CONcerts:  It’s unreasonably difficult to attend any music concert nowadays because of skyrocketing ticket prices

I’m a sucker for music concerts. Whether I know all the lyrics to every song or only a few of their number-one hits, any chance I have to see live music has me scouring StubHub, attempting to buy tickets. 

Attempting is the keyword.

Of the hundreds of artists I wish to see live, only a fraction have affordable tickets — “affordable” being anything under $150 per seat. This doesn’t even include the hidden fees, which inevitably come with tickets.  

Ticket prices have gotten out of hand. Right now, it’s cheaper to buy a plane ticket to Chicago and a day pass to Lollapalooza — a music festival with various artists — than to pay for one ticket to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Concerts should be affordable to all who enjoy the artist’s music, not just a select group of people who can spend hundreds on tickets. 

When searching for Cage the Elephant tickets on StubHub and Ticketmaster, the cheapest tickets I could find were nearly $200. That’s a lot of money to sit in the very back corner of the Starlight Theater with an obstructed view of the stage.

I’ve had friends who got their Noah Kahan tickets for maybe $30 or won the “concert ticket lottery” by getting ridiculously cheap Zach Bryan tickets. But, I’ve never struck such luck — and neither has the average concert-goer. 

When I purchased my Zach Bryan’s Quittin’ Time tour tickets I bought four, assuming my friend group would go with me. This $300 price tag, however, was enough to make one of them drop out. 

I normally find myself paying upwards of $100 for a seat with an awkward two-foot space to dance, jam-packed next to the fans on either side of me who are unfortunately suffering the same fate as myself.  

I gave a sigh of relief when my friends and I had two empty seats beside us at Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts Tour. This would mean we could spread out and dance freely to “good 4 u” and “get him back!” without having to worry about being in a random person’s personal space. 

But, my excitement plummeted when a couple took the two unoccupied seats next to us. I spent the only hour and a half I would ever have Olivia Rodrigo in my presence practically linking arms with the stranger beside me. 

I had to constantly remind myself that this experience was worth the 40 hours I worked at my minimum-wage lifeguarding job — I had to make the best of it.

This mindset was especially hard to keep up during Zach Bryan’s Quittin’ Time Tour. When picking out the seats, TicketMaster failed to inform me there would be a fan sitting behind me filming the entire concert with her flash on, backlighting the entire concert. 

Teenagers who make up a big chunk of these crowds, shouldn’t have to drain their bank accounts for two hours of their life. 

The strobe-light-heavy, sensory overload of a concert is fun — in theory. The music is loud, the performance is top-notch. But this experience isn’t worth hundreds of dollars. I guarantee Morgan Wallen will be fine if my ticket costs $50 rather than $250. 

Concert tickets have value, as it’s not every day Justin Timberlake comes to the T-Mobile Center. But I’m not interested in breaking the bank to stand in a hot arena listening to songs you can stream for free on Spotify.