I get 15-20 dollar tickets to concerts by bands I love fairly often, personally. It definitely depends a bit what kind of music you’re in to, and probably what part of the country you live in, but cheap concerts are still out there.
Did you notice they mentioned pretty huge bands that bring in tens of thousands of people? Yeah, these groups don’t do shows where the tickets are 15-20$, but what’s fucked up is that they did back in the 90s when they pulled in even bigger crowds. So what has changed for their tickets to be 10x (or more) as expensive as 30 years ago? Ticketmaster.
15-20$ in my area might get you symphony type concerts, but not one of their good ones. I could also pay the cover at a bar that has a live band. The smallest venues near me are still 50+ per ticket.
I could also pay the cover at a bar that has a live band.
I think the disconnect here is to me and the guy you’re replying to, that’s still a show/concert/whatever you wanna call it, but since a band like Julie isn’t as big as Metallica, they play the venues metallica used to play in '84, while Metallica is an arena act now. A concert doesn’t have to be in a theater or arena, that “cover” is the ticket price. Like see this show here at The Middle East downstairs in Cambridge MA, https://www.mideastoffers.com/tm-event/czarface-ocelot/ you’re not just paying $30 to get in, you’re paying $30 for an advanced ticked to see Czarface (who fucking rules btw), $35 day of show.
Unless you mean some shitty cover band nobody knows the name of in a bar nobody wants them in, in that case my mistake, bars around here don’t charge a cover for that they basically use it to beg for customers. I hate it, I wanted to drink with my friends and talk not “SURPRISE! Bad Barenaked ladies and Eve6 covers for 4 hours!”
You know what, you have a good point, all the bars around me I looked at don’t charge a cover. Theres probably some decent bands in the downtown area near me that are up and coming but my city is no Nashville.