There has been recent talk about Lollapalooza; a large three-day music festival hosted every summer in Chicago. I live in Chicago, so I have pretty much grown up going to Lolla. The pre-sale tickets came available yesterday and they sold out in 12 minutes! Thus, there is definitely a lot of hype around this music festival and for good reason. Lolla is able to bring in a diverse collection of music each summer: at one side of the park you can find the techno stage and at the other end there is the stage for country music and so forth. It is often a game between my friends and I to make our own music schedule for each day and then compare to see how many different concerts we have in common with each other. Furthermore, during the actual event, it is often a race to see who can get to the front row of their favorite concert or band. The act of going to a concert actually becomes like a game in this three day music festival, as I find myself constantly scheming at ways to get to the front row, or to be able to see two bands playing at the same time.
Here is last years line up:
As you can see there were some really great performances. My favorite of all of them was definitely Eminem, as it was one of his first concerts back from rehab and thus was very dramatized and exciting. The lineup for this year is expected to come out any day now and fans can't seem to contain their excitement (I have a countdown on my computer for it).
Yet, there is something a bit off about Lolla these past years. For one, when I first started going to Lolla, it was not that big. Rather, it was only a few stages and it did not even take up all of Millennium Park. It was mainly only people who lived in Chicago that went. Now, Lolla has become a very big publicized event and it has grown exponentially, with people coming from all around the world to attend the festival. Last year, the amount of people that usually attend tripled, and there were about 50 different stages with people packed everywhere. Furthermore, the smaller bands that used to play at this festival are no longer really there. Now, it is more headliner bands and techno music because that is the fad at the moment. Thus, while I love that Lolla has become so well known, there is a part of me that misses the days where it was a smaller event, where I could walk around without getting lost, and where I was able to see bands I normally would not get the opportunity to listen to.
By: Taylor Rothman
Lollapalooza is now a huge event! I have friends from school from all over the country coming in just for this event! Getting tickets for lollapalooza was like a game. Who would be winners to get the $79 special. And what about the $200 early bird pass? Well, not me. At 11:00 sharp, the minute tickets came out I was on my computer ready to purchase them. However, the site was on overload and I spend 20 minutes on my computer on standby. By the time it was my turn to purchase a ticket I had to buy the regular price ticket. I felt like I lost the game by having to pay extra. However, I was simply paying the normal price, nothing more. This made me realize how sales are like games. Consumers compete to pay the lowest price for a product. As soon as something goes on sale, there is a rush to purchase it at the lower price. In fact, sometimes my mom will tell me to wait for something to go on sale before I buy it simply because it feels like winning getting a better deal than someone who pays the full price!
ReplyDeleteThis is such a great comparison, and something we haven't really discussed in class how music and tickets can be like a game. Although I was not one of the people to be refreshing my computer in order to get these "early bird" passes I can totally understand how Alexa felt like she "lost" a game. It's almost like when you're backpacking every semester and it finally comes time to register and you see those horrible blue boxes next to every one of your discussions. You then know it will be a whole summer or winter break (good thing it's only one week), waiting for that blue box to turn into a yellow triangle and hopefully you will have a nice enough GSI to override your wait list!
ReplyDeleteI had never realized until reading this how buying concert tickets could be connected to the competition aspect of gaming. Just a few months ago I was counting down the days until the Coldplay concert tickets in Los Angeles would come out because I was DYING to go! Before presale, I made sure to create a game plan in how I was going to end up with the best possible tickets for the most reasonable amount of money. Waiting till the actual tickets went on sale? NO WAY! They would for sure be sold out within the first 5 minutes. So instead, I thought about my network and how I could possibly get my hands on a pair of tickets by working around the system. After realizing that people with American Express could get tickets for presale, I made sure to set the alarm on my phone to 5 minutes before the presale tickets would come out. As i simultaneously called American Express as well as held my place in line for tickets by not refreshing my web-browser online, I was definitely competing with other Coldplay lovers. My strategy payed off when I was able to get 4 front and center tickets.
ReplyDeleteReading your post definitely made me think about what fans are willing to do in order to see the artists they love. While people buy tickets to concerts and sell them for sometimes up to ten times the original price, it is interesting to see how much fans are willing to pay to get their hands on these tickets. This goes to show how the simple desire to go to an enjoyable concert can turn into a major competition, where people try to play around the rules in order to succeed, just as I did for Coldplay!