The stage lights up, the crowd erupts in response to their favorite artist walking out onto the stage with a microphone in their hand, about to sing someone’s favorite song. Whether it be for a small artist who is just beginning their career to one who is well known and has fans all over the world, the atmosphere of a live performance is unidentifiable. Going to a concert is a feeling that most people want to experience in their lifetime; however, that feeling is becoming increasingly impossible to achieve with the amount of live performances going down and the prices for these performances going up. 

As ticketing has gone online in recent years, it allows people from all over the country to try and buy tickets to a show, regardless of where they are located. The retreat from the box office to these platforms has made it harder for local fans to purchase tickets to the show nearest to them due to high numbers of people trying to buy tickets. Sometimes it can even exceed 100,000 people trying to buy tickets to a specific venue that only holds 18,000 people.

“The worst place I have been in the [Ticketmaster] queue was for the Eras Tour for Taylor Swift because it was so high in demand,” Gia Shan (10) said.

In recent years, concerts have become increasingly popular for people of all ages to hear their favorite artists perform but as artists’ popularity continues to grow, the prices of their concerts tend to go up and the demand for these concerts has increased in return. As concerts are not limited to true or die-hard fans who have been listening to their music for years, random people who often have no idea who the artist is are buying up the tickets and leaving these fans miserable as they have been wanting to hear that artist live for years. These people are called resellers and they either use sheer luck or bots to buy up some tickets in order to resell them to fans for a much higher price. When stranded in the back of the line to buy tickets, these fans tend to succumb to the resell prices and keep the resellers in business.

“I do not approve about Ticketmaster’s process when distributing tickets as they do not scan for fake profiles and bots which makes it hard for real fans to get tickets,” Emma Wang (10) said.

However, these resellers are still people and this is simply just a job to them. Although it can be annoying at times, resellers do not always do it to go out of their way to cause this botherance to fans.

“I started off reselling tickets as a way to fuel my love for going to concerts. I would buy tickets for whatever artist I would want to go [see] and resell two or three extra tickets in order to pay for whatever friends or family I wanted to take to that concert with me,” Don Kumar (10) said. “Now I resell tickets as a hobby to make more opportunities for myself to see artists that I enjoy or for future experiences.”

With loads of big name artists going on tour this year, such as Katy Perry, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Kendrick Lamar & SZA, fans are grappling with both Ticketmaster and resellers to snatch tickets in order to see at least one of their favorite artists.

“I would want to see Gracie Abrams as she has recently become one of my favorite artists, and I would love to see her sing live to all of my favorite songs,” Wang (10) said.