by Mia Stachura
I’m sorry to be the one to deliver the bad news, but concert culture is now officially dead.
About 10 years ago, along with my best friend, I begged my father to drive us to Tinley Park to attend our very first music festival, Vans Warped Tour ‘15. Sick and tired of hearing two teenage girls try out their negotiation skills for hours on end, he agreed to be our chauffeur for the evening and did what dads do. He pulled up to the rideshare drop-off, handed us each a crisp twenty from his wallet, and disappeared into the day all while we got swept away in the heat of alt-fest madness.
An hour in, my friend and I had already secured several meet-and-greets with bands we only saw reblogged on Tumblr, and all of them somehow free of cost. I remember sitting in the nosebleed section of the main stage watching Andy Biersack forget the words of his own song while my friend and I tried desperately to not pass out due to the intensity of the mid-July sun. This wasn’t helped by the fact that we had blown all our water money on T-shirts that would eventually be used as cleaning rags once we grew out of them. But none of that mattered. In that moment, absolutely nothing could take away the fact that this was a great day.
Fast forward to 2018. I’m now driving around in my very own Ford Fiesta hauling my best friend to the Eagles Club in Wisconsin to see The Neighbourhood perform for the third time. The opener was scheduled to start at 8pm so we got to the venue at 6pm so we had time to scope out the merch table before standing our ground in the General Admission area. No campers in sight, no makeshift placeholder wristbands on anybody’s wrist. Despite the band being 30 minutes late to perform and our feet killing us from choosing style over comfort, nothing could take away from the fact that this was a great day.
The year is now 2026. “Fans” are camping outside of all major venues weeks before the start time of the concert. Other fans are being scrutinized and shamed online for not knowing about private group chats consisting of random people deciding that they’re more deserving to be first in line. These same fans are spending their free time laminating official-looking, entirely unofficial spreadsheets ranking who among them gets to stand at barricade and implementing that in real life, acting as though their made-up system has any authority whatsoever. Nothing can convince me that this behavior exists to build a stronger community of supporters. It seems like modern concert-going is no longer about love of the band; it’s about the love of accomplishment.
There was something so adrenaline-inducing about getting to the venue a few hours before showtime and standing in line with like-minded people all wearing similar merch and sharing their best “I met the drummer once!” stories. Now, if you don’t have the privilege of calling out of work, or skipping class, you’re shunned to the back, literally and socially.
And don’t even get me started on those ticket prices. One ticket to Warped Tour in 2015 cost what I would pay in service fees now. A single ticket to any performer is expected to run at least $200 not including entertainment fees, parking, merch, or the $16 bottle of water you’ll be forced to purchase if you’re no longer able to stand the typical concert dehydration.
The price of the tickets is only half of the issue, though. You’ll spend your month’s rent, sure, but only if you’re lucky enough to get the opportunity. Gone are the days where you can log onto Ticketmaster a few weeks after the general tickets went on sale and purchase them at face value. Now, you can expect to sit in an 8-hour virtual queue where maybe, possibly, you can get a view-obstructed seat or no ticket at all because they were all sold to resellers 4 hours in. There simply is no heart in the concert game anymore.
Maybe I sound dramatic. Maybe every generation had their own way of doing things and it worked for them. However, I can’t help but yearn for when all a successful concert trip took was some dad-money, a nosebleed seat, and the genuine thrill of knowing you’re exactly where you need to be. That was more than enough.
