Tom Dunne: Oasis ticket gouging leaves a really bad taste
Oasis fans have expressed outrage as Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing led to extremely high ticket prices for the band's upcoming tour. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP)
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Just because you’ve developed the technology to “maximise profits” at a time of “peak demand” doesn’t mean you always need to use it.
What if this technology fell into the hands of a corrupt Santa? What tales of unbridled anguish would Christmas visit upon us then? Selection boxes for €215? Trees starting at €50 but, if you go Christmas Eve in a flap, prepare to pay €9,000?
It is implicit in the unspoken contract that exists between fan and artist that the artist respects and appreciates the fans’ role in the life they now have. And it isn’t the cars and the houses they appreciate, although that too. It’s being gifted the time and space to make music.
The time and space to make music is all any artist wants. It’s why people so fervently hope that the Basic Income for the Arts will be both retained and expanded. At the moment, it gives 2,000 artists €325 a week to help address the financial instability artists face.
You won’t buy Oasis tickets on that kind of money, and you’ll struggle to raise a family. But if music is something you “have to do” it will allow you to do that for a while and see where it goes. The Basic Income will help you to carve out the time and space you need to create.
If it works and CD sales, gigs and merchandise conspire to give you a decent income you’ll be taxed and the majority of that money will go back in tax to the government, as it should. No one who has managed to secure a livelihood in music through that money will be unhappy with that. It’s all they really want.
For the majority of artists that “make it” making it just means being allowed to keep doing it. For a small number of artists that does then cross over into huge sales and with it, huge income. That might be a small window, and no one objects to nests being feathered at that point.
In fact, it’s part of the deal. “Working class lads or lassies deal with untold wealth” - generally very badly - is part of the trope. It’s like a lottery win. It rarely ends well, but it is entertaining.
Prior to that most artists will have spent years slogging on the road. Prior to Nirvana, Dave Grohl had toured with a punk band called Scream. Those tours are sobering reading for anyone with a romantic dream of “making it”. Endless, often overnight, drives in a small van. Little food, no showers.
But at the venues they’d be welcomed warmly by fans. Food would be free, and floor space offered. It was a community. I’ve experienced it myself and I’ve seen bands like U2 and REM play to tiny audiences. Those audiences are life affirming but above all they keep the flame alive.
After the long drives, the penury, the discomfort, the watching your peers pursue a normal life and thrive, these 12 people – it happened, in a venue on Staten Island – are all that keep you doing it. And they seem to know this, so they clap louder and hold up your album to get signed.
They are the kind of fans that no artist can survive without and which no artist will ever forget. When a Bruce or a Bono takes time out during a massive stadium gig to acknowledge the moment it means something. To touch their hearts and acknowledge “none of this without you” means something.
But it has to have a sense of fairness as it progresses. To exclude the very people who supported you in the beginning through a punitive ticket price is seven shades of wrong. Exploitative at best. Corrupt at worst.
And it doesn’t have to be that way. Paul Heaton has pegged his upcoming UK Arena tour ticket price at £35. He will play to 116,000 people and “easily make a profit”. He says he doesn’t want to take advantage of people in a cost-of-living crisis.
He also says he hopes others might find his ticket price a little “embarrassing” and believes artists with sky high prices are either “greedy or ill advised”. So, which is it, Liam and Noel?
If bands can beat a drum about their advances in being “carbon neutral”, might they also be able to take time out to ensure their prices don’t disenfranchise the very people who made them.
