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Get sold out Wiz Khalifa tickets right here at SeatGeek.com!

Wiz Khalifa is a rapper out of Pittsburgh, PA that has been putting out acclaimed mixtapes since 2005′s the Prince of Pistolvania, but except for minor success with the song ‘Say Yeah’ he has yet to hit the main-stream. Well that might be about to change. I have been tracking Wiz Khalifa tickets since the launch of his now top 40 single ‘Black and Yellow’ and he is selling out venues across the country and creating a pretty serious secondary market. He is at the unique stage as an artist when their venues are small but their fanbase is starting to outgrow the venues. In such cases, tickets often sell-out fast and the secondary market is in big demand. He has already sold-out many venues including Columbia, Missouri, Winston-Salem, NC and recently on November 6th in Atlanta, GA.

UPDATE: Wiz Khalifa’s 2011 Tour (The Green Carpet Tour) continues to have success – read more at the SeatGeek main blog.

Wiz Khalifa Ticket Prices

These prices are pretty high for such a young artist and are likely attributable to small venues and a small but very loyal fanbase. The 11/6 event which averaged $118 in the secondary market was the sold-out event in Atlanta, while the 11/13 event is this weekend’s sold-out event in NYC at Best Buy Theatre.

It will be interesting to see if Wiz breaks out this year as he is impressively the first Pittsburgh artist since Christina Aguilera to achieve Top 40 success on the charts. Do you think Wiz and the Taylor Gang Movement will have the same type of breakout success Kid Cudi did a little over a year back? Or will Wiz fall off like other solid rappers like Saigon and Posta Boy before him?

• Elton John is the big winner of the 20 days. His concert with Leon Russell on October 19th is selling on the secondary ticket market at $383.23. This is a good 21% higher than any other concert in this period. What makes this even more impressive is that it is a midweek concert.
• To quantify the difference between a Sunday concert and a Saturday concert can be shown by the Eagles. The first concert is in Kentucky, and the second is in Arkansas, so there is not a huge socioeconomic difference between the two areas on the two dates. The first Saturday concert on the 16th is selling for $286.35, while the Sunday concert on the 24th is reselling for about $90 less, at $196.99.
• Jimmy Buffett will also prove that location is not only important in real estate, but just as important in concert prices. The concerts on the 16th and 21st are in similar locations in mid California. Those are selling for similar prices. The big difference is that concert on the 23rd. It is second on our October list. That concert is in the MGM Grand in a little town called Las Vegas, which might explain why it is 35% more than either of the other two Jimmy Buffett concerts.
• Roger Waters did not come back to play the Wall in its entirety for nothing. He has the highest amount of total dates in the top-15 with 4. The high priced date is on October 24, in the Palace of Auburn Hills. His other dates are at the low end of our top-15 (low is relative, just ask Waters accountant), with all three selling for around $180.
• What exactly is better about Day 2 of the Bridge School Benefit: Jeff Bridges. He is the only person scheduled to appear only on Day 2. It is either attendees love Bridges, or dislike Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Billy Idol and David Lindley, who are all scheduled to appear only on Day 1.
• Shakira is the only pop-singer on the list, with her October 16th concert selling for $215.15. This is in the Mandalay Bay casino, so if the concert did not get the Las Vegas bump, we might not have any modern pop acts in the top-15.
• Trick or Treating on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, anyone? Phish’s Halloween concert is selling for $280.68. Halloween concerts are probably low on the list of Holiday Concerts, but Phish has been able to pull it off.

We might get some interesting concert price developments as we get closer to the Holiday season, but if you are a Roger Waters fan, or an Elton John one, you might not be too excited at the prospect of shelling out top dollar, but rest assured, they sure are excited that people are.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions. Feel free to let us know what you think. You can contact us @SeatGeek on twitter, or on Facebook. ‘Till Next Time

The Kings of Leon show is clearly the grand finale of the season for the Verizon Wireless Music Center, drawing the second highest ticket prices of any concert at the venue, only $3.26 behind Tim McGraw’s show there on May 14th at $145.50, and well above the prices of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Zac Brown Band‘s performances from earlier in the year.

