They haven't had a hit in 10 years, and Vertigo was only a "hit" because it was in that ad. I only heard it on the radio for a couple days when it was released.
NLOTH sold poorly, and SOI was going to do worse. They knew that. They're just another old band loved by Rolling Stone and the Grammy committee.
Its true they have not had a "radio hit" in 10 years, but Vertigo was a legit hit regardless of the Apple add or not.
NLOTH was actually one of the biggest selling albums of 2009. There were only 6 albums that year that sold more worldwide.
I understand the stereotype of being some old heritage act and people have been trying to lable them as such for almost two decades now, but have failed to each and every time. There may come a time when they do fit that category, but it has not happened yet. U2 are still the most popular band on the planet.
There are many arguments you can make for U2's continued relevancy, but the number of people who downloaded this record is not one of them.
And there are contemporary artists who can and do compete with U2 in selling tickets, merchandise and records in huge numbers. Some of them don't even give their records away for free.
Well, U2's last tour grossed almost $750 million dollars just from ticket sales. How many artist do you know can compete with that, especially since there has only ever been 12 tours at this point that have reached the $300 million dollar mark which is less than half of U2's most recent completed tour. U2 fans typically buy more band merchandise than other artist at shows, and when you have 7.2 million ticket buyers, that translates into a lot of merchandise. The last album, NLOTH, was one of the 10 biggest selling albums of 2009 worldwide.
I know of no artist that has 1. A $750 million dollar tour. 2. 7.2 million ticket buyers buying tons of merchandise. 3. one of the 10 biggest selling albums of the year with their last album NLOTH.
Those a three big benchmarks.
Yes it does makes sense. If you have a 60k seat stadium, 10k @ $250 or more is less than 20% of the ticket pool. Now we're seeing practically every lower bowl seat (and some uppers) near $300, and that's not including the $600 'VIP' seats.
My point is that the 20% is probably more like 50% now, and that is more that many are willing or able to pay. Distance isn't really the gripe for some - it's affordability.
Ok, but when U2 charged 10,000 tickets at the $250 price in a 60,000 seat stadium, they did not charge that many tickets at that price because it was nearly 20% of the ticket pool. They did it because they felt they could sell 10,000 tickets in that particular market at the $250 ticket price in those particular seats.
Fast forward to 2014 and that same factor still applies. You scale things down to an 18,000 seat arena, but your still going to have 10,000 people that will pay the $250 or $280 list price like they did on the last tour. Yes, that's more than 50% of the pool of tickets, but you already know from the last tour that there are 10,000 people willing to pay those prices in a stadium. Now its an arena where its more intimate and these seats are closer. Naturally U2 are still going to be charging the top level dollar for those 10,000 ticket buyers who purchased the $250 tickets on the 360 tour. Yet, despite that they have still kept the GA tickets low priced, $65 list price compared to $55 list price on 360. The last 1/3 of the arena tickets are priced at the normal $100 and then discounted $65 and $35.
The resistance to the $250 ticket priced should have showed up on 360 but it didn't. Because it didn't that insured that we would have those large ticket price levels swamping the arena shows on this tour. It was inevitable, its what the market will allow. Also, there were lots of $250 tickets that were always available for months prior to the 360 shows. Its a top level ticket price that the majority of fans shy away from, but despite that most of them are eventually sold by show time, and so will it be with these arena shows.
If you want the cheap tickets to make up a larger fraction of the ticket pool, then you should be demanding a stadium tour rather than an arena tour. If the band moves to stadiums on this tour, you will see the number of "cheap" tickets make up a far larger fraction of the ticket pool than they are currently.
