According to usatoday.com, the average price for concert ticket has jumped from $25.81 in 1996 to $135.92 in 2024. And now, a weekend at Coachella starts around $600, Lollapalooza single-day tickets start at $189, while the cheapest seats for Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are about $80 and the average price for entry is around $200.
For older generations who have enough wealth, money is not an issue. But for younger consumers, who value experiences over material goods and are often swayed by a collective fear of missing out, that is very concerning and costly. For most of the younger consumers, not going to a show is not an option, so they are taking advantage of an old-fashioned solution called payment plans. Everyone from ticket brokers to festival organizers are seeing big growth in the number of buyers opting for what amounts to layaway for live music.
Music fans will find payment plans vary by event and seller, but in general, they ask for a relatively small down payment to sign up that is followed by split installments. Some plans are offered by the festival organizers, while others leverage outside vendors such as Klarna, Zip, Affirm and PayPal.
More than 60 percent of the estimated 80,000 attendees at Coachella, where Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Benson Boone, Green Day and Travis Scott were among the headliners, used the festival’s payment plan, according to Billboard. This is staggering in comparison to when the payment plans were first launched in 2009 when only about 18 percent of attendees relied on their use, according to GQ.
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