How to Cure Blue Dot Fever

Over the past few months many in the music industry have been struck down with what is being called ‘blue dot fever’. The name for this disease comes from the way Ticketmaster show unsold seats on their site but this problem of lack of ticket sales is not confined to seated concerts. In Scotland alone this summer we’ve had cancelled festivals, and other major events offering heavily discounted tickets for standing concerts. 

This week Brandi Carlile was the latest artist to come down with blue dot fever. She’s cancelled and rescheduled her entire European tour, with every venue in the UK being downgraded to venues that are less than half the size of the original ones booked. She’s used the ‘personal circumstances’ reason for the changes, which may be true but is suitably timed to save face and cover her losses. As a fan it’s irritating to have to rebook, especially as I’d carefully chosen the best seat for the lowest price in the previous venue. Other fans had booked flights and hotels for these shows leaving many much more out of pocket than me. 

By looking carefully at what went wrong with Brandi’s tour you can see exactly how this blue dot fever catches. Artists and promoters looking at streaming data and social media followers seem to overestimate fan demand for seeing artists live. It especially seems hard to predict how American artists will translate to UK crowds and vice versa (Lily Allen has had to downgrade her American shows for example). 

Also if an artist quickly sells out smaller venues in a city then you can see how the blue dot fever then catches as they are then encouraged to book bigger venues. For example the last time Brandi played in Glasgow she immediately sold out a venue there with a capacity of around 2000. By booking a bigger venue she offers all fans a chance to see her but there just aren’t many venues that bridge the gap between that and the Hydro which is 12-14000 all seated. The Hydro was severely undersold when she cancelled. The venue she has downgraded to is two nights at the Armadillo with 3000 capacity but it has a poor reputation for live music (as Miranda Lambert famously found out) so you can see why they made the original choice to go big. 

But really for me there is one glaring problem that is causing this epidemic: the rising cost of tickets. For Brandi’s gig the cheapest tickets were the ones I bought that were £55 for a poor view. The majority of the decent tickets were over £100 and then we have the outrageous ‘VIP’ packages which can run into the hundreds. Only the die hard fans are going to pay these prices – you aren’t going to get casual music fans taking a punt on someone they’re not familiar with at that price. Artists are choosing to set these ticket prices so high – we know from Paul Heaton that it is possible to set the prices for these gigs at acceptable levels. 

So using his example here’s how we cure ‘blue dot fever’ going forward. It’s actually pretty easy if artists and fans work together.

1) Keep it Small 

Look I’m not against the Hydro or arena venues as they are much preferable to hearing music in soulless stadiums. But I want to see the artists who are playing stadiums going back to arena venues. I don’t want smaller artists stretching themselves to fill these arena spaces. My favourite venues are all medium sized with a mixture of standing and sitting so that everyone can enjoy themselves. Book two nights somewhere smaller and it’s a better experience for everyone.

2) Keep it Affordable 

The price of tickets is out of control and has been for a long time. This doesn’t hurt the big name artists who still sell out. Springsteen et al keep increasing their prices and their fans keep paying it. What happens is that fans then have less money to spend on going to see smaller artists they’re familiar with or taking a punt on someone new. 

Prices really are out of control as proved by Oasis who last year charged over £150 for a standing ticket for their tour with one support act. Using the inflation calculator you can see that in 1996 they charged £22 for Knebworth with five support acts including the Charlatans and Manics which in today’s money would be £45.60.

But the problem is not just with the artist – the problem is people are still buying tickets which encourages these inflated prices and has a knock on impact lower down the musical food chain. 

3) Don’t Flood the Market 

In Scotland this summer you can see the impact of flooding the market with events and festivals. Firstly the only major new music festival Scotland has is TRNSMT which has been a poor replacement for our previous big festival T in the Park. The city centre venue and strange mix of artists has led to many older music fans avoiding the festival and many younger fans not knowing everyone on the line up causing stagnation with ticket sales. This led to the promoter offering last minute half price and reduced cost tickets across the event, which was an insult to fans who have paid full price. Then the same promoter began to offer a deal for their other run of over ten major concerts called ‘Summer Sessions’ where if you bought tickets for one event you got tickets for another one free. 

What both these offers show is that there are too many events happening in a short period of time. When people share the old posters of the T in the Park line up and lament how good festivals used to be they are missing the main reason. If you take the TRNSMT and Summer Sessions line ups together they are the equivalent of an old festival or a current Glastonbury line up. Glastonbury might be £370 but you see multiple big names and new artists over three days. One great event in the summer at a fair price where you can see tons of great people is the only way to solve these half sold gigs. It’s pure greed from the promoters to expect fans to pay £100 for multiple concerts. These concerts all appeal to similar fans and no one has the money, time or energy to go to all these events. 

Overall looking at the issues I don’t see blue dot fever going away any time soon. We need cheaper prices and less big events but that is only going to happen when fans refuse to pay the inflated cost of tickets. Artists getting burned by failing to sell out venues might be the only ones who learn their lesson and go smaller next time. I, for one, welcome that and hope fans can do their best to get out to support affordable live music. 

READ NEXT

THE HIGHWOMEN LIVE ALBUM REVIEW

FAV ALBUMS 2017-2025

HOW TO SOLVE THE TICKETMASTER PROBLEM