Concerts Still Strike Chord With Consumers Despite High Prices

Concerts Still Strike Chord With Consumers Despite High Prices

This year’s concert season will feature several high-profile acts and increasingly high prices.

The cost of seeing movies, plays and live music has jumped 20% since 2021, CNBC reported Friday (Jan. 31), citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data. However, consumers have shown a willingness to put up with these higher costs, known as “funflation.”

Concertgoers plan to see more and spend more this year compared to last year, the report said. CouponCabin found that 17% plan to spend up to $1,000.

“Consumers, especially younger generations, are placing a higher value on experiences that bring them joy and connection over accumulating material possessions,” PYMNTS wrote last year. “Research on subjective well-being has become more mainstream, with widespread media coverage on the science of happiness and with podcasts further delving into the subject matter.”

As such, younger consumers could be becoming more aware of the consistently reaffirmed scientific findings that spending money on experiences can bring them more happiness than buying objects.

In addition, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Why One-Third of High Earners Live Paycheck to Paycheck” found that consumers with the most cash to burn are the likeliest to splurge on experiences. Individuals who earn more than $200,000 per year spend 9.3% of their incomes, on average, on recreation, leisure and entertainment — a larger share than any other income group. Retailers have taken notice of this trend.

“Consumers are remixing their spending back into services and entertainment outside of their homes after curtailing those activities during the pandemic,” Target CEO Brian Cornell told analysts in May, noting that this trend helped drive “continued soft trends in discretionary [retail] categories.”

Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music, said in the CNBC report that dynamic pricing shares some blame for the rising price of concert tickets. Dynamic pricing is the charging of steeper prices at times of higher demand. It’s a concept often associated with airline ticket prices or the way ride-hailing services tweak their fares at busy times.

Last year, the high ticket prices for tours by a pair of rock groups — Oasis and Green Day — led to calls for dynamic pricing reforms.