I love Zach Bryan. My sisters and I have bonded over our love for him for the past two years. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him – he is a folk/country singer who recently has become very popular. He served in the U.S. Navy for seven years before being honorably discharged to pursue a singing career. Since focusing on singing he has risen to fame and recently collaborated with multiple well known artists such as Bon Jovi, Noah Kahan, The Lumineers, and Kasey Musgraves. His songs are heavily influenced by folk but have a country-like sound and lyrical theme. He is a skilled guitar player and developed his songwriting skills while serving in the Navy. When he performs, he travels with his band made up of a guitar, fiddle, base, and drums.
My sisters and I all saw him twice last year – once with our friends and once altogether. The venues we saw him at were not huge arenas, only fitting about 14,000 people. He gained a lot of popularity from speaking out against the overpriced tickets of ticket selling companies such as Ticketmaster, even naming an album “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.” However, over the past year, he has accumulated significantly more fans through his hits, such as “Something In The Orange” and “Revival.” His fan base is now so big that he has booked out nearly every professional football stadium and major arenas in the country. In order to do this, he went back on his denouncing of Ticketmaster.
Tickets on his previous tours ranged from $30-250. Tickets on his upcoming tour are starting at $150 and climbing to as high as $3000 per ticket. As a huge fan, this is heartbreaking and incredibly frustrating. Like many of his fans, my sisters and I love his music but are now faced with the financial challenge of affording his tickets.
One of his draws before as an artist was that his concerts were actually affordable to a wide variety of people. With his hiked up prices, this is no longer the case. It is understandable, as everyone wants to make money and he has an opportunity to. However, it makes you wonder whether there should be some sort of cap on how much artists should be allowed to sell their tickets. Some surgeries cost $3000, which is a decent amount of money and is a little crazy to pay to see someone sing for two to three hours.