Rock & Metal Profs

THE ROCK & METAL PROFS

WITH MATT ALSCHBACH & DR. COURT LEWIS

Associate professors at Owensboro Community College and Pellissippi State Community College, respectively, Alschbach and Lewis host the popular podcast The Rock & Metal Profs: The History & Philosophy of Rock & Metal. Now they're bringing their keen insights to the pages of News 4U with a monthly deep dive into some of the best bands of the rock/metal genre and thoughts on music in general.

TICKETBASTARDS

In the eighties, purchasing tickets to see your favorite band was an adventure, a rite of passage, and a pain in the ass. We drove to the venue the night before, partied most of the night, queued up by 6 a.m., and by 10 a.m. we had tickets within the first few rows of the stage. A fair price for a memorable concert experience for those willing to pull an allnighter. Tickets were anywhere from 16 to 25 dollars on average, and it didn’t matter which row you were in, your tickets were always the same price - for every row.

My, how things have changed. In 2019, we purchased tickets to see a certain “hottest band in the world,” and ticket prices were enough to make the Dalai Lama seethe with contempt. Ticketmaster has invented “Official Platinum” seating, so that the front row was $1000, the 2nd row was around $800, and we procured 3rd row for a paltry $600! You might think that handicap-accessible tickets would be more reasonable, but the cheapest accessible at a recent concert in Nashville was $450. No satisfaction, indeed!

Ticketmaster also loves to tack on a laundry list of “service fees.” Let’s say you are willing to fork out $375 for a front row ticket. There will be a processing fee of $3.30 and a service fee of $55.50. Yes, we know that Ticketmaster is a business that needs to make money, but this is just a racket. Bridgestone Arena in Nashville holds about 20,000 people, while the Ford Center in Evansville holds around 10,000. If tickets were $10, then they would make $200,000/$100,000 for a sold-out show. Not much room for profit. But the average ticket price in 2019 was $96.17, according to Statista.com. That’s almost 2 mil./1mil. per sold out show, then you tack on service fees and concessions, and you can see how fans are being fleeced. But we aren’t here to condemn these online ticket services - they offer a product, and we have no choice but to pay if we want the tickets. (Not having a choice is one of the reasons it’s so easy to fleece fans). Bands get in on the

PICTURED LEFT TO RIGHT: MATT ALSCHBACH AND DR. COURT LEWIS action too by jacking up ticket prices into the many hundreds of dollars. Sure, they often offer special perks, like cheap lanyards and getting in early, but these perks do not justify a $300 tax. Yes, bands need to make money, but at some point, it’s just greed; and fans are being priced out of seeing the bands they love. The fans are the ones who made them famous, and the fans deserve better. The Rock & Metal Profs podcast is available on iTunes, Google and Spotify.