As with most blog posts that start with a question, the most honest answer isn’t yes, no, or maybe—it’s “It depends.”
The economics of touring are challenging, even for A-list artists. Every band travels with an entire support machine as they move from venue to venue, performing a mix of new and old material. Traditionally, bands toured to promote new albums. However, classic and legacy acts have discovered that fans will pay premium prices to see their music icons perform beloved hits. This has eliminated the incentive to release new material—audiences primarily want to hear the familiar songs they love.
Billy Joel learned this lesson in the early 1990s after releasing his final pop studio album. For nearly 30 years, he toured both solo and with Elton John, playing to packed venues of fans eager to hear his greatest hits. Were his shows expensive? Absolutely. His 2024 Madison Square Garden residency saw ticket prices starting at $660.
Other legacy acts command similar premiums: The Rolling Stones start around $275, Tears for Fears at $220 or more, and even My Chemical Romance, with “cheap seats” for their Black Parade 2026 Tour starting at $158 for the August 30th San Diego show.
And then there’s Rush. A decade after calling it quits with the R40 Tour in August 2015, the surviving members of the power trio are hitting the road in 2026 for an R50something tour. The tickets are insanely expensive, with some packages running $1400 per ticket. I purchased nosebleed tickets at the KIA Forum in LA for $307 each, which felt like a relative bargain.
Now, I’m not going to go on a tirade and complain about how unfairly priced Rush tickets are, but I will note that the trendline is that the more senior the band, the more they can command in terms of ticket prices. It’s not every legacy band. For every Rush overpriced ticket, there are $30-$50 tickets to see bands like Toto, REO Speedwagon, or ZZ Top to be had.
Okay, what about non-classic rock bands? I’m seeing Belly on this tour in November:
My tickets were $35 each (I bought two). Belly is a favorite of mine, having released only three studio albums and one album of B-sides. They aren’t an A-list band, but people who come to see them love those two albums from the ’90s (Star and King) and are likely pretty okay with Dove (2018). Belly never had the bevy of hits or a huge fanbase like Rush, The Rolling Stones, or Billy Joel, but they have enough of one that they can tour small venues with seating or standing capacity of 500-700 and still make some money.
I also saw Steven Wilson in September at the Masonic Theater in San Francisco; it was about $100 a ticket.
The Masonic is a great venue with great sightlines and a max capacity of about 3300. I’ve never seen Steven Wilson live, but have enjoyed his music after being introduced to it through one of his many bands, Porcupine Tree. To me, it was worth $100 + $75 for parking to see a musician of his calibre play live — even though the album he was touring on was kind of ho-hum.
Another band that I’ve been into since 2021 is Wolf Alice. The album Blue Weekend was on high rotation after reading about the record in NME and taking a chance on it. I’m glad I did because I’ve become a big fan of their music. The new album, The Clearing, has grown on me, but their debut record, My Love is Cool (not the greatest title), is super solid. So, when the band announced they were touring, I got tickets to see them in Oakland at the Fox Theater.
As you can see, the ticket prices were not a bank-buster. Indeed, they were surprisingly affordable for a band that’s having a moment and leveling up in terms of getting out of their alt-rock lane.
So, circling back to the question posed in the post’s title, “Are Concerts Too Expensive?” The “it depends” answer is one that I’m sticking to. It depends on how much you’re willing to pay for nostalgia, and it depends on how open you are to seeing bands and artists that you don’t know that well. Because if you have a more open mind about seeing live music, you can see some high-quality performers for affordable prices — the examples I use in this post reinforce my point. I’ll add that I went to see The Pineapple Thief in December 2024, and the tickets were $40 each. Though I don’t know a lot of their music, I found the show to be quite the treat because, for a small venue (300-400 people), I got to see some very accomplished musicians play in a space where I was close to the stage.
And while I did take some video of that concert, I’ll leave you with a snippet I shot with my iPhone 15 at the Wolf Alice concert earlier this month.
