Whoa, I thought you guys in London spoke in kilometers, not miles.

I'm more excited about this than PJ in Manchester which I haven't got tickets for yet. At least I won't feel like I just spent £200 to taste something past its use by date.

Fees and stuff added, 1 ticket for Pearl Jam in Amsterdam would be just about half the price of 1 ticket for Eddie Vedder in Amsterdam. I honestly can't get my head around that fact. So ridiculous.
Besides, where's those solo dates in Italy that were as good as confirmed a while ago? Scrapped? Or are they waiting till Italian fans have spent it all trying to see him somewhere else abroad... as usual?

the price is crazy, but if you havent seen eddie vedder solo you probably should

I'd say there'll be more dates/places added. There's a lot of free space and the routing looks a bit off as it stands. Plus i don't believe he'd come just for 5 shows and only one in the major market. these are feelers. there'll be more added i reckon.

how much is too much is a something everyone needs to decide for themselves, but Eddie's solo show was fantastic

So will Ryan Adams be. And he's costing LESS THAN ONE THIRD of Eddie Vedder. Also solo, also in a small, intimate venue (see spoiler). It's not even just crossing the line, this. It's 5 lines further. And my anger comes from my disappointment, because I really wanted to see him, but there's no way I'm going to pay that. No way. I already thought Pearl Jam was quite expensive...

Spoiler: show

Ryan admas its cheaper because well...he is ryan adams.

don't kid yourself buddy

dont be that guy, Vinylguy.

I was about to ask who the fuck Ryan Adams is but I think this post covered it nicely

Ryan Adams is probably a more talented musician than Eddie Vedder. Yes.

Oh, there is no question about this. Ryan Adams is leaps and bounds more talented musically (and probably vocally) than Eddie Vedder, and those talents really shine through in a solo live show. But VinylGuy has a point... Ryan Adams is Ryan Adams. A fringe musician viewed by most of the non-melomanes as a one-hit wonder (or by the ONTD contingent as "Mandy Moore's hipster hubby"). Eddie Vedder is a cultural icon, and in more of a position to charge whatever he wants because his overzealous fanbase (who are, by this point, older and with more disposable income than the average Ryan Adams fan) will pay just about anything for the privilege of being in his presence.

Edited to remove reference to Gollum.

Ed solo is fantastic.If he approached Pearl Jam shows with the care he approached the solo shows, that'd be something.

To be clear: I’m fully aware of the not so famous status of Ryan Adams, I was just comparing a gig I have lined up in a similar intimate venue which also sold out right away. It's all personal of course. People who want to pay this: all the best.

He does sell out, but three-quarters of the audience leave disappointed that they didn't hear Summer of '69.

Wonder who's gonna be support act. Wasn't that in the first anouncement for last few tours?
Probably gonna be Hansard, which is more than fine with me. But wouldn't that make a Dublin gig almost mandatory?

Someone wrote a good article in a Dutch newspaper about the current ticket price of the upcoming Eddie Vedder solo shows in Europe, and ticket prices in general. Check it out:

"That is quite simple to explain. Eddie Vedder just has (like any artist) a fixed fee. The booking agent (Mojo Concerts in the Netherlands, part of Live Nation) pays wages to the artist and must then hire a concert location to make everything in order (ticket sales, logistics, insurance and related matters). With the ticket, those costs are recouped.

Eddie Vedder as a solo artist wants to play in special rooms: beautiful theaters and auditoriums with seating. In the U.S., he almost always plays in venues with a capacity of 2500 seats or more, often more than 3000 seats. In England he will play in two prestigious, elegant rooms with over 3500 places: the Hammersmith Apollo in London and the O2 Apollo in Manchester. The booking agent is - apparently - free from costs when the ticket costs about 60 euros. This is also what you pay in the U.S.for an Eddie Vedder solo show, usually.

The problem is: in the Netherlands we have no grand theaters or classy auditoriums with 3500 seats

Then you have to choose, being Mojo. You can put chairs in the Heineken Music Hall (with which you will have about 3500 places), but then the evening takes place in a cement block in the Bijlmer. Or you can go chic: Carré, the Concert Building, but these are very small rooms for Eddie Vedder, with respectively 1600 and (I believe) 1800 seats. Then the ticket price needs to be sharp, because Vedder just gets his fixed salary and has nothing to do with those ticket prices.

In this case, Mojo chose chic and prestigious and exclusive. First, because this has the preference of Eddie Vedder, second, because it is a beautiful way to represent the Netherlands. This is the first (!) time Eddie Vedder performs solo in Europe. Carré has the scoop: his two first European solo shows ever. In total he is doing five shows, two of them in Amsterdam, and because of the intimate setting the two most prestigious of the five, and also the only two theater shows on the continent (besides two times Netherlands and two times England, he only plays a festival in Portugal).

These considerations made Mojo decide that an average of 90 to 95 euros for a ticket is justifiable. Mojo is of the opinion it offers the fans something more special with this, than with a show in the Heineken Music Hall, which would have been 30 euros cheaper, per person.

Well, that's a consideration.

Considering how special the Carré scoop is, considering Hammersmith Apollo is twice the size as Carré, and when you consider that the Netherlands has a much higher VAT rate on concert tickets (per 100 euros 14 euros more VAT than in England), then the price difference is not so outrageous anymore.

Yesterday I called Mojo about this and they assured me that the wages of Eddie Vedder in itself "are not particularly high" for an artist of his level of popularity. But Mojo has, in consultation with Vedder, opted for small and exclusive, instead of larger, less cozy and cheaper. On top of this, Carré is an above average expensive room to be rented: expensive location, prestige, and more overhead than the average concert hall (more and better paid staff on the payroll).

The booking agent in this case has decided that it was worth it.

I still need to eliminate one myth:

It's not that Mojo has created a nice wide margin for itself. Whoever thinks that, does not understand how the concert industry works. Mojo does not have that kind of power. Mojo is a tiny office in Delft, where a handful of people work. They cannot demand a large piece of the pie for themselves. If so, then the big artists will say: fine, then The Netherlands is on their own. Mojo is confronted by big artists with an accomplished package of facts: the wages, the additional requirements ("we want to play in Amsterdam and nowhere else", "we want to play in a theater", or whatever) and often with a very meager margin percentage. An arena show of U2 or the Stones must sell out if Mojo wants to break even; eight thousand empty seats means a financial catastrophe.

It is just not true that expensive tickets are the fault of a greedy Mojo. It all has to do with artists' wages, and nothing else. Mojo can do nothing about that, with its ten or twelve people in Delft.

The Netherlands should be happy with Mojo. That the Netherlands is still a prominent concert country, and that virtually every major tour of a big artist has a show in the Netherlands, is not in the least due to the network and the expertise of Mojo, one of the oldest booking agencies of Europe: a lot of goodwill, many contacts. If a big artist comes to Europe for six shows, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland are screwed, but the Netherlands is always part of the tour. This has two reasons: 1. We have Mojo, 2. We have Amsterdam.

Two of these unique evenings in Carré is something which Helsinki, Stockholm, Lisbon or even Brussels can forget about. This is only accomplished by the A-towns, and that includes Amsterdam in the eyes of American pop stars.

The booking business has become risky: the fees are high, margins are thin and the market is fickle. A few years ago, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young went on tour again in the U.S.. The wages were astronomical, and that times four, because these are four business and each of them wants the main prize. In the U.S. people paid $400 for a ticket. Mojo had a choice when they were offered that show. Do we put them in a room where baby boomers are feeling comfortable? Then the tickets will cost at least 300 euros. Mojo did not want that: the whole country would be cursing and complaining about this to Mojo (not to CSN&Y, because fans do not like to grumble at their idols, it is always the fault of Mojo). An arena then? Then the tickets would be 80 or 90 euros, but would you get 50,000 baby boomers for that price to a football stadium ...?

The end of this story: Mojo said no thanks. Too expensive, too risky, irresponsible and too uncertain to make that investment.

It is, in short, absolutely not true that Mojo can count themselves rich because people have to pay a 100 euros for an Eddie Vedder ticket. Especially with those big, expensive shows the margins are so thin that they really have to think carefully whether they can break even. They can hardly decide for themselves, in many cases.

By the way, I did not post the above to speak in favor of Eddie Vedder, or whatever. I think a 100 euros is expensive for a pop concert, and certainly for a man-with-guitar solo show, which is hardly surrounded by a big production. If I had to pay for a ticket, I probably would not go.

I just wanted to clarify some things:

1. It is not true that Mojo is filling its pockets here. They are faced with a package of facts: wages and demands of artists.

2. You can not simple state that Eddie Vedder is asking people to pay 100 euros for his solo shows. He just has a wage and lets his management know to tell booking agents he wants to play in chic theaters. Whether it's a theater of 4000 places, so the ticket price can be 50 euros, or a theater of 1600 places, so the tickets have to be 110 euros, that is the choice of the booking agency in question. Vedder probably does not even know the gist of it; those are big international calculations; artists themselves are not on top of the ticket price in London or Vienna or Rome or Amsterdam. They will find out automatically what beautiful locations have been arranged for them.

Well - Pearl Jam is one of the largest and most popular live bands in the world, and Eddie Vedder is the frontman. It simply has a certain market value. Pearl Jam has fought a legal battle against Ticketmaster for fair-priced concert tickets. When they lost that case, they arranged their tours by themselves for a couple of years, at locations over which Ticketmaster had no control: abandoned racetracks, etc. So they could determine their own price level, but they had to pay and arrange everything themselves: from First Aid to the stewards, from sanitation to the food and drink stalls.

After a few years they said, we can not keep up with this, this is too much trouble and it costs too much money. Since then, they - with their tails between their legs - hooked up again with Ticketmaster and (when downloading came into vogue, and record sales started to earn less and less) also went along with the trend of increasing live wages. But they have always kept a little below the level that is normal for bands their caliber. They are not anymore a fundamentally cheap band, but still a bit cheaper than comparable bands.

According to Mojo, Vedder's solo wage is not very high for an artist of his stature. So even though Pearl Jam and Vedder went along with the price developments in the live sector (call it hypocritical or understandable, whatever you want) it is not quite fair to call them greedy. They have fought hard for low prices sixteen years ago (in 1996); not anymore. Now they grab their market value. Of course some things have changed in those sixteen years since 1996 in terms of album sales and ticket prices. A band which has principles and climbs on the barricades, does not have the moral obligation, sixteen years and a technological revolution later, to be a thief of its own pocket by basicly handling 1996 ticket prices.

Well, I personally think not."

There's also the fact that if Eddie/Pearl Jam don't charge $100 (or whatever) for those tickets, scalpers will buy them and charge $100 for those tickets. The only thing selling cheap concert tickets for popular acts does is line the pockets of scalper with fat margin. If I'm going to be bilked, I'd rather it be by the artist!