Why is live music so expensive in Korea? Pt. 1 - International tours and festivals
By Jamie Finn (@jamiefinn2209)
With the cost of festivals and gigs constantly creeping up in a country where live music was already pretty costly, we decided to look at why live music in Korea is so expensive. In the first of our two-part series, we’ll look at ticket prices for international touring artists and festivals. In part two, we will look at local live music.
Whether you’re a native of Korea or you’ve been here a couple of weeks, if you’re a live music lover, you will have noticed that it’s not cheap to see shows here. And that’s a situation that is only getting worse. Blind tickets for Seoul Jazz Festival will set you back 360,000 KRW, and that price will likely approach 500,000 KRW by the time the full lineup is announced. Standing tickets for the upcoming Coldplay shows start at 135,000 KRW and go up from there, with the most expensive tickets being over 1,000,000 KRW.
Photo from Hyundai Card
You may be saying to yourself, “I am a respectable music lover and support only independent artists, so these prices don’t affect me”. Well, first of all, drop the attitude. Second, local band shows are far from immune to this inflation-busting price hike. Recent event announcements have shown that the price of these gigs is going up, too. Some well-established venues are now asking gig-goers to fork over 50,000 KRW to see local indie bands. We’ll be covering that in part two of this article.
Why are gigs so expensive in Korea? Well, it’s complicated, and there are several important factors involved - some of them obvious and some of them less so.
Big stadium shows
Going to see concerts for international touring bands in Korea is expensive. But is it actually more expensive than other like-for-like countries? The answer is, surprisingly, perhaps not. It might seem like an odd gambit in an article about why live music is expensive in Korea to argue that “actually maybe it’s not”, but here we are.
Take that Coldplay concert, for example. In Hong Kong, standing tickets were about 235,000 KRW, a huge jump up from the Korean prices. In fact, the only recent Asian country that had cheaper tickets than Korea was India (around 100,000won). The average price of a concert ticket in the USA is around 180,000 KRW, which would make Coldplay tickets seem like a bargain.
Is Korea actually more expensive
than other like-for-like countries?
The answer is, surprisingly, perhaps not.
So why, then, does Korea have a reputation among some for having expensive shows? One reason could be that prices for Korean concerts have traditionally been quite high but have been rising more slowly than in other countries. The perception that they are expensive may be a hangover from the much higher-than-average prices of 2010s Korea. The USA, in particular, has seen a surge in ticket prices, with the average ticket going from around 129,000 KRW in 2019 to 161,000 KRW in 2022, a rate that is massively outpacing inflation by some margin.
While the USA, with its gargantuan live music infrastructure, isn’t exactly the perfect comparison to South Korea, it is interesting to consider why their prices are rising so much quicker than here. One reason could be the difference in how the USA and a country like Korea price live concerts - demand vs. logistics. Most experts say that the reason for the increase in American ticket costs comes down to two reasons: the insidious greed of Ticket Master/Live Nation and, more importantly, a huge surge in demand. While demand here can influence the cost, it’s often not the driving reason behind Korea’s high ticket prices, at least not for shows that aren’t K-pop. The fact is that the bottom line price of bringing international touring artists to Korea IS high. The shipping of whole teams and equipment combined with the extra time taken to come here means that, regardless of demand, seeing artists from abroad in a country like Korea will always be somewhat of a luxury.
Photo from Live Nation Korea
But the USA and Hong Kong are imperfect comparisons. A much closer comparison, geographically, economically, and, to an extent, culturally, would be Japan. How do prices compare between Japan and Korea? Well, for the biggest of big shows, they’re pretty close. Oasis tickets in Korea started at 99,000 KRW, whereas they started at 110,000 KRW in Japan. Tickets for the second-best Backstreet Boy, Nick Carter, in Korea start at 154,000 KRW for some reason. They are about 115,000 KRW in Japan. Last September, Olivia Rodrigo played in both Japan and Korea, and tickets were within 10,000 KRW of each other. There’s an up-and-down in the prices, but for big shows, Korea and Japan seem to hover around the same price range.
Medium-sized shows
Mid-level shows do seem different, though. Acts like Yard Act, Hippo Campus, Knower, Geordie Greep, and more have visited both Korea and Japan in the last year, and without exception, tickets in Japan have been significantly less expensive. The question then becomes, with the geographical similarities between Korea and Japan, why do these shows cost so much more? Surely the same logistical issues Korea faces also face Japan?
Well, yes and no. It’s true that shipping equipment and teams of people to countries like Japan and Korea pose the same logistical costs. However, Japan - and many other countries - hold two core advantages over Korea, driving their ticket price down.
This ability to play several shows in a single country naturally increases the potential revenue of a visit, which in turn drives down ticket prices. Japan can offer this, Korea can’t.
First, an obvious one, they have a much larger population and a population that is more open to band culture in general. Second, and kind of related to the first, all the bands listed above were able to play several shows during their stint in Japan and only one show here in Korea. Many bands visiting Japan will play shows outside of Tokyo, too, travelling across the country for events. In an increasingly Seoul-focused Korea, though, with very few exceptions, international artists rarely leave the capital. This ability to play several shows in a single country naturally increases the potential revenue of a visit, which in turn drives down ticket prices. Japan can offer this, Korea can’t.
The ability to play a string of events without travelling by air or sea is incidentally why tickets in Europe, which average around 66,000 KRW, are so low.
Venue costs and drinking culture
There is one other factor that is driving up the prices of big concerts and international tours in Korea - venue hire fees. Korean music venues are more expensive to rent than in most countries. One of the main reasons for higher fees is that venues in Korea do not have alcohol sales as a revenue source and, therefore, are solely reliant on rental fees to stay afloat. In fact, it’s actually illegal for officially licensed music venues to sell alcohol. Any time you’ve had a drink during a show in Korea, the venue was almost certainly not registered as a music venue but as a bar/restaurant. We’ll get into the cultural connection between live music and alcohol in part two, but suffice to say that the ripple effect of not being able to sell drinks at concerts is something that has affected the price of tickets.
Festivals
Then we get to festivals. And once again, we have to ask ourselves, “Are they really more expensive here? and once again, we have the terribly unsatisfying answer of “Well, yes and no.” The festival prices around Asia vary wildly, even more so than the cost of single gig tickets. In countries like Taiwan and Indonesia, festivals are, understandably, way, way cheaper. Cheap enough that one would be tempted to move there and go to music festivals every week. Don’t pack your bags just yet, though, because while these countries may make for a difficult comparison to Korea economically, it is interesting to note that when adjusted to reflect average salaries, Korean festivals do come out looking cheaper. For example, a three-day ticket for Joyland in Jakarta will cost roughly around 110,000 KRW. This is roughly around 30% of the average monthly salary in Indonesia. Conversely, a Pentaport Rock Festival ticket will cost 250,000 KRW, less than 10% of the average monthly salary.
Photo from Pentaport Rock Festival
But, while that information might be interesting, it is pretty limited as a comparison. So, once again, like a broken record, we are going back to Japan. The obvious comparison to make is between Japan’s Summer Sonic Festival and Korea’s Pentaport Festival. These two are so comparable, in fact, that they actually take place at roughly the same time and often share much of their respective lineups.
A three-day ticket for Summer Sonic will cost about 360,000 KRW, whereas a three-day ticket for Pentaport will cost you only 216,000 KRW. Yet, because of Summer Sonics’ significantly more robust lineup of international artists, people don’t necessarily think of Pentaport as “cheaper”. The feeling, among many music lovers here, is that, yes, tickets for a festival like Pentaport might be lower than their Japanese counterparts, but the reliance on Korean bands that play regularly means it’s for a less enticing product.
The feeling, among many music lovers here, is that, yes, tickets for a festival like Pentaport might be lower than their Japanese counterparts, but the reliance on Korean bands that play regularly means it’s for a less enticing product.
The fact is that, for reasons we have illustrated (lack of interest in band culture, inability to play several events), Korean music festivals are simply unable to spend the money needed to attract huge amounts of international artists. If they did, the prices would exponentially rise and likely surpass that of their Japanese counterparts.
It’s also worth pointing out that Pentaport is actually a relatively good value festival when compared to other Korean events. So much so that it could be misleading. For example, the Seoul Jazz Festival charged 187,000 KRW for a single day, adding to the perception that Korean live music is expensive.
Conclusion
So, what’s the conclusion that we can come to after all this? Well, there’s a few.
First, the most obvious one is that perhaps live music here is not as expensive as it once was or as it sometimes seems. While Korea’s ticket prices have continued to creep up, many other countries have surged and levelled out with Korea. This is especially true of large-scale, international tours.
With that said, medium-sized shows, such as Yes24 Live Hall or Rolling Hall, are more expensive here. The amount of people in Korea who are interested in band culture, paired with the Seoul-focused demographic barriers of Korea, means that it is difficult for visiting artists to play several shows. High rents caused by the inability to sell alcohol also have a significant knock-on effect. Festivals here can often be extremely expensive, but many of them can also be pretty cheap relative to similar countries. However, the inability of them to draw a deep roster of international names means that people don’t feel like they’re getting value. Unless there’s a significant uptick in band culture, particularly outside of Seoul, and an increase in the bridge between music and drinking, it’s hard to see any changes happening soon.
In part two of this article we’re going to explore why local shows are more expensive than other countries.