According to research done by ANP, the Dutch national news agency, and Sargasso.nl, the price for a concert ticket is increasing disproportionately. 

In the last 30 years, the price of a concert ticket has increased faster than expected when regarding inflation rates. According to the research, this trend is especially noticeable in the price for concerts of prominent artists. For example, the ticket for a Queen concert in the seventies would, corrected by inflation, cost about 30 euro, while concert tickets for Lady Gaga or Madonna currently cost about 100 euro. 

It is noticeable however, that the increase of price started after 1995. This can be explained by the fact that artists make fewer revenues off their CDs and merchandise, although this used to generate most of their income. Download websites have caused the income of artists to decrease in regards of albums sold. Therefore, instead of using concerts as a form of promotion, artists nowadays use concerts as a form of income itself. 

Smaller artists however, do not benefit from the increased concert prices. Concert tickets of for example Kosheen cost about 15-20 euros. However, when comparing this to the seventies: This would have been a reasonable considering that a ticket for Blondie would have cost about 10 euro nowadays. (inflation taken into account). 

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Source: Nu.nl 

Written by: Nathalie Falot