Paid Meet-And-Greets Are A Staple Of Concert Experiences — But For How Much Longer?

By Larisha Paul


What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a concert ticket? My response used to be just over $125 — the cost of a face-value ticket to be able to see Harry Styles at Radio City Music Hall — up until that number jumped to $175, the resale price to be graced by Lorde’s presence on the Melodrama tour. Somehow, this doesn't even feel also outrageous. Because the general cost of concert tickets has risen over 27 percent in just the past three years, with the average ticket price jumping from $74.25 in 2015 to $94.31 in 2018, according to Pollstar, fans have noticed themselves paying in the mid-hundreds or higher for certain top-tier live entertainment experiences (even as much as $2,850, if you’re a BTS fan purchasing resale).


A significant jump in pricing, although, comes alongside the alternative to buy VIP meet-and-greet packages. These possibilities often include early entry into the venue, a soundcheck experience, tour merchandise, along with a meet-and-greet where visitors will be treated to photo possibility and also a chance to chat briefly with the artist. The span of those interactions largely depends on the artist’s schedule and also how several visitors paid for the package. It could be exhausting to speak with dozens of people consecutive and preserve the same level of enthusiasm and attention for each of them.


Nevertheless once The 1975’s Matty Healy took to Twitter earlier this year to question the origin and motivation of paid meet-and-greets, he raised a couple of crucial points about the monetization of human connection and the expenses of touring. “The problem is that a lot of artists don't understand how brutal [paying for meet-and-greets] is, because MAJOR LABELS have normalised it,” he tweeted. Fans have as well.


“I feel like the more you love and support an artist, the harder it is to mention a certain price ‘isn’t worth the experience,’” mentioned Jared Green, a 20-year-old Tori Kelly fan who dropped $125 on a meet-and-greet package for the singer’s Unbreakable Tour. He recalls Kelly coming across as both open and genuinely appreciative of the relationship she has with her fans. “As an enormous fan of an artist, we’re only going to want the ideal VIP package each tour,” he continued. “With that being mentioned, I do feel like some days artists and their managers understand that and take advantage of fans by setting VIP packages very high.”


Emmy Levine, a tour manager currently working with rising artist Lauren Sanderson, believes that the prices of several VIP packages are fair any time as soon as you imagine the often failed to notice charges that go into putting on a tour. Artists are creatively involved in the development process, nevertheless entertainment agencies like Live Country are tasked with organizing the packages themselves. In exchange for their curation and coordination, these businesses take a percentage of the revenue, Levine told MTV News.


There’s also the cost to produce the merchandise typically included in these packages, and also fees to hold more time at a venue for the meet-and-greets. Levine specifically invoked the added allocate problem of “paying for the production of the tour, which would be anything from the lights and the sound and tour buses to backstage catering [and] the crew.”


In short, tours are expensive. And one way to recoup some of these expenditures is to charge music fans hundreds of dollars, furthermore to the price of a ticket, for a chance to interact with their preference artist.


“It is hard to turn down the sort of cash you could make by charging people to shake your hand,” drummer Pat Kitch, who plays in pop-punk musical group The Maine, told MTV News. “I can only visualize it going increasingly in the direction it is headed now.” Nevertheless not for his musical group. In The Maine’s more than 10 years on the road with each other, they’ve never charged fans an interaction fee. Alternatively, they make a task to stick around right after their shows each night to meet as several people as they can manage.


“It’s habitually been our position that music should never be about your position of monetary privilege,” added frontman John O'Callaghan. In previous years, those attending the Vans Warped Tour could find The Maine perched under a tent with a backdrop that asked in all caps, “Why would you pay cash to meet a human being?” It’s the tactic that’s helped them build the diehard following they have right now. Four aids in averting on their current tour have sold out, and low ticket warnings are in place for a couple of others.


When founder Kevin Lyman began up Warped Tour in 1995, he immediately implemented the event’s “no paid meet-and-greets” policy. “Once the bands begin charging to meet fans, it just changes the role. It’s just a transaction,” he told MTV News. Though Lyman was told monetizing these interactions could be more financially favorable for the bands, he determined he’d sooner walk away from the festival. “It might solve some financial issues you could be having. Yet in the long term will those people be there for whenever you maybe really need them?” Lyman asks.


Warped Tour’s controlled outside environment makes it easier for fans to meet bands than it could be if they attempted to do so at larger-capacity spaces and arenas. Recently, artists have created personal systems of their own to get around this provide, while assuring that they’re able to meet their fans at no added cost apart from a ticket.


On their current North American tour, pop musical group LANY are randomly selecting 15 to 20 fans each date to attend soundcheck and hang out with the sort. “We want it to be as fair and open as possible,” LANY manager Rupert Lincoln told MTV News. He first brought the idea to LANY in 2018 as a means of connecting with fans safely; they were immediately on board.


With the band’s growing popularity, it’s no longer plausible for them to hang around and meet fans right after shows like they used to. This new method preserves the fan-to-artist connection they’ve habitually had. Equally, Troye Sivan had members of his team scout fans in the audience to bring backstage right following the show on his Bloom tour for a complimentary meet-and-greet experience.


One of these was 16-year-old Liza Tijerina, who met Troye at his Denver stop. As instead of the common rush of formal meet-and-greets, she had the chance actually converse with him, and he even humored a request that he write out a tattoo for her. These randomized processes also counteract the hierarchy that can form within fandoms once access is dependent on how much disposable revenue a fan has.


“Being on stan Twitter over the years, I’ve seen people who have the chance to meet their preference artists often and people certainly tend to feel and mention that those fans act more superior,” Tijerina said.


Maybe Matty Healy was right once he sardonically proposed, “They could make all fans pay in money — directly to the artist.” Or perhaps, like Tijerina points out, the mere presence of cash changing hands can taint an otherwise positive experience. “[If I had to pay to meet Sivan], I feel like it certainly wouldn’t have been as intimate and special.”