By A recent Pollstar.com report suggested that the average cost of a concert ticket was $134 in the United States in 2025. From my optics, this number seems pretty low. I have tried to see a few shows in 2026, as I have been getting out more socially and who doesn’t like to experience some live music? One concert opportunity that came to mind was the recent 50th Anniversary Tour for legendary Canadian progressive rock band Rush, who opened their nationwide tour at the “fabulous” KIA Forum. The venue isn’t exactly walking distance from where I now live, but it wouldn’t be much more than a 10-minute ride in an appropriately spendy Lyft Black. A music school buddy of mine had procured tickets and they were middle of the road options at a mere $700 apiece. Normally for me, concert tickets are gifts and/or parts of press events, thus I wasn’t exactly prepared for that number. I would learn later that it wasn’t really all that comparatively expensive.
Taylor Swift Might Have Started This Party
Last summer, I was blessed enough to play golf at Fishers Island, which is a very fancy country club off of the coast of Connecticut, designed by legendary course designer Seth Raynor. He was the protégé to C.B. Macdonald, who was the man who brought all the classic course design elements over from Scotland to the United States. Many of the courses that Macdonald designed were also worked on by Raynor, and many are at the top of my favorites list, such as Camargo Club in Cincinnati and National Golf Links in Southampton on Long Island.
The event that we were playing was a “hit and giggle” tournament, which wasn’t very high-pressure. Driving the 40-foot yacht back to New London, Connecticut, without bottoming out the sucker on some rocks, was a whole other pending challenge. The topic of conversation on the course was how all my buddies have teenaged daughters and fancy wives and how they had to buck up for Taylor Swift tickets when she came to New York. Friends, this is no small financial outlay. I don’t expect you to feel sorry for these guys, who are mostly notable lawyers in the Hartford area thus they can afford expensive concert tickets. They were spending $1,250 a seat, willingly, to see Ms. Swift do her thing in a giant stadium which was almost assuredly The Meadowlands.
In business school, we learned that the right price for something was at the intersection of what a buyer is willing to pay and and where a seller is willing to sell, so it is hard to say that the show was overpriced. It is easy to say that it was very expensive to attend, especially if you are taking the whole family like my buddies were doing.
In additional defense of Tay-Tay, my brother is a pretty seasoned guitar tech for rock bands. Swift has changed a lot about the music business, and paying her staff as full-time employees with very fair wages makes it far more sustainable to make a living out on tour with a band. The impact of what Swift has done has trickled down to most other major tours and positively impacted many people that work hard to bring us our entertainment. For that, and beyond the raw supply and demand issues, we can understand the cost of her show when Ms. Swift is on the road.
That Last-Chance Concert Opportunity Can Really Motivate
I never thought Rush would go back out on tour after the death of their world class drummer Neil Peart from a terrible brain tumor. Another act that I heard about that was out on tour this summer that seemingly everybody loves is Earth, Wind & Fire. Talk about a show where you’ve got some feel-good energy and you know every word of every song.
My friend who lives not that far from Oprah (in a “slightly smaller” house) just south of Santa Barbara and I discussed going to see the R&B masters at the local outdoor venue. That was until we saw the price of the tickets. Holy crap. They were asking $1,500 apiece for tickets in the mid-level of the Santa Barbara Bowl and we both politely decided to save our cash for other more lasting experiences and/or assets.
The thing was that the concert gods have a funny way of making things happen. The day before the show, I got a call to see if I would consider busting up the coast for a Friday night show. My friend was gifted a pair of tickets for $3,000 apiece and they were seats 1 and 2 in Row 1. I charged up my bougie “computer on wheels” and headed north to have a blast. We had a driver to pick us up and drive us to dinner, then to the event and then home. It was a great time and lovely to see the smiles on Phil Bailey’s face, as he could still hit the very high notes at 75 years old. Would we have paid $6,000 for these tickets? Absolutely not, but for free – we were all-in for making this a great musical experience.
The Value Proposition of Live Concerts Versus Listening at Home
We never miss a chance to remind every audiophile to go out to as many live shows as possible, which gets harder and harder with age, but it almost always worth the effort. It is also super-important to make sure that one protects their hearing when at a show. At the Earth, Wind & Fire show, they handed out hearing protection for free at the concession stands. The cost of some foam earplugs is close to nothing, while the cost of losing your hearing is simply unthinkable, so it is very important to protect what drives our hobby.
Having a baseline for what music sounds like out in the wild is priceless, even if the tickets often cost a fortune. The question is – what could $3,000 for a pair of concert tickets do for your audio system? I don’t care what kind of system that you own, because $3,000 will likely make a big improvement in any good audiophile setup. For those who have a fully-realized, world-class audiophile system – a $3,000 expenditure could purchase a meaningful audiophile system for a local school’s music department or make a 14-year-old’s life (as my Dad did for me back in 1988) with a gift of one hell of a starter music playback system. I am not suggesting in any way that recorded music is the same experience as a live musical event, but it is a renewable musical resource. It is something that you can use to your benefit every day and every night when you are home. It is an asset.
How Can We Strike a Balance Between Live and Recorded Music Experiences?
Having music in your life makes it better. Having a great music playback system is the stated goal of many who read FutureAudiophile.com, but experiencing live music is also very important, too. One good compromise is to go to hear live music at smaller venues with perhaps less famous artists. While you might spend thousands on tickets for a massive, global stadium tour, smaller jazz clubs or rock venues can also give you that palpable, visceral experience of hearing music live that we crave for a lot less money.
If you need to hear more familiar music, many people seek out tribute bands as a fun alternative. The Atomic Punks are an early Van Halen tribute band so good that David Lee Roth often uses them as his backing band when he plays solo gigs. A different music school friend who now lives up in Sacramento is fond of the Yacht Rock genre, and he will go out to see Yachtly Crue, which does exactly what you think they do. They are a little bit silly. They are kitschy and it is always good to go out to hear the smooth, relaxing tunes from the 1970s and ‘80s. Hell, the new singer for Journey was discovered in a tribute band.
Live experiences are a very important part of loving music. We all should try to go out and hear music as the performers intended us to – perhaps with a new twist or a heightened energy? The more spontaneous nature of live music is simply addictive for most music lovers. Experiencing music with a large audience of often like-minded listeners is also a powerful experience. At the same time, investing real money in a tangible asset that can provide years and years of musical enjoyment is a sound concept. Finding the right balancing act between the tangible and experiential is your personal challenge as an audiophile. The right balance is a concept that only you can define, but when you do, you are on your way to making music more of a source of joy in your life, and that is exactly the essence of what this hobby is all about.
How do you feel about going to concerts? What have you seen recently that you enjoyed? What did you pay to go out that night? Would you rather have invested that money into your audiophile system? Tell us about how you define what will get you out to hear live music. We can’t wait to hear from you.
