Last month, Harry Styles announced his comeback tour, Together, Together. After a few years of silence following the wrap of his last tour, Love on Tour, in 2023, America’s favorite Brit is back with more music and more live entertainment for fans across the globe.
Unfortunately, Together, Together quickly became an exclusive event for those who were willing and able to spend more than a pretty penny to go.
On Jan. 30, tickets for Together, Together went on general sale for the United States leg of the tour, following some presales that occurred a few days prior. Before tickets went on sale, there was some backlash from fans as Styles plans to spend all 30 United States shows at Madison Square Garden. Backlash continued when tickets officially went on sale on Ticketmaster and were immediately sold out within minutes, leaving fans to have to rely on second-party sellers on platforms like StubHub, Vivid Seats and others.
As a fan of Styles’s music as well as his overall message of treating people with kindness, it was extremely disappointing to see how he has become one of the many artists trapped in the cycle of outrageously overpriced tickets with no other method or effort to make their concerts more accessible to all of their fans.
Ticketmaster has time and time again released tickets to concerts and other shows that immediately get swooped up by resellers or online bots for the cheapest price to then be resold later on second-party apps for double, sometimes triple the price. Currently, StubHub has tickets for Together, Together that range in price from $400 to thousands of dollars. These prices are nothing but completely ridiculous and unattainable for the average person, and artists have time and time again done nothing to advocate for their fans in this way. Live entertainment has become less about an artist performing for their fans and more about just how much ticket prices can go for.
Additionally, because all of the U.S. shows are taking place at Madison Square Garden, American fans who want to go see Styles in concert are forced to spend an additional large sum of money on flights to New York and possibly hotels to stay there overnight. Furthermore, Styles is stopping at only seven total cities across the globe throughout the tour, meaning that fans all over the world will be forced to travel long distances, perhaps even internationally, if they want to experience the show. Of course, no one is being forced to go to the show. But for diehard fans who maybe saved up their money to be able to afford one ticket, it is extremely disappointing to have to drop more money on unforeseen expenses.
While of course it is easy to blame Styles himself, Together, Together is just one piece of a much larger, more problematic puzzle. Concerts, and live entertainment as a whole, have become completely unattainable to the majority of people and are catered toward the elite population of society. It feels as though our generation has missed out on an era where the point of live music was to unite people and entertain an audience that all shared a common love for whoever was performing.
As a society and as a population of music lovers, we need to advocate for our right to enjoy music and performance the way they were meant to be enjoyed: through dancing, celebration and a community that is open to all, not just whoever has the most money.