Chicago’s indie Music venues have a Taylor Swift problem

The late afternoon sun was setting over United Center Parking Lot K as a line of tittering general admission holders queued up to see Billie Eilish.

In the sea of baggy pants and mustard-yellow hoodies stood Paul Sanders, 28, who paid around $200 via Eilish’s presale on Ticketmaster for the November show. “The first time I saw her was at Coachella, and it was probably the best experience I’ve ever had at a concert,” said Sanders.

How much would you spend on potentially the best concert of your life? Friends Nia Jordan, 23, and Eliana Brinkerhoff, 23, frequent shows together, even though Jordan lives in West Garfield Park and Brinkerhoff in Michigan. They were also eager to spill what they’ve spent on concert tickets.

“I got presale [on] Ticketmaster, I got both our tickets. I think that was about $250 each for pit,” said Brinkerhoff, who has seen Eilish four times. “The artist really keeps you coming back,” said Jordan, “and the community.” She’s seen three Eilish shows.

Concert tickets have generated widespread handwringing in recent years; an anxiety-inducing Ticketmaster queue is a nearly universal experience these days, or budgeting $100 for a coveted ticket and paying hundreds more. Despite efforts from federal legislators and ticket-sellers themselves to make prices more transparent to the consumer, concert tickets have outpaced inflation for a decade.

Today, the average ticket hovers around $127, according to a midyear report from Pollstar. That’s only partially due to the nature of services like Ticketmaster. There’s another factor at play: our willingness, as concertgoers, to pay premiums for artists we adore.

Our tendency to spend astronomically on fewer artists also has an effect on smaller, more often locally owned venues. We may be less likely to make the leap on a performance that we’re not as familiar with.

“Coming out of lockdown was great in so many ways. We were selling out of everything,” said Brent Heyl, the director of Music of 16 on Center, a Chicago hospitality group that owns and operates venues like The Salt Shed, The Empty Bottle and Thalia Hall. “I think a lot of people were buying tickets to shows to support the venues. Now there’s this whiplash where [audiences] got a little tired of going to shows, or they spent all their concert money.”

The plague of high ticket prices — and changing consumer behavior as a result — has also hit music festivals. Just think of the final Pitchfork Chicago Festival (RIP): The highest single day-pass at Pitchfork in 2007 was $25; by 2024, it was a whopping $379. Of course, the recent price bakes in all the “extras,” such as exclusive lounge access and private viewing platforms.

Some people may splurge. But other concertgoers are skipping festivals and instead choosing a single big show, like Eilish.

‘I don’t care how much I have to work for it’

An extreme but common example of concert ticket inflation is Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, for which Chicagoans paid a median price of about $2,300 per ticket on resale sites.

But MIT economist Sara Fisher Ellison, who focuses largely on e-commerce markets, argues that internet tech–driven factors are also likely to blame for the uptick in ticket prices.

The internet, she says, makes it easier for concertgoers to learn about shows, compare their options and watch clips of previous performances. She calls this pre-research on an artist “match quality.”

“The willingness to pay for that particular match might be very high,” Ellison said. “Even though high prices often seem like something that’s bad for consumers, [they] can signal that consumers are just willing to pay more for a concert that they’re very sure that they want to attend.”

Another factor is driving ticket-buying behavior, according to Ellison: The internet actually makes it more difficult to compare price points. She calls it “search obfuscation,” and it means that the thing you’re searching for online is purposefully hard to find.

When you go to buy a concert ticket, you may visit a few different websites to find the best seats for what you think is the best price. You add the tickets to your cart and check out, only to be hit with surcharges that you weren’t expecting.

“You can imagine having to train a human being to sell tickets under circumstances like that, where every single transaction, the seller has to say, ‘Would you like to upgrade to this? Where would you like your seat to be? Are you willing to pay more to have this sight line?’ ” Ellison explains.

Ultimately, the combination of match quality and search obfuscation creates the perfect alibi for ticketing companies. They’re able to hide prices until the very end of the ticket-buying process, while being certain that consumers will pay those high prices.

When asked, multiple fans admitted that the concept of a concert budget fell by the wayside when it came to their favorite musicians.

“If it’s something I really want to go to, I usually find ways to make it work,” said Charles, a 25- year-old Eilish fan from Moline. “I don’t care how much I have to work for it. I will make it work.”

It’s not just ticket companies bumping up their prices. Artists themselves are commanding more per ticket, and that’s due in part to changes in the ways we listen to music. With streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music now dominant, musicians can no longer count on album sales to earn a living. In fact, record sales only count for about one-fifth of what they did in 2007.

Artists have had to shift the way that they make money, increasing the value of revenue streams such as merch sales and social media (think Jason Derulo on TikTok or T-Pain on Twitch), especially through the most traditional route: live performances. It’s easy to see the difference in these shows. Swift, one of the biggest pop acts in the world, just concluded the nearly two-year-long run of the Eras Tour, logging the highest-grossing tour of all time before even hitting the one-year mark.

‘It’s forcing us to look at our revenue streams’

So maybe you’re not a fan of the big pop stars who sell out arenas. Even if you’re going to shows at smaller venues, you may still feel the pinch of increased ticket prices. Chicago’s small and midsize venues are feeling the aftershocks: People who spend big bucks on one concert they really enjoy may not go out of their way for up-and-coming artists at smaller, locally owned venues.

So, concert halls around Chicago are adapting.

Take The Salt Shed, which has an indoor capacity of 3,600. Just this year, it’s hosted performances by musicians like André 3000, PJ Harvey and Jon Batiste.

The same owners also run The Empty Bottle, with a smaller capacity of 400. The Bottle, in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood, has a fiercely loyal consumer base, plus a pattern of lower ticket costs (about $15 to $25) and consistent music curation; there’s a concert practically every night of the week.

“The Empty Bottle has a community within itself, and all the folks here work hard to maintain that,” said Heyl of 16 on Center. “You see a lot of familiar faces. There’s people who really just consider it part of their home.”

Heyl hopes that The Salt Shed can adopt a similar community-oriented feel at a larger scale, even off its industrial stretch of Elston Avenue along the Chicago River. Yes, the venue is mostly used for concerts, but 16 on Center just opened a new cocktail lounge there, while also promoting a skyline “rooftop” view and daylong markets and events.

“Nothing’s guaranteed, but you can at least get to a place where you’re able to host great bands and get them good deals,” said Heyl. “Especially at the smaller level, the best place to possibly be is to have an audience where people are just coming back to the venue because they know there’s good shows.”

Other venues are looking at diversified revenue streams, like craft cocktails, to offset changing fan behavior and the steeper costs of putting on shows. While he doesn’t see direct competition between his venue and large-scale sites like the United Center, Eric Henry, director of operations of the 350-capacity Sleeping Village in Avondale, is actively trying to fight off price obfuscation by using the ticket service DICE. The platform shows consumers the price they’ll pay for an event before adding that ticket to their cart. It also defends against scalpers, because you can’t buy DICE tickets from third-party resellers.

This transparency is important to Henry, who says Sleeping Village is trying to make its messaging on pricing clearer to fans.

“If [smaller, independent spaces] could collaborate and all get together on what ticketing platform we use and really get that information in front of people more regularly, [people could] see what’s going on at all the venues that are not going to be $200 for a ticket,” he said.

Rising artist and staffing costs also play a part in ticket prices. Venue owners have to balance what they charge with the responsibility of securing a living for both artists and employees.

“One of our mission statements as a company is to do our best to fairly compensate artists for their work,” said Henry. “[Musicians] experience the same hardships that businesses do in terms of inflation.”

Another consumer pattern hampering smaller Chicago venues: We’re drinking less.

“Venues depend on alcohol sales as one of their main revenue streams, so you’re able to give a little more to the artists if you’re making a little more off the drinks. That has changed pretty significantly since reopening [after lockdown],” said Henry.

Heyl agrees. “It’s forcing us to look at our revenue streams and see how else we are able to stay afloat and maintain the level of promotion and production that we’re used to,” he said. “Is it food sales? Merch sales?” Both Heyl and Henry noted that their respective venues have ventured into nonalcoholic drinks, all part of keeping an eye out for what customers may want.

Back in line at the Eilish show, the anticipation ramps up the closer it gets to doors opening for general admission. Fan-since-Coachella Paul Sanders wonders aloud if there will be any special guests — another phenomenon driving fans to plunk down hundreds, sometimes thousands, on big-name artists.

After all, Swifties obsessed about Taylor Swift’s surprise song selectionsand TikTok For You Pages were chock-full of Charli xcx and Lorde videos when they performed together at Madison Square Garden earlier this year. It’s all part of the package now.

“They can do anything in any city,” said Sanders. “You never know what to expect.”

Sofie Hernandez-Simeonidis is a digital producer on WBEZ’s Arts & Culture desk.