the surge of concert cancellations seems scary but also expected
ok lets be real for a second, i bet if i walked into a room of 100 people, none of them were planning to buy tickets for post malone, meghan trainor, zayn... the list goes on. and no, im not saying theyre bad artists! i like some of the older post malone records (esp hollywoods bleeding) and zayn has been on my radar for a bit. the thing is, nobody can simply afford these artists anymore. and the thing is, a lot of these artists who are touring book too big of venues when their size is half of what it used to be.
lets use slayyyter for example. she is at a growth point in her career right now, so shes been starting to blow up a TON both online and irl. her concerts have been selling out INSTANTLY. she is booking smaller venues that her label know fit her audience, so she is able to get a sold out tour and fill her venues. now lets look at meghan trainor. shes been on a stuck point for awhile in her career. yes, she has had some viral social media songs like mother or made you look, but viral tiktok audios dont equal sales. she hasnt had a big album era in a long time, and she isnt grabbing peoples attention like she did in 2014-2016. in simple terms, she might have 21 million monthly listeners, but a lot of them very likely only stream her biggest hits. more importantly, spotify will consider people fans of an artist if they stream just 30 seconds of a song. so if you really did the math there, that number is at least a quarter if not even less than that.
it doesnt help that concerts are also controlled by one whole monopoly who adds many fees and ups the prices of concerts so they can profit and pay the artists and venues way less. people just cant simply afford concerts. an average concert ticket nowadays is 100 dollars PER PERSON, sometimes even more! you want better seats? vip? maybe the chance to get in early? you pay even more! this is just the ticket by the way. no food, travel expenses, hotels if you dont live nearby and can drive there and back in the same day, car rentals if you travel into state... it all adds up. im going to my first concert this month, and i know its gonna be expensive. thankfully im going there and back and i live in california (socal to be exact) so its not a bad drive, but still it will cost a lot. concerts were never made to be inaffordable, its just the corporate greed that made them expensive, the inability to book smaller venues that fit an artists real audience size, and the amount of concerts that only go to the same cities in california and new york, which itself is a whole other issue that needs to be talked about.
so if you are a meghan trainor fan who had tickets to her concert and are wondering "why did he just cancel it out of nowhere?", blame ticketmaster and her label for thinking she could book the massive venues she was supposed to sell out somehow.
