Concert Pricing Update

Billboard gives a mid-year concert update:

In general, the North American touring industry is maintaining a healthy pace. Gross dollars for January-June of 2006 are up 24.6% from the same period last year, driven mostly by the tours cited above. With attendance up just 5.4%, high ticket prices have helped boost the increase.

Worldwide, revenue is up 13.3% and attendance up 2%.

We've talked about concert pricing a lot recently. (Go here, here, and here or visit our good friend Bryce here and here). It's become commonplace to assign the blame for the increase in concert ticket prices to file sharing and a decline in CD sales. As I've argued in those previous posts, I don't think that argument holds water and instead, I blame eBay and the like. But there's no doubt that prices are rising.