Live music, cute outfits, Instagram-worthy pictures, and of course, having to sell an arm and leg to pay for your entrance – that’s concert culture. Concerts are a delightful way to let loose and have fun while listening to your favorite artist live, but what happens when the tickets to go to said concert become too expensive to even think about buying? Ticket prices for these events have soared recently, and many are proclaiming these happenings as fraud. Though it is okay to splurge once in a while on experiences, spending multiple paychecks worth of money on one ticket is an utter scam.

   Attending concerts is a common activity for students at UC High. Sophomore Penny Wright is a frequent concert goer who is well aware of the situation and unhappy about the hefty costs. She said, “There are a lot of concerts that I would like to go to that cost up to 400 dollars, which makes me wonder if it would even be worth it. What would happen if I didn’t end up enjoying the concert?” Though ticket costs were more reasonable a mere year ago, Sophomore Maeve Nuñez noticed that, “The prices have skyrocketed [as of late].” They said, “When I was not allowed to go to concerts, the prices were a lot less expensive.” Now that they can actually attend, the costs prohibits them.

   These price surges are not going unnoticed by artist fandoms either, leading to frustration being projected at the performers themselves. According to Time Magazine, Harry Styles’s fans in New York took to social media to express their concerns with ticket costs, with spreadsheets ranking the lowest to highest prices being posted on TikTok, and inexplicable price ranges being discussed on Twitter (time.com).

   A recent controversy surrounding the songwriter Taylor Swift has prompted an investigation into the ticket-selling website Ticketmaster. The site crashed on the day LA concert tickets began to be sold, backing up virtual lines and resulting in complicated transactions for fans. Sophomore Delaney Churchill purchased tickets through Ticketmaster, and was appalled at the wait to purchase a ticket. She said, “[Ticketmaster] ended up crashing due to the insane amount of people purchasing tickets, which pushed back my transaction to 3 p.m, when I began waiting in line at 10 in the morning.”    Though some of the concerns are directed towards creators, most are being focused on ticket-selling websites and companies like Ticketmaster. The site has received backlash for the multitude of fees which are imposed on buyers. Fees have reached costs which are as high as 78 percent of the original ticket price, which are then divided by the venues, promoters, artists, and Ticketmaster itself, according to Variety (variety.com).

   However, fees are not the main cause of high prices. Resellers, people who tend to buy tickets in bulk and use bots to up the prices, can mark up tickets from anything between 50 to 7000 percent (variety.com). These resellers are taking advantage of people just wanting to enjoy a live concert experience. “Recently, I wanted to go to a concert that sold out pretty much instantly. I then went to take a look at the resale prices, and was shocked to see that seats surrounding the walls of the venue were the price of a typical pit ticket before resale,” said Wright.

   What makes buying tickets even more complex is that, “Ticketmaster holds back as many as 90 percent of the tickets for the secondary market — credit card companies, promoters, radio stations, or artists’ fan clubs,” according to Time Magazine (time.com). “There are people who are dedicated to just buying popular artist’s tickets in bulk while they are cheap and selling them for a much higher price,” said Nunez. Due to increasing awareness about resellers, Wright said, “There are now limits on how many tickets you can buy on certain websites.”

   There is no doubt that concert tickets are excessively overpriced. Ticket-sellers, mainly Ticketmaster, are the main culprits, with the overwhelming fees imposed on buyers and unfair ticket availability. The next time you think about buying passes to your favorite artist’s concert, consider the unfortunate price increases.