What a day that was. Yesterday, I went into town and found myself in a very busy shop. By the time I was served, prices had more than doubled but I desperately needed some items and went ahead and bought them. Then, I went into an even busier pub where the price of a pint of Boston’s Old Thumper had risen in price from £6 to £16 while I queued. I had waited so long but by the time the bartender served me, I was parched. What else could I do? Finally, I went to our local chippy, joined a long queue and ordered a cod lot, which tripled in price by the time I was served. But what could I do? I was literally starving. I was amazed that dynamic AKA surge pricing had been introduced in so many places, but I guess that businesses saw the extra profits being trousered by the popular beat combo outfit Oasis and concluded, “I’ll have a bit of that.”
Obviously, none of this actually happened but if it had shops, pubs and chip shops would only be adopting a strategy of dynamic pricing, adopted long ago by various companies, not least the likes of Ryan Air and easyJet , whose entire business model depends on making as much money as possible from its customers.
Oasis are getting plenty of stick, some deserved, some not, about their comeback tour so it’s worth addressing the issue of the dynamic pricing the band and their promoters have employed. What is the purpose of the reunion tour? It’s to make money. The vast majority of artists tour for that very reason. It’s what they do, it’s their job. Whether it’s that up and coming band at the local small hall or Oasis at Wembley Stadium, it’s a version of the same thing. In the old days, a band would tour in order to promote their new album. As no one pays for music these days, the tour is all that’s left to pay the bills. For men. of a certain age, in this instance 40, 50 and 60-somethings, Oasis represent what some call the soundtrack of their lives. While you might hope that a band as big and successful as Oasis would charge reasonable prices for tickets and avoid dynamic ticketing, the argument some will use is, “Why should they?”
Judging from the “unprecedented demand” for tickets, fans who got tickets simply don’t care that they were ripped off. Seeing their heroes from 30 years ago may well constitute a bucket list moment. While I would not, in any way compare Oasis with The Beatles – that would simply be absurd – to some folk the Gallaghers are the modern day Lennon and McCartney. And if that’s how they feel, can you not understand how people would pay absolutely any price to see them just once? If somehow The Beatles in their entirety could be reassembled for one tour – this is tricky since two of them are long dead – would I not try to get a ticket at whatever cost? I’d be thrilled to be ripped off. That, I imagine, is how Oasis fans are feeling.
Anyway, it’s not just Oasis who are fucking their fans over, is it? What passes for The Eagles these days are lip-syncing their way around the world on an endless farewell tour. Harry Styles and Coldplay are laughing their way to the bank by way of dynamic pricing and how about the hero of the working man, Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen, believed to be worth $1.1 billion having sold his entire music catalogue to Sony Music for $500m? At least Springsteen is honest about it. In charging $5000 for the best seats at his shows, he admits he is looking for the best deal for himself. “What I do is a very simple thing,” Springsteen said. “I tell my guys, ‘Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.’ That’s generally the directions. They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years, or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.” And you know what? His fans don’t care. Why? Because fans have accepted and embraced dynamic pricing and that’s all there is to it.
I’d love to see Springsteen play live, too. I have bought most of his albums and adore his music. However, I don’t care for stadium shows and, frankly, his status is such that he is unlikely to play smaller halls, even arenas, anytime soon. And I don’t like him enough to be happy being ripped off, whether it’s “great for the fans” or not.
I don’t regard Oasis as being up among the greats of rock music. They’re nowhere near the level of the Beatles, the Stones, The Who, Dylan, Springsteen and Neil Young. But they’re not crap, either. And while Noel Gallagher’s lyrics are pure gobbledegook, he has, or rather had, an ear for a good tune, as the early Oasis albums confirm. More importantly, their seemingly anti-establishment, don’t-give-a-fuck swagger resonated particularly with 20 and 30 something working class men who I suspect saw a band who looked and sounded like them.
Those working class men are now more likely to be more affluent middle class parents and grandparents whose everlasting summer, they can see it fading fast, as Steely Dan put it. So they grab a piece of something that they think is gonna last. And that piece of something is the Gallagher brothers, rolling back the years – or is it reelin’ in the years? – and playing the oldies for a generation that thought its time had come and gone. For Oasis, this could be the last waltz, unless because of “unprecedented demand” they mine the nostalgia well for a few more years and boost the pension pot. Why, frankly, would they not?
Dynamic pricing is shit. It’s a rip off, but it’s here and, as ticket sales for the Oasis comeback tour have shown, there are more than enough people who are happy to pay whatever it takes. Love them or hate them – and I am slap bang in the middle of that one – it doesn’t matter. And whoever says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, well, they’re wrong, aren’t they?
