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Empty Seats Finally Having Impact

The fact that tickets to many concert tickets are sold many months ahead of the date of the show made artists, managers, agents and promoters think the live music business would weather the recession better than it ultimately did.  Theaters, arenas and amphitheaters continued doing good business long after other sectors of the economy had begun to tank.  Once solid attendance was no longer being sustained by tickets sold well before the severity of the recession was generally known, 1/2 empty venues became an increasingly alarming norm.  That triggered desperation discounting in the hope that some of the slack could be made up by increasing the volume of concession and merchandise being hawked at concerts.  Whatever cushioning effect it had was far too little to offset the fact that, on average, 40% of the seats have been empty during a good stretch of months during the last two seasons.
Artists and agents continued to demand fees that showed complete disregard for the economic pummeling that promoters, venue operators and their fans were taking.  A drop of 12% in box office business between 2009 and the close of 2010 seems to finally have made those on the talent side of the equation realize that they had to be more responsive to the new economic realities of the concert business.  2011 should see a reversal in the gravity and reality defying uptick in the average ticket price for concerts.  Too bad it took so long for big artists to get a grip on the fact that the booming economy that allowed them to demand guarantees that are the single biggest determining factor in ticket prices ended for their fans a long time ago. When your real world economic hardship means a charter instead of a private jet, understanding it's unreasonable to expect average fans to spend more on a concert ticket than they do on their car payment comes slow to some.