Oxford University Press may have crowned “brain rot” the word of the year, but “dynamic pricing” was also a top contender.

Originally coined by economists in the late 1920s, dynamic pricing refers to “the practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions. In particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand,” the publishing house said on its site.

Many people associate it with shifting airline ticket prices or how ride-hailing service Uber adjusts fares at busy times. However, there was heightened awareness — and controversy — around the practice in 2024, especially when it came to buying highly sought-after event tickets.

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“In some high-profile cases, dynamic pricing was used in setting prices for concert tickets, resulting in fans (often reluctantly) paying very high prices to see their favourite artists. In some cases, fans were in a virtual queue for hours before realizing how much they would be asked to pay, leading to questions about the transparency of dynamic pricing practices, as well as value for money,” Oxford said.

Ticketmaster is under investigation in the U.K. for its recent use of dynamic pricing in sales of next year’s reunion concerts from Britpop band Oasis.

Many Oasis fans took to social media to complain that they ended up paying more than double the face value of the ticket without warning. The band said it would abandon the practice for the North American leg of its tour.

Taylor Swift reportedly refused to dynamically price her Eras Tour tickets because “she didn’t want to do that to her fans,” Jay Marciano, chairman and CEO of AEG Presents, which promoted the event, told HITS Daily Double in October.

Also in an interview this fall, Robert Smith, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Cure, said dynamic pricing is “driven by greed,” calling the practice a “scam.”

How and when dynamic pricing is used is at the discretion of the artist or management, according to Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University — and it was often determined under the radar.

However, with so many recent high-profile tours, “for sure, dynamic pricing has surged to the forefront of concert goers’ attention,” he said.

Throughout the 21^st century, revenue from recorded music has gone down while revenue from live music events has gone up. By the mid-2000s, concerts “provided a larger source of income for performers than record sales or publishing royalties,” economist Alan Krueger wrote in a paper on the economic issues and trends in the rock and roll industry. Live music industry revenue jumped 25% in 2023 alone, according to data from Statista.

In 2011, Ticketmaster first introduced an early version of dynamic ticket pricing, which is now the standard for live music ticketing sales. In more recent years, “ticket sales went crazy” driven by post-pandemic pent-up demand and a surge in mega-star stadium tours, Bennett said.

“You can see why it’s tempting,” he said. “The live music industry is constantly leaving money on the table that fans would pay. Dynamic pricing is sort of a capitalist inevitability given the forces at play, but I don’t want to live in a world where it costs a $1,000 for my daughter to see Taylor Swift.”

Still, it’s now common for ticket-selling platforms to charge more per ticket depending on demand for the event at any given time — whether consumers like it or not.

“It’s not very popular, as you might imagine,” said Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief credit analyst. “Businesses and musicians are trying to see what the market will bear, and it makes things really difficult for the consumer.”

Despite complaints, consumers prove that they have a high tolerance for the increasing price tags of live events, also known as “funflation.” Younger adults, particularly Generation Z and millennials, have demonstrated they would even go into debt to pursue some of these experiences, recent reports show.

Nearly two out of five Gen Z and millennial travelers have spent up to $5,000 on tickets alone for destination live events, one recent study from Bread Financial found.

“Knowing your limits is important,” Schulz said. “As much as you might love your favorite musician, there should be a limit to how much debt you are willing to go into for them.”

“Our research consistently tells us that concerts are a top priority for discretionary spending, and one of the last experiences fans will cut back on,” Live Nation said in a quarterly earnings call in 2023. 

But as consumers continue to spare no expense to see their favorite artist or group, that means that means dynamic pricing is here to stay, at least for now.

“The live music sector has been leaning into this attitude for a long time,” Northeastern University’s Mall said.

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More federal student loan borrowers have been able to get their debt discharged in bankruptcy over the last few years, thanks to new guidance that the Biden administration has issued.

That more lenient policy may be at risk when President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House in January, experts say.

Here’s what borrowers need to know.

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Higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz also expects to see a reversal in the approach.

“The Trump Administration is likely to rescind this guidance,” Kantrowitz said, referring to the Biden administration’s looser rules for student loan borrowers in bankruptcy.

Latife Neu, a bankruptcy lawyer in Seattle, said she wasn’t sure bankruptcy would necessarily become more difficult for student loan borrowers under Trump.

“There is a surprising amount of consensus across the political spectrum,” Neu said, that the higher bar for student loan borrowers to get their debt discharged in bankruptcy is “a defective policy.”

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a CNBC’s request for comment .

In the fall of 2022, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice released updated bankruptcy guidelines to make it easier for struggling borrowers to get their student loans erased in court.

Previously, it was difficult, if not impossible, for people to part with their education debt in a normal bankruptcy proceeding.

In the 1970s, lawmakers added a stipulation that student loan borrowers needed to wait at least five years after they began repayment to file for bankruptcy. Policymakers and pundits had raised concerns that students would rack up a bunch of debt and then try to get rid of it after graduation.

The waiting period was upped to seven years in 1990. The rules changed yet again almost a decade later, so that only people who proved that their student debt posed an “undue hardship” could discharge it.

Congress, however, never spelled out what that term means, and lawyers and advocates say the uncertainty led to unfairness in the courts.

The Biden administration’s recent approach treats student loans more like other types of debt in bankruptcy court, experts say. Borrowers are able to fill out a 15-page form, detailing their financial struggles and making their case for a mulligan.

In the first 10 months of the new policy, student loan borrowers filed more than 630 bankruptcy cases, a “significant increase” from recent years, the Biden administration said in a statement at the time.

“The vast majority of borrowers seeking discharge have received full or partial discharges,” it said.

There’s soaring interest in donating cryptocurrency to charity as digital currency investors seek to maximize their tax break and impact.

“A lot of folks have begun to realize that crypto giving is hugely beneficial,” said Kyle Casserino, vice president and charitable planning consultant for Fidelity Charitable, a public charity that accepts bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin.

Bitcoin donations have surged amid the latest rally as investors learn about the tax benefits, according to Casserino.   

For 2024, Fidelity Charitable has accepted $688 million in crypto donations through Nov. 19. That’s up from $49 million in all of 2023 and $38 million in 2022, according to the organization’s 2024 giving report.

For some perspective, as of Dec. 31, 2023, Fidelity Charitable had received more than $565 million in cumulative gifts since the charity started accepting the assets in 2015.

“Most of our volume, in terms of numbers and dollars, is all in bitcoin,” Casserino said.

DAFgiving360, formerly Schwab Charