I’m officially offended (by Victory amps) 😡

[William Payne]

Ha
I had those muscle cars in the 70's. People at the time couldn't unload them fast enough because of the gas crisis (ha ha gas lines and gas was upward of eighty cents a gallon). I bought em for fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, then drove them changed parts had fun. Been there, done that. Those days are gone. Nowadays those surviving cars are bought up by dreamers who never had one for seventy, eighty thousand. Those cars now have crazy big seven, eight hundred horsepower engines that get ten miles a gallon if they're lucky. Can't even drive the freekin things. Oh man, not for me. They can keep em.

Are guitars and amps the same way? Getting there, there already. Is it worth plunking down all that dough? To some, I guess so.

It’s the same thing with the extreme concert ticket prices now. As long as there are people who will pay anything no matter the cost the costs will stay high. It’s not the companies inflating the costs, it is the customers with big fat wallets that will pay anything.

 

[MarcB]

Ha
I had those muscle cars in the 70's. People at the time couldn't unload them fast enough because of the gas crisis (ha ha gas lines and gas was upward of eighty cents a gallon). I bought em for fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, then drove them changed parts had fun. Been there, done that. Those days are gone. Nowadays those surviving cars are bought up by dreamers who never had one for seventy, eighty thousand. Those cars now have crazy big seven, eight hundred horsepower engines that get ten miles a gallon if they're lucky. Can't even drive the freekin things. Oh man, not for me. They can keep em.

Are guitars and amps the same way? Getting there, there already. Is it worth plunking down all that dough? To some, I guess so.

I guess when being a musician was deemed a low life occupation for decades and scorned upon by the general society.. the tools of the trade were affordable.. but nowadays because it’s all about the shizzle and bedazzle of showbiz (which everyone seems to want to be associated with..) everything is now high dollar.. including vinyl records, white tees, jeans and guitars.

Everything cool is always bastardised by the masses at some point.

 

[J T]

Yeah Led Zeppelin, The Who, at the garden for fifteen bucks a ticket. That's when it was fun, not an investment.

 

[William Payne]

I guess when being a musician was deemed a low life occupation for decades and scorned upon by the general society.. the tools of the trade were affordable.. but nowadays because it’s all about the shizzle and bedazzle of showbiz (which everyone seems to want to be associated with..) everything is now high dollar.. including vinyl records, white tees, jeans and guitars.

Everything cool is always bastardised by the masses at some point.

It’s like selvedge denim jeans that I wear. They used to be just working man’s jeans people wore to do real work.

Now it’s hipster high fashion. We live in a time where people will spend crazy money to replicate the past.

 

[MarcB]

It’s like selvedge denim jeans that I wear. They used to be just working man’s jeans people wore to do real work.

Now it’s hipster high fashion. We live in a time where people will spend crazy money to replicate the past.

Exactly..

 

[ourmaninthenorth]

Yeah Led Zeppelin, The Who, at the garden for fifteen bucks a ticket. That's when it was fun, not an investment.

Bang on Jim.

Zeppelin at Knebworth 79, £7.50 a ticket, £300 quid for beer money.

Man them were the days....well, the bits I can remember.

 

[Xpensive Wino]

 

[goldtop0]

Exactly..

We live in a time where people will spend crazy money to replicate the past.

Cosmetic surgery

 

[MarcB]

Cosmetic surgery

I’m thinking of getting my fist enlarged so I can shake it at larger clouds..

Bonjour.

 

[Xpensive Wino]

Everything cool is always bastardised by the masses at some point.

In which case it is no longer de rigueur, mon ami.

 

[MarcB]

In which case it is no longer de rigueur, mon ami.

on m'appelle Monsieur Belle Époque

Bonjour.

 

[Xpensive Wino]

on m'appelle Monsieur Belle Époque

That explains things.

Bonjour!

 

[Any Name You Wish]

One day millennials will pay big bucks for an old Tesla I will say however that I am guilty. In the past 5 years I have bought a few expensive custom shop guitars. Paying all that money for my R9 really freaked me out but I got used to it. What have I got left? 15 years maybe before they put me in a home, or worse. If you are playing them everyday then I say go for it. 15 years from now some kid will get a great deal on a great used guitar because your family will sell it all off cheap after you kick the bucket.

 

[Xpensive Wino]

One day millennials will pay big bucks for an old Tesla.

​

 

[William Payne]

Cosmetic surgery

I had eye surgery one time. As I was walking to the private clinic in Auckland I walked past all these cosmetic surgery places. It made me realise how easy it is to change what you don't like if you are willing and able to pay.

 

[Hiwatts-n-Gibsons]

It’s the same thing with the extreme concert ticket prices now. As long as there are people who will pay anything no matter the cost the costs will stay high. It’s not the companies inflating the costs, it is the customers with big fat wallets that will pay anything.

I would put the onus for upward pricing pressure more on scalpers than the end consumer. It's essentially placing a second middle man between the goods and the consumer, and each has their own expected profit margin.

This is why I applaud artists who do all they can to counteract this secondary market, because facing facts the ticket agency has no financial incentive to intervene because they have no mutually respectful relationship or emotional attachment for the end buyer like an artist may have. Quite frankly the ticket agency doesn't care who buys from them, so long as enough tickets are sold, despite taking some easily skirtable precautions to limit the number of tickets sold to any one individual buyer for any one particular show.

One would think the easiest way to cut off scalpers is to not only monitor and limit their # of purchases for any one particular show, but across all shows. Scalpers may focus more on certain high percentage of possible profit they see in any one artist's show, but they have their fingers in many different pots.

Like if the companies' monitoring algorithm detects someone buying large amounts of tickets for Metallica or Foo Fighters shows across the country, then following a similar pattern for Taylor Swift, then again for Megan the Stallion, well then they might just have found a scalper.

They could do this quite easily, but do they?

 

[William Payne]

I would put the onus for upward pricing pressure more on scalpers than the end consumer. It's essentially placing a second middle man between the goods and the consumer, and each has their own expected profit margin.

This is why I applaud artists who do all they can to counteract this secondary market, because facing facts the ticket agency has no financial incentive to intervene because they have no mutually respectful relationship or emotional attachment for the end buyer like an artist may have.

Yeah that doesn’t help. But only thing I could think of there would be to have some kind of proof of purchase. But then I wonder what happens to tickets brought as gifts?

 

[Hiwatts-n-Gibsons]

Yeah that doesn’t help. But only thing I could think of there would be to have some kind of proof of purchase. But then I wonder what happens to tickets brought as gifts?

I saw that I needed to go more in depth, and edited my post to add a few more thoughts on the subject and one possible partial resolution.

Another fact to face is that there have always been scalpers, and likely always will be despite any actions taken. The only way to push back is make it more complicated, labor intensive, and expensive for the scalpers to function. Still short of requiring a ticket to have a specific end buyer's or holder's name printed on it, and a matching ID to enter a show there is not any way to completely eliminate scalpers. They will find ways to partially get around any obstacles, but there are some obstacles that could mitigate in part their upward pricing pressure by making the act of scalping more time consuming, more expensive, and more labor intensive.

 

[J T]

Bang on Jim.

Zeppelin at Knebworth 79, £7.50 a ticket, £300 quid for beer money.

Man them were the days....well, the bits I can remember.

Forty Five years. Good Lord. Are we that old?

And the old folk, times doting chronicles.

 

[William Payne]

Forty Five years. Good Lord. Are we that old?

And the old folk, times doting chronicles.

On the subject of time and peoples era. Many people feel what happened in the early 90’s changed music. Well Kurt Cobain died 30 years ago.