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Does 50k a ticket for live gig make Coldplay a sell-out?

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Akhil Sood
Akhil SoodSep 16, 2016 | 16:10

Does 50k a ticket for live gig make Coldplay a sell-out?

People who go for rock music concerts are either cheap or poor or (usually) both. Everyone knows that. So when you price your cheapest ticket at a fairly high Rs 5,000 (naturally leading to a never-ending waitlist), you're telling your fans, in a way, that they don't matter. That they are small and irrelevant. That you're more concerned with the big guys, the ones who can pay Rs 50,000 for the "Gold" category (although there's more, which we'll get to). They'll welcome you to India warmly, Coldplay.

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The artist shares a complicated relationship with the fan, but also a deep one, built on implicit trust.

See, rock music functions in this strange ecosystem of floating morality. The artist shares a complicated relationship with the fan, but also a deep one, built on implicit trust. It's not a mechanical transaction, like maybe in commercial pop music, where often it's a straightforward business-like association. That's a fling.

Here, there are real emotions involved. Think of Deadheads talking about Jerry Garcia; the eulogies Syd Barrett gets from Pink Floyd extremists; think of middle-aged men doing a classic Lennon vs McCartney; Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails releasing their music directly to the fans; the sense of community the hardcore punk bands of the '80s fostered.

It's a very real and very imaginary bond. You, the artist, will write music with some degree of subjective honesty and integrity (that I decide), and hopefully appeal to my aesthetic and emotional sensibility. It's a mysterious kind of empathy that's conveyed through the music. You will not screw me over.

I, the fan, will, in return, support you when you suck. I'll buy your CDs or MP3s; I'll tell my friends about you; I'll wear a T-shirt with your face on it. At the very least, I'll make sure I listen to your music. And, if you ever come to India, I will travel half the country and watch you live and cry a little. Unless you make me buy tickets for Rs 50,000.

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Things get ugly very quickly if either party breaks that sacred, unspoken understanding. That's why the notion of "selling out" is so hotly debated.

My contempt for Coldplay notwithstanding, they are legitimately a big band that has built a huge fan base in India. They have developed and cultivated that relationship with their fans for years (while being laughed at by everyone else). So them coming to India, at a time when they're still relevant, is a big deal. They play the Global Citizen gig on November 19 in Mumbai along with some other artists and non-artists.

Global Citizen is a global community working toward eradicating poverty, so the cause is a good one. The gig takes place on World Toilet Day (we won't make any jokes about that, as tempting as it might be), and features a star-studded line-up with not just Coldplay, but also Jay Z (formerly known as Jay-Z), who is the husband of Beyoncé, in addition to being a musician himself.

Other names on the roster include Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Arijit Singh, Monali Thakur, AR Rahman, and Farhan "rockstar" Akhtar. Further, they have Grammy-winning artists such as Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and more.

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Charming as that line-up may seem, it's not the most worrisome thing about the gig - the "for the greater good" dictum can be invoked in the face of criticism. The problem is the way the ticketing structure has been arranged.

So you have these "earned" tickets, where you sign up on www.globalcitizen.in and do a bunch of social work-type tasks, like on Roadies, to earn points. If your score is high enough, you'll find yourself in a lucky draw pool with other overachievers. The selected ones will get two free non-transferable tickets to the gig.

There are 48,000 such free tickets to be claimed.

The Take Action tasks include signing an email petition to improve sanitation, to be sent to the World Bank President, which will get you three points. Use their hashtag #ShuruaatHoonMain on Twitter for two points; upload a photo with their other hashtag, #IAmAGlobalCitizen, for five points. Refer five friends to the site for three more. A lot of these seem oddly self-serving, but there's other stuff too, like taking a quiz and signing a couple of other petitions.

Call me naïve, but shouldn't social work channel self-motivation? And shouldn't it be a choice? Also, this does seem to me to be more a social media promotional campaign and number-aggregation than a means to affect meaningful change.

To be fair, their website does state that they have made commitments worth $25 billion, and speaks of how small actions can affect change in ways that aren't always obvious, so I may well be missing something. And I'm not here to pick holes in what is no doubt a noble venture.

Moving on, it's not just free tickets they're advertising. You can buy them too, and yesterday, the first set was made available on BookMyShow (which is one of their many, many high-profile partners). They were split into two categories: Silver and Gold. The "early bird" tickets were for Rs 5,000, leading to online queues on the site that stretched beyond 1.2 lakh people. That was the Silver category, where subsequent tickets were sold for Rs 7,500, Rs 10,000, and Rs 15,000 (Phases 1, 2, and 3 respectively).

The Gold category, which includes food and (non-alcoholic) beverages, in addition to "exclusive merchandise", "pit-access", and priority parking, started off at Rs 15,000. Phases 1 and 2 were priced at an unreal Rs. 35,000 and Rs 50,000. Not to worry, though; they're all sold out.

And that's not even getting to the "Platinum" and "Titanium" tickets. Early reports had speculated the prices could rise up to Rs 5 lakh. For that amount, I could travel to New York and back, and then back to New York, and then back again. And watch tons of bands and sign lots of petitions.

There's also a layout of the venue on the website, where you can see that the paid ticket-holders get the privilege of standing up front, the "Titanium" and "Platinum" ones right up against the stage. The ones with the earned tickets get to stand at the back - in a different field, possibly in a different PIN code altogether, if you have an Action Journey 14 ticket.

I'm not complaining though. It's a one-off event meant not "just" to be a concert, so the standard rules don't apply. Fans always have the choice of either doing as they're asked, or not going for it. Plus, the "greater good" aspect factors in again, so you can't fault Coldplay, or Jay Z, or Aamir Khan, or Katrina Kaif, for lending their name to such gigs.

But let's get back to that relationship between the band - Coldplay in this case - and the fan (not me, in this case). There are mitigating factors if one were to be generous, but it does seem to be a giant middle finger directed the way of the fans, the kids who connected with "Yellow" when they were 14 and have followed the band through their many misadventures since - in favour of some grandstanding and hobnobbing with India's cultural elite. You can't have it both ways. Maybe some good will come out of it. But then, the road to hell is paved with good intentions... and Coldplay.

Last updated: September 16, 2016 | 18:24
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