I would walk 500 miles: using travel costs to analyse the market for popular music concerts

ABSTRACT

This article examines the market for live performances of superstar musical artists. Using data on 56 concerts featuring acts such as Steely Dan, Willie Nelson and Def Leppard, we find that concertgoers have a higher willingness to pay for an increase in the artists’ top-10 albums than for an additional chart-topping single.

KEYWORDS:

• Popular music concerts
• superstar artists
• travel costs

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Z1

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Alex Gray at Waterfront Concerts for providing the data and assistance to make this study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Ticket sales data were provided under a confidentiality agreement with Waterfront Concerts.