with many of the artists, and he respected both the music and the fans. Thus, promoters like Graham would arrange for tickets to costs what they figured their fans could pay.

Also, I think artists expected to make the bulk of their money from record sales, and they looked at concerts as a way to promote those sales -- not as a way to make a fortune. Indeed, prior to the mid-90's, the purpose of concerts was primarily to get fans in the stores to buy the albums and singles (back when there was a singles market). This way of thinking didn't require high ticket prices.

Then the mega-companies (like Clear Channel) saw an opportunity and pounced. They bought out/squashed the local promoters and took over the business. They CORPORATIZED the concert business. They looked at the situation and saw the potential for profit. They also saw that a lot of "classic" bands were still touring, and that those bands' core audience were not kids in high school, but baby-boomers with jobs and disposable incomes who might be willing to pay significant coin to see their favorite acts. These corporations are run by people who don't necessarily care about the music, only the business potential. Where once you would have the head man (like Bill Graham) wandering around the venue at his shows in shorts and sandles, making sure the fans were having a good time and the sound was good; now you have the head man being a guy in a suit sitting in his corporate office looking at accounting sheets, and not in the arena a thousand miles away where one of his concerts is taking place (and probably not able to tell you much about the act headlining the show).

With the corporations making a lot of money off of inflated ticket prices, the artists started to get smart and demand a large chunk of the action. (My jaw always drops whenever the Rolling Stones announce a new tour and I hear how much $$$ they will make.) I don't blame the artists getting their cut -- they certainly deserve it far more than the Corporations. But it kind of smacks of Hollywood to me: When studios started offering a few A-list actors mega-million dollar paydays in order to secure that actor for the studio's new blockbuster (no matter how bad the script or director), the A-list stars (or, more accurately, their agents) realized that they could control the asylum. So they started demanding bigger and bigger paychecks -- and the studios had to cough up. Now some A-list actors can make $30 million on a movie upfront AND another $75 million (or more) on the backend. As a result, movie budgets skyrocketed, which resulted in movie ticket prices skyrocketing.

Ah, Hollywood...Anyway, don't want to get too far off track. What I wonder is what will happen with the concert business in the next few years. The word now is that the record companies, which are suffering through the impending collapse of the music retail market, have started to notice the loads of money that can be made off of a successful concert tour, and are asking, "Why aren't WE getting a piece of that?!" So what's that mean? Maybe they will put it in their contracts with artists that the record company will get a piece of the artist's concert profits. Or maybe they will just find a way to get a cut of ticket sales. Either way, it looks like a potential recipe for even higher ticket prices.

Anyway...I'm not an expert or anything. But that's just how I see it.

sonic said:

Thank you!

The 80s and current tickets analysis seems pretty good.

But what i also noticed is that although maddonna is chargin $300
for her top tickets she also has $45 seats

The reason for her sellout is mainly speculation by ppl who thought they could make a quick pretty penny. That is not happenin alot of ppl r resellin those tickets for less then 100.

Like how it happened with all those dot bomb stocks!!!

I am sure the record companies might try to get a share of the tickets becasue they spend so much money trying to promote. But new acts dont really sell many tickets at high prices. look at Alica keys beyounce and missy concert they r relatively big these days and the concerts didnt sell out even with 3 big acts. The main reason most young acts dont make so much money is coz most of thier fans r poor kids!!

I think this CD included is a brilliant biz model. I mean a significant part of the CD sale is goin to distribution costs and many middle men. The cost of CDS distributed at P concert is maybe 50cents. In future if he starts charing $7/8 per CD he is making more then $7 profit which is huge!!
Remeber 10yrs back TLC was sellin big time records and goin broke thats
becasue artist make $1.35/CD even if u sell 10million records its only 13.5 million divided by bandd members. The cost of staying at top: limos, bling bling
and many other things is quite high.

Just my 2 cents

madartista said:

that's what I'm saying! It's funny how uninformed people always assume that Madonna is STILL all about sex.I just came back from my third "Re-Invention" show and I can tell you that,it's not really a "sexual" show at all.Janet,Britney and others are all about sex,but Maddy moved on along time ago.
[This message was edited Thu Jun 10 0:55:55 2004 by DavidEye]

estelle1981 said:

So,if Madonna isn't selling out shows,I guess the article posted above is nonsense? I've seen numerous other articles that are saying that her tour will be the biggest-grossing tour of the year (expected to gross over $120 million).So either the media is lying,or YOU are.I just attended the three Madonna shows in San Jose,and I can tell you that each show was completely soldout.By showtime,there wasn't an empty seat in the house.And it's funny that the only folks complaining about the $300 price are the NON-FANS who wouldn't go to one of her shows no matter how much she charged.I paid $300 for an excellent seat up in front and I would do it again with no hesitation.

estelle1981 said:

Are you really that clueless? Madonna herself is NOT allowing her tickets to be sold that cheaply.Desperate scalpers are having to "reduce" their prices,but they paid face value for them.Bottom line...Maddy is getting paid.What happens to a ticket after it's bought is not really a concern to her.

DavidEye said:

First of all, you can argue with me all you want to, but I already gave the website address of Ticketmaster.com to you. So, you need to check the attitude and e-mail them and tell them to stop lying. Since they are the leading event ticket sellers in more than just the US, I think that they would know a little more than some journalist. Most of these writers reported that Prince had sold out certain shows, but I talked to people who went to those shows, and they said that there were still plenty of empty seats. Plus, someone above mentioned that they went to the venue the night of the show and bought two floor tickets for $25 or $50 each. Sorry, but if an artist has to lower their ticket prices just to 'sell out' a show, than that's just as bad as not selling out at all in my opinion. I'm not going to congratulate her on selling $300+ tickets for $25 each. If every other summer tour did this, they'd probably sell out too. Who can't find $25 to go to a show? If you didn't pay full price for all three of your tickets, you have no reason to be yelling at me. Don't get mad, because I have evidence that proves you and many of these articles wrong. I've been on every ticket website on the internet so I do know what I'm talking about my Dear. Sellers on Ebay are selling two Madonna floor tickets for $100 or less, whereas I've seen two upper level tickets for some of Prince's concerts (the $45 tickets) going for double their value on that same website. Explain that to me, even though I already know that you have no case in this debate. Plus, I'm not the only person who has said that the shows aren't sold out, or maybe you missed those two previous posts that were waaay before mine. I do believe that she has sold out some of her shows, but not the large amount that many of these articles are saying. Papers will lie and say a show is 'sold out' because it makes the tickets more wanted, like the whole forbidden fruit scenario. If you can't have it or easily acquire it, you want and crave that thing even more. If people see 'sold out', they are going to rush around and spend more money, because they believe that they have something that is hard to comeby. It's an old marketing ploy and has been used for years to sell not just concerts, but albums, artists, movies, and even stocks. The "only non-fans are saying this" statement is getting old and is complete garbage. Just because I have found evidence stating otherwise doesn't make me any less of a fan than you, so don't ASSume. I wouldn't stick up for Prince either and I'm a huge fan of his. I'm not going to make-up uplifting stories about any of my favorite celebrities no matter how great I think they are...I don't do misleading; it's not my thing.

DavidEye said:

You calling me clueless and you don't have the intelligence to go to Ticketmaster.com, who aren't scalpers, and see that they still have plenty of tickets left for 30+ of her 37 shows? That's kinda like the pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?

Man, y'all are worse than all of the most jaded queens on a Madonna forum!

Anyway, I happen to be a fan of BOTH Prince and Madonna, and have seen both shows already. Both shows blew me away - the Prince one assured me being a fan for life! That man's vocals were incredible and he could play like a motherf*cker. Prince is more pure talent - there's no denying that - he's always been. Sometimes not the smartest career decisions on his part, but the talent has always been there. Madonna's show was one of the best of her career. On the cutting edge again - amazing vocals, great choreography, much more straight ahead rock concert than she's ever put on before. But please don't make comparisons between the two shows because they were night and day in style - but both equally amazing.

Prince commanded people to stand up (just like Madonna) - but he did it through the entire concert I went to in San Antonio, and commanded us over and over to sing along! It was like "yes, Prince, we love you, we're showing the love, now get back to the music!" And, grudgingly, I must admit like the reviewer said it was kind of annoying to listen to a minute and a half of "Let's Go Crazy" and "When Doves Cry", or 2 verses of "7" - I wanted to hear the whole thing! Of the whole show, I thought the opening "Purple Rain" album montage section was the most disappointing. The rest of it was off the hook.

Madonna played for about 1:55 (not 1:30), Prince played for about 2:20. Prince's show was much more about the musicality and that man can jam on a guitar like no other. And his vocals sound amazing. Madonna's vocals were amazing this time around too. The choreography - the performances were stellar.

Madonna has seen some premium tickets go on sale the week before each of the shows. These tickets eventually sell out before the show. They really are the two best concerts of the summer - and I am glad for seeing both.

Somebody said Madonna's album sales fell when her boobs sagged. Well, tell me again, when was the last time that Prince had a hit? Oh yeah, I think it was 10 years ago when "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" went top 10.

Madonna did not lower her prices before the show - the private brokers did. They bought their tickets from Ticketmaster at full price, but had to sell them below. There may be a handful of Ticketmaster seats not selling for each show, but most of the "under face value" you're hearing about are people and brokers selling off their extra tix (which they all had to buy for face value). She screwed the brokers with this one and will be laughing all the way to the bank.

[This message was edited Fri Jun 11 7:08:12 2004 by matttx00]
[This message was edited Fri Jun 11 7:11:51 2004 by matttx00]
[This message was edited Fri Jun 11 7:26:14 2004 by matttx00]
[This message was edited Fri Jun 11 7:28:19 2004 by matttx00]

1st of all this is Prince ORG! The hell with Madonna. People kill me with asking ...when's the last time P had a hit? Like we all don't know that P was being blackballed by the industry and the Media (print&Radio)! Like that was'nt the most telling factor of P's so called commercial decline! Madonna has been a Media darling and was never blackballed by the industry as a whole. So when comparing the 2 that point is MUTE! And she did'nt take a stand against the Music Bizness and their practices. It would b like comparing Muhammad Ali 2 Rocky Marciano right after Ali took his stand against the war. And then he was blackballed and stripped of his title and the same thing has happenned 2 Prince in his profession. We all know who the champ is and that would b Prince no matter when the last time he had a hit or not!

matttx00 said:

Loakum said:

that is a valid point about prince having been blackballed by the media for not having a "hit" in ages, but prince have been putting out some pretty below standard music too.(just keepin it real sir.)

Loakum said:

Below who's standard? The Britney Spears standard? The Puff Daddy Remix standard? The R.Kelly same song 150 times standard? I guess all of Madonna's albums of late has been stellar with some great new musical frontier that we've never new existed. Oh what amazing sounding house music. Pleeeeeze give me a break with that bullshit. All of P's last 4or5 cd's are different and not the normal MTV crappola. Prince does not need a hit 2 validate anything that he's doin from here on out. He's Prince an ICON in the RRHOF just like the Beatles. U hear critics and the like say that P's bad efforts are better than most artist good 1's. If that's true then there should b no argument over his greatness or freedom 2 do an album like XPECTATIONS and not get ridiculed 4it. There have been countless GRAMMY winning songs that was subpar and that's Y i don't listen 2 radio right now. Madonna is a very good performer like i've stated b4, but my point was that Madonna's talent or live shows can b duplicated EX: Janet,Cher,Micheal Jackson,Britney,Christina,Ricky Martin,J-LO,Beyonce. Where as there is not a performer on this planet who performs like P live in concert. They are both different types of entertainers but all i'm saying is that it is easier 2 do the Madonna thing than it is 2 do the Prince thing!
[This message was edited Fri Jun 11 17:41:56 2004 by ELBOOGY]

ELBOOGY said:

Many people feel as tho it is below the "Prince" standard. I have noticed for along time that critics and public alike don't really compare Prince to anyone but himself (not including the Prince wannabees...A3000, D'Angel, Maxwll etc) Let's face it the dude is the measuring stick for PoP music since like 1982. He is the BMW of the music world. What he must do to accomplish a true come back (like it seems as tho many really want, sorta like Christians and the second coming of Jesus...Hey is he the music Messiah? well is he?) is to produce pretty much a 1999/PR/SOTT type LP (1999=influence, PR=Sales, SOTT=absolute Brilliance)

lmas said:

Y is it that P is the only Artist 2 b overanylyzed and critiqued. Prince does'nt have 2 rise 2 the Prince standard bcuz he is Prince,thats 4every1 else 2do! It's like Wilt scoring 100 points or OJ's 2000 yard season. How many times do u expect Prince 2 out do Prince? Santana's last big Grammy winning cd was'nt better than some of his old releases 2me but commercially it was a big success it had good timing and hip collabo's on it. Musical depth?, not as much as some of his earlier works in my eyes. P is at a stage in his career where he can fly the plane as high as he wants or just keep a steady Latitude. As long as the music is good that's all i care about whether he puts out a Commercial cd(Musicology) or an instrumental like N.E.W.S/Expectation is his muse 2do so. All this talk of he should do another SOTT or 1999 or PR will never happen. This is a different time period, he's different, his fanbase is different. Be glad that he is still around 2 make whatever!
[This message was edited Sun Jun 13 11:17:41 2004 by ELBOOGY]

ELBOOGY said:

Great minds think alike

lmas said:

U and ME both PLAYA, we b just telling it like it is!

ELBOOGY said:

no doubt, no doubt.

U know the one thing that drives me crazy about the org is that I normally don't come into a thread until it is almost done

ELBOOGY said:

Thank You! There is no artist out right now who can truly compare to Prince. Madonna has more than one little clone out right now....does Britney Spears ring a bell. Madonna has focused more on her stage design, costuming, and choreography, than her singing throughout her career.....just like Britney Spears. Who out now is like Prince with the small stage production, the live band, the ability to play more than one instrument, sing, and dance LIVE for over 2 and half hours? Nobody that's who! All these acts nowadays are soo damn pre-recorded and over-choreographered that is disturbing that they can call their concerts Live....no, Karoake is live, those concerts are just an episode of "Making The Video" that people just happened to show up to see. When an entertainer can mesmerize an audience without all the elaborate stage designs, expensive costumes, and excess fireworks, than I don't care what anyone says, that person is a True Entertainer. James Brown did it, Tina Turner did it, Elvis did it, the Beatles did it....what's everyone else's excuse? Who can't use all that costuming and production to put on a decent show? That's like who can't answer a test without the answer sheet? I'm sure Madonna's show is good, but not worth $300 tickets....$100 maybe. Plain and Simple, Madonna couldn't do a show like Prince...ya know, without all the theatrics....her fans like all the glitz, but Prince can easily do a show like Madonna's and still sell out. The man is the blueprint for what an real entertainer is supposed to be.