Jaylon Jackson, 21, has spent about $5,500 on 12 concerts over the past two years. But when Hozier announced a tour date in Los Angeles with tickets costing just $130 , he passed.

“I love his music, but I really want to appreciate the money I spend to see an artist,” Jackson said. For him, that means saving up to see a show as big as The Eras Tour or the Renaissance World Tour.

According to Business Insider , Jackson is not the only audience member who feels that way. While Sabrina Carpenter’s shows are selling out and Taylor Swift’s global tour is about to end after 18 months of dominating the market, other artists holding concerts during this period are facing a crisis, such as the Black Keys and Animal Collective, both of whom have had to cancel their tours due to lack of demand.

Two opposite poles of the market

The average price to see The Eras Tour in 2023 is $254 , and tickets are resold on the black market for around $3,801 . In October, Forbes estimated the concert’s total revenue at $1.93 billion from 121 shows.

Meanwhile, on the SeatGeek platform , resale tickets for Kacey Musgraves’s late November show in Texas are selling for just $33 , nearly half the original price, while some tickets for Justin Timberlake’s December concert in Arkansas are listed for $10 . Tickets to see Post Malone and Morgan Wallen perform are also seeing a sharp drop in price.

In June, Jennifer Lopez canceled her This Is Me… Live tour to “spend time with family” amid rumors of a rift with Ben Affleck. However, Forbes points to persistent poor sales as the real reason.

According to the diagram on the ticketing platform Live Nation, each of JLo’s shows has an audience of about 15,000, but the stadium occupancy rate is only about 70%. Some places have more than half of the stadium unfilled, even though tickets have been reduced to a record low of only $10 . Online, many comments say that JLo’s appeal has decreased.

Taylor Swift just completed a 6-night tour in Toronto, Canada. Photo: @taylorswift.

Chris Leyden, chief marketing officer at SeatGeek , calls it a polarization of the marketplace. Some artists are seeing the highest demand ever for tours, while others are struggling to sell tickets.

Touring artists are facing a double-edged sword of inflation: Artists have to spend more on equipment and staff, which leads to higher ticket prices. This puts pressure on audiences because the cost of travel, hotels, food, etc. also increases, according to Jonathan Bricker, assistant professor of music management and business at Berklee College of Music.

That’s why, except for the enormous appeal of Taylor Swift, mid-level artists often have to call on audiences to buy tickets to their concerts, even taking a loss to reduce the price.

Mike Finn – tour director of Imagine Dragons and professor at Berklee – commented that in the high-end segment like The Eras Tour or Renaissance World Tour , the audience still accepts to spend a large amount of money, but at the same time, they expect the show to be of quality, commensurate with the price.

“Over the past year or so, we’ve seen people willing to pay higher prices, even thousands of dollars, to see their favorite artists perform live,” said Joseph Bocanegra, a spokesperson for StubHub . “Fans see events like this as a bucket list item for the year,” he added.

Audiences are no longer interested in concerts.

Ticket pricing and distribution platform Automatiq said the average ticket price for the $50 to $200 range — the price point many mid-tier artists are targeting — dropped nearly 23 percent from the first month of sale to the last month of sale. In the last month of listing on resale sites, nearly 37 percent of tickets in that price range sold for less than their original price.

Joseph Bocanegra says that nearly 40% of 2024 US concert tickets have an average selling price under $50 on StubHub , including tickets to see Ice Spice, Omar Apollo and Girl in Red, and nearly 80% of tickets have an average selling price under $100 .

“This may be good news for fans who have been waiting for a bargain. But for artists, the volatility has led to their own calculations and tightening of scales,” Business Insider commented.

Mike Finn was working with a musician whose tour of outdoor theaters sold out earlier this year. So for the next few stops, they decided to rent a bigger stadium and charge higher prices. In the end, those stops didn’t sell.

Ice Spice is not a name that guarantees the concert market this year. Photo: Bostonglobe.

“We’re only seeing about 50, 55, 60 percent of tickets sold. I think part of it is the saturation that’s happening across the board,” Finn said.

He doesn’t want to spell doom and gloom for mid-level music acts. Instead, Finn thinks some changes need to happen to balance the market.

“Can tour companies reduce tour prices? Or bus or truck companies do the same. They can help the economy and the tourism ecosystem by reducing some prices,” the expert asked.

As the experience of watching a musician performer becomes more and more mundane, people are starting to pay more attention and love to other live events, such as sports tournaments. About 40% of SeatGeek accounts bought tickets to a baseball game in the first week of the event.

“Baseball fans have so many options that they can make last-minute decisions. With so many events scheduled and extremely affordable, music fans are starting to turn to sports,” said Chris Leyden, chief marketing officer at SeatGeek .