From buying the tickets, to picking an outfit and arriving at the venue, this is your go-to guide for cutting costs before a live show.
By: Lila Swedzinski
November 12, 2023
Tik Tok is full of influencers with horror stories about spending $5,000 or more to see their favorite artists perform. Although it’s fair to assume that social media personalities can afford live shows and all of the costs along the way, those videos still strike most of us as out of reach. For those of us living paycheck-to-paycheck, here are 5 tips for attending concerts on a budget.
1. Follow your favorite artists on social media. Following artists and music venues on social media will clue you in on shows as they are announced, which gives you the opportunity to get tickets early through the artist’s or venue’s website. Resellers tend to charge significantly more than the original price of the ticket for concerts in high demand — like Olivia Rodrigo and Noah Kahan.
Although sold out, the tickets for Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming GUTS Tour were originally sold for $49.50 to $199.50 on Ticketmaster. Now they are being sold on SeatGeek for $294 to as much as $1,925. However, not all resellers hike up prices this much. Several floor tickets for Noah Kahan’s June 7th show at the Xcel Energy Center are being sold for around $50 to $100 more on SeatGeek than the original price on Ticketmaster. So when an artist posts about an upcoming tour, you will know when the tickets go on sale and be able to purchase them at face value before they are resold for a higher price.
2. Work to avoid scammers. If you must purchase from resellers, be sure to avoid scammers. This article from Rolling Stone magazine suggests buying from a verified third-party ticket website such as SeatGeek or StubHub rather than an individual seller. Avoiding individual resellers significantly lowers your chances of buying a ticket that has been sold to multiple people.
3. Shop sustainably for your concert outfits. In the era of dressing on-theme for concerts, it is easy to get sucked into purchasing inexpensive, one-time outfits from websites like Shein and Cider. Those outfits usually end up hanging next to the Halloween costumes at Goodwill about a week later. According to a study featured in Teen Vogue, 7.5 million outfits per year are single-use outfits worn to major music festivals. This is the equivalent of $307 million in clothing. Thrifting, altering or borrowing clothes from friends are great ways to combat the negative environmental effects of fast fashion and save some money — and you can still dress on theme.
4. Cut travel expenses by taking a bus. If you are going to a concert or music festival out of town, ditch the expensive flight and take the bus instead. Gas and parking costs can be expensive so odds are taking the bus is the cheapest option. If the concert is close to where you live, use public transportation or choose a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft to eliminate parking costs.
5. Choose an Airbnb instead of a hotel. If you are going to a music festival out of state, or even out of town, and you can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars a night on a hotel — choose Airbnb.
Let’s say you and a friend are traveling to see Olivia Rodrigo on March 15th at the Xcel Energy Center, and you need a place to stay in Saint Paul from March 14th to March 16th. If you opt for an Airbnb, you can pay as low as $60 a night for a comfortable stay. If you choose to stay in a hotel, you will be paying around $110 (give or take) a night for a decent room. Now these prices will vary depending on your personal standards, but typically Airbnbs will charge less than hotels of the same quality.
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