One can guess that I don’t spend much time listening to Kid Rock. Actually, whatever the self-inflicted loss, I can say that don’t listen to any Kid Rock. (Before writing about his views on ticket sales, I had to look him up on Wikipedia, actually, just to learn a bit about him.)
There’s a post at mlive.com that asks, Ticket scalping controversy: Does Kid Rock hate the free market? Apparently, Kid Rock’s upset that all 45,000 tickets for an upcoming show sold out in 19 minutes, and he’s blaming scalpers.
(He’s reported to have written of the scalpers that “IF I COULD CONFRONT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM FACE TO FACE I WOULD AND IT WOULD NOT WORK OUT TOO WELL FOR THEM I GUARANTEE ALL OF YOU.”)
His tickets went fast, and many went to scalpers. Why? Because he didn’t price the tickets at a full market value — he under-priced them. Tickets to his concert could go for more than the face value, so a secondary market for willing buyers (fans) and sellers (scalpers) emerged. It’s not as though the scalpers want to attend the concert — it’s that they realize there are fans who want to attend who are willing to pay more than Kid Rock asked in the first instance.
By the way, as the mlive.com story observes, musicians know this will happen, and complaining about it is just posturing. If the practice continues, it’s because musicians benefit from the appearance of low face-value ticket prices while simultaneously profiting through arrangements with re-sellers from the secondary market.