(antiMusic) This past weekend we published an editorial by Tony Kuzminski dealing with the outrageous ticket prices Bon Jovi is charging for a ten-night stand at a new arena in Newark, NJ. Tony, a huge fan of that band, was a bit outraged when he discovered that tickets were going for between $67 and $337 each before Ticketmaster added on their pounds of flesh for giving you the convenience of being ripped off by their monopoly. Tony wanted to share his honest frustration over Bon Jovi going Streisand. (e.g. bilking fans with high ticket prices.) And the truth of Tony's frustration was validated with the response to his article. Within a day of publishing, thousands of Bon Jovi fans had clicked over to read it and while we eliminated commenting on most of our articles a while ago, we were able to read comments on a few Bon Jovi message boards that linked the article and discovered that the fans were overwhelmingly in agreement with Tony. Bon Jovi had went too far with this ticket pricing scheme. Reportedly, a lot of fans on the Bon Jovi's official fanclub board even agreed and Tony's article sparked a healthy debate there. Unfortunately, we have to take a few fans word for that since we couldn't read the boards. (Yup, Bon Jovi wants you to pay for that too. Ok, that a bit snide. Sorry)
Nevertheless, from what we've seen and with the exception of the few expected apologist that came up with arguments like the prices are so high because it's a new venue etc, most fans feel a little betrayed by the high ticket prices. This just illustrates a growing frustration in the music business with rising ticket prices all around. Tony even wrote an editorial about that recently as well. At a time when music sales are down, not because of illegal downloading as the industry would like us to believe, but because fans don't feel they are getting their money's worth with most recent sub par releases, and concert attendance is down, wouldn't it be a better idea for bands to lower their tickets prices to attract fans back to their shows? Or is this a case of the Streisand syndrome, rip off your fans for as much as you can get because there are enough out there willing to pay the high price? Then again, can the thousands of Bon Jovi fans that read Tony's editorial and agreed with him be wrong? We'll have to wait and see but for now if you are one of the few that didn't read Tony's controversial editorial - you can read that right here.
Click here to read today's full report
Related News for Bon Jovi
Preview and Purchase Bon Jovi music
Bon Jovi Tour Dates/Tickets