From this data it is clear that Alabamans love Kings of Leon, however how do they compare to KoL fans from across the country?

The answer is that they do quite well. Out of dozens of concerts, from all around the nation, secondary market ticket prices for the Kings of Leon show in Pelham ranked fourth highest, ahead of such high profile venues as the Hollywood Bowl, and Blossom Music Center. Tickets for their concert are still available, so don’t miss this unique opportunity to witness what is sure to be an extremely memorable concert experience.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at jonathan@seatgeek.com, and be sure to like us on facebook (http://facebook.com/seatgeek) and like us on twitter @SeatGeek & @SeatGeekMusic.

One might assume that given Indie bands low profile and relative lack of promotion from radio stations, record companies, and concert promoters, tickets to Indie shows would be cheap. Well unfortunately that is not the case, with average transacted ticket prices for Indie concerts being comparable to more mainstream artists like Rihanna.

Here are the top 10 most expensive Indie shows of 2010 up through today.

With top alternative band’s shows going for upwards of $100 a ticket on average, clearly these are no bargain shows. However, there are good deals on concert tickets to be found. Here are the top ten cheapest Indie shows from SeatGeek’s database.

As you can see, there is a wide discrepancy between the most, and least expensive concerts amongst these artists. For example, tickets to The National’s show on June 5th could be had for an average of under $25, only 26% of the average price for tickets to their show from the previous week!

Clearly this is an indication of the relative popularity of these bands in different locations, as well as a testament to the value of investigating multiple concert dates when deciding to see a certain band, as their show-to-show prices fluctuate tremendously.

We also delved a bit deeper to find which bands offered the most bang for your buck. We took three of the most popular alternative bands today – MGMT, The National, and LCD Soundsytem, and analyzed their respective transacted ticket prices during a period of over a month from May to June of this year.

As you can see, The National‘s prices generally lagged somewhat below the other two bands. However, all three generally followed the same trends and transacted at similar prices. While these prices are nothing to sneeze at, fluctuating between lows of around $50 and highs breaking $120, they are all incredibly affordable when compared to some of the high grossing acts of the year such as Lady Gaga. Over the same time period, tickets for her shows were transacting at prices around double these other bands.

As our data reflects, going to an Indie concert is not cheap. However, if you want to experience some great and unique music, without all the fluff and artificiality that seems to constitute the majority of popular artists’ concerts nowadays, these tickets are certainly worth your while.

Please feel free to email me at jonathan@seatgeek.com, like us on facebook at facebook.com/seatgeek and follow us on twitter @SeatGeek & @SeatGeekMusic

The New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Wall Street Journal have all picked up the story and the major study they are citing is this report by the trade magazine Pollstar.

Here are the highlights:

• Overall sales are down. The WSJ summarizes this nicely: “The top 100 tours in North America show gross ticket-sales revenue of $965.5 million, down 17% from a year earlier. Number of tickets sold: down 12%. Average gross per show, down 14.4%. Ticket prices now average $60.77, compared with $64.61 last year.”
• The top summer tours by sales revenue in 2010 are:

• Others, however, aren’t doing so well. According to the Sun-Times, Rihanna, Limp Bizkit, even the Jonas Brothers have erased concerts. The Country Throwdown Tour called off shows in Dallas and Houston, while Christina Aguilera’s tour had to be postponed completely.

What’s to blame?

Of course, the prolonged economic slowdown and steady increase in unemployment has hurt, recent recoveries notwithstanding.

(see this wonderful NYT chart which shows the geographies of the recession)

But what does the secondary ticket market say? Are Bon Jovi tickets selling for more than Rihanna‘s? Let’s dive into the data.

