The evolution of ticket pricing strategies in the North American concert industry: evidence from two decades of data

This article examines changes in the ticket pricing strategies employed by popular musicians in the concert industry, with a particular focus on the use of second-degree price discrimination and its relationship with key concert outcomes; ticket revenue and capacity utilization. By analysing a large, longitudinal dataset of concerts performed by popular musicians between 1999 and 2019 in the United States and Canada, this article documents how the use of price discrimination, as well as the relationship between price discrimination and concert outcomes, has evolved over time. Additionally, this article reveals how the relationship between discriminatory pricing and concert outcomes depends on musician popularity and the intensity of price discrimination as measured by the difference between the highest and lowest ticket prices. In turn, this article provides some suggestive evidence as to how musicians may be able to improve their pricing strategies, and reveals the potential impacts that the use of dynamic pricing has had on equilibrium in the concert sector.