sven945 wrote:
However that's not the point I was making. It was more about how the booking/postage fees add up. And, in my mind, when you pay £20 for a gig it's normally someone pretty big. But that's not been the case in reality for a good few years, to be honest.
It's more of a "it's not like it was in my day" grumble.
I'm not a gig promoter, but the ticket price (£15) comes with the territory. Gig prices in general seem to be going up in London and I could come up with two reasons for that.
One is that gigs are going through a hayday, and so promoters know they can rake the prices up for bands with any kind of interest and people will pay it. Two is that far too many venues are now owned by one company, AMG, who wholly owned by Live Nation, who are wholly owned by Clear Channel. There is simply no other venue in London of a big enough size that isn't owned by them. Somehow this has gone unchecked by the monopolies people, but I'm pretty sure that this means AMG can fix the venue fees as high as they like, which forces the band/promoter to have the ticket priced as high as it is.
In other words, there is nothing that can be done. If you want to be seeing any bands that arn't 'big' in the near future, then you'll have to get over it. As for the other £5 you're paying to a ticket agent, if you're so bothered by it there is a way round it. Make a trip to either the lovely people at Stargreen in oxford street and then it's £17.50, or better still go to the venue box office and get it for the price that was intended. Although for some reason if you want a ticket for gigs at brixton the only place that you can go is Islington academy.
wanted to see them play brixton for ages, atmosphere is always superb in there for a rock band
