This is big news in the musical world. The Biden Administration is suing Live Nation on the grounds that it’s been artificially hiking ticket prices. To which I say, “Well, DUH.”

There’s something to think about, though, which I realized when I began considering the problem. Let’s take a popular artist such as Taylor Swift. Now let’s pretend she announces a concert tour, and tickets are priced at $1.00, or 1 of whatever currency is in your home country. Wow! Such a deal!

What would happen when tickets went on sale? They’d be sold out snaps fingers like that. The Internet would also probably go down from the demand placed on it. So I think we agree: that price is too low.

Now, let’s pretend tickets are priced at $10,000 each. Pricey! Do you think tickets would be sold out as fast? Unlikely; but they might sell to conglomerates who would scalp them to rich fans. What about $100,000? $500,000? A million samolians?

You get the idea. There’s a sweet spot at which the cost is affordable to most fans and yet sells out the venue. But what is that cost? Is it less than Live Nation is charging?

I’m not against this lawsuit. I’m just saying that the issue of ticket prices is a knotty problem. I remember when tickets for Chuck Berry’s Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll! filming were on sale for $25.00 each. Gone like snaps fingers that. They added a second show. Ditto. I paid a scalper $75.00 for mine. How’s that for inflation?1And this was in 1987 dollars.

What do you think? What’s the solution to Live Nation and its ticket monopoly? Discuss below.