Bon Jovi, with his blockbuster summer tour, will have been to 57 concerts this year (up until the end of July) and the average transaction price for his tickets on the secondary market has been a very healthy $164.

Taylor Swift, 3rd on the list, has been to 41 events this year, and her avg. transaction on the secondary market has been $152. Not too shabby either.

What the artists have in common is that they’re all pushing above the $150 barrier in average transaction prices. Yes, George Strait is at $144, but hey, he’s also the only country artist on the list and the most expensive one too.

And the underperforming artists?

Well, Rihanna‘s average comes in at $130 — not too bad, but not earth-shatteringly low either. And that’s not taking into account that she has canceled shows in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and Indianapolis, so yes, we can confirm that her summer isn’t going too well according to the secondary ticket market too.

As for Christina Aguilera, with her cancelled tour, you can be sure that there is no data on her concerts on the secondary ticket markets, so we are doubly sure that she isn’t having a great 2010.

So while overall the ticket industry has been experiencing declining overall sales, there has been significant discrimination between artists, and some have clearly profited heavily this summer.

And if you want to see the hottest tours, at the best price, you all know to come to SeatGeek to for all your ticketing needs.

Music fans were quick to scoop up tickets for the 2010 festival:

• Pitchfork Music Festival Three-Day Passes Sell Out!
• Pitchfork Fest Sunday Tickets Sold Out

As we have previously discussed on this blog, you don’t have to worry when tickets sell out, just read our guide on finding and buying sold out tickets.  Fortunately, for those that purchased resale tickets over the weekend, they were able to find them for the most part under $80 and sold out tickets are still available on SeatGeek.

• Friday (7/16) tickets are not sold out yet, so ticket prices remain significantly lower on the secondary market
• Saturday (7/17) and Sunday (7/18) tickets have transacted at $78 and $81 respectively, driven up by quick sell outs
• Modest Mouse, arguably one of the more mainstream bands at the Festival performs Friday, yet prices remain low
• Sunday tickets are trading at the most expensive price, driven by headliner Pavement and other notable acts such as Big Boi of Outkast.

We previously highlighted some of the economical benefits of music festivals which of course should be weighed against reduced set times and overlapping set times, where multiple stages are being used. Even so, the Bonnaroo graph below makes it clear that you often get a solid bang for your buck.

Above, we isolated a small sample of artists performing at Bonnaroo and compared their combined average ticket prices on the resale market in Spring/Summer to that of a $234.50 Bonnaroo ticket – the economical advantage is pretty clear. Pitchfork, although not as large, also offers a great opportunity to catch many of your favorites artists without going broke.

The above charts shows the transaction prices for Bonnaroo vs the sum of the daily ticket prices for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Pitchfork

• Pitchfork is not as expensive, though we would have expected a larger discrepancy
• The lack of a huge gap, could be market driven – Pitchfork is located in Chicago, Il while Bonnaroo is in Manchester, TN

When we looked at Bonnaroo a few weeks back, a lot of constructive feedback was given in terms of factoring in set times. Below, we have displayed average tour prices for Modest Mouse adjusted for set times (i.e. multiplied by 66% – the assumed duration of festival sets versus tour sets) versus Modest Mouse as part of a mult-artist show Friday at Pitchfork.

• Modest Mouse tickets are transacting at an average of $91.47 on the secondary market, 63% over the average transaction price for a Friday ticket at Pitchfork
• Modest Mouse tickets transact 45% higher than Pavement Tickets – Pavement is a headliner for Pitchfork
• Adjusted for set duration, Modest Mouse tour tickets are still close to 10% above average transaction prices for Friday Pitchfork tickets

Lastly, we took a look at  tour headliner Pavement, so you can see how their invidual tour prices are moving and compare back the price to attend Pitchfork.

Please comment with any thoughts or questions. Check back to SeatGeek whenever you need concert tickets or sold out tickets.