A lot of people just don't get it: Tickets for major sporting events and concerts are luxuries for the rich, exactly like private jets. They are supposed to be unaffordable. I don’t know where this idea came from that a middle class family is supposed to just be able to afford live Taylor Swift tickets. This isn’t 1970.
If artists price them below what they are worth, they are going to sell out to (mostly) scalpers in 200 milliseconds. If they price them at what they're worth, people grumble and complain about how expensive they have gotten, but that doesn't stop people from buying them, so there is no downward pressure on the price.
So by now they're pricing them way more than they are worth, and people are buying it regardless, so there's still further upside :\
I want concert tickets to cost more; I hate scalpers more than I hate the rich.
Yeah, I remember when Led Zeppelin first came to my town.
All the way from England.
It wasn't 1970 yet either.
That was two dollars well spent.
Or find a free concert to go to. There’s always free music performances to be found if you know where to look.
Someone like Taylor Swift has hundreds of millions of fans. There are what, maybe 50-100 tour dates a year.
The venue doesn't have a million seats.
Most of the fans aren't going, then.
It sounds like the alternative you propose would involve... not having a ticket? That is clearly not an acceptable outcome if I want to go to the concert.