The Cure’s Robert Smith says dynamic ticket pricing is a “scam” and “driven by greed”

13 October, 2024

The Cure‘s Robert Smith has shared his thoughts on dynamic ticket pricing, saying he believes it’s a “scam” and “driven by greed”.

Smith made headlines last year when he criticised Ticketmaster, saying he was “sickened” when he saw that added fees totalled higher than the face value of the tickets themselves.

After cancelling over 7,000 tickets on secondary resale sites, Smith was later able to convince the company to issue small reimbursements to verified ticket buyers to compensate for “unduly high” fees. He later had to ask the ticketing giant to explain why tickets in its promised face-value exchange were “weird” and “overpriced”.

Now, he’s further spoken out about the cost of live music. In a new interview with The Times, the frontman said he was “shocked” by how much profit is made from modern ticketing. “I thought, ‘We don’t need to make all this money.’ My fights with the label have all been about how we can price things lower. The only reason you’d charge more for a gig is if you were worried that it was the last time you would be able to sell a T-shirt.

The Cure's Robert Smith
The Cure’s Robert Smith. CREDIT: Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images

“But if you had the self-belief that you’re still going to be here in a year’s time, you’d want the show to be great so people come back. You don’t want to charge as much as the market will let you. If people save on the tickets, they buy beer or merch. There is goodwill, they will come back next time. It is a self-fulfilling good vibe and I don’t understand why more people don’t do it,” he said.

Earlier this year Oasis came under fire for applying dynamic pricing to tickets to their UK and Ireland reunion tour. The move prompted backlash from fans and politicians alike, with experts also suggesting that not warning fans of increased prices beforehand may breach consumer law.

Oasis later responded with a statement denying their involvement in the decision and confirmed that a dynamic pricing structure would not be applied to their North American reunion tour dates.

Oasis’ Liam and Noel Gallagher. Credit: Gareth Davies/Getty Images

Cultural Secretary Lisa Nandy further condemned the policy earlier this week, during her first address to the UK music industry at Beyond The Music, saying the government are committed to resolving the issue.

Speaking about the controversial policy, Smith said: “It was easy to set ticket prices, but you need to be pig-headed. We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’ they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either fucking stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.”

The band recently announced they’d be playing an intimate gig at the 3000-capacity Troxy in London to celebrate the release of their album on November 1.

Smith has since shared a cost breakdown of the £56.61 fee on Twitter/X, highlighting a £1 donation to charity Warchild, a booking fee, a transaction fee and a restoration levy. The frontman also wrote that there was “no dynamic pricing”.

The legendary band are preparing to release ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ – their first album since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream’ – on November 1. You can pre-order the album here. So far, they have released two singles from the record: ‘Alone’ and ‘A Fragile Thing’.

In a five-star review of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, NME wrote: “The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”

The album has been a long time in the making, with Smith saying in a clip posted to the band’s Instagram account last month: “I don’t think there was really a kind of an official beginning to this album because it’s been kind of drifting in and out of my life for an awful long time. I mean if I have one regret is that I said anything at all about it in 2019 because I really shouldn’t have done that.”

At the BandLab NME Awards 2022, he shared details about ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ and its sister album. He said: “So I’ve been working on two Cure albums, and one of them is finished,” he added. “Unfortunately, it’s the second one that’s finished. [On the other] I’ve got to do four vocals, and there are 10 songs on each album. We’re mixing next month on April 1, so I’ve got three weeks left.”

Fans in the UK and Europe can pre-order their copy of the album here before 11:59pm on October 16 for the chance to access tickets for the Troxy show. Anyone who has already pre-ordered the album will automatically have access to the ticket sale. Tickets will then go on general sale at 3pm on October 17, with £1 from each ticket sold being donated to War Child.

For those unable to attend, the show will also be live-streamed for free on YouTube.

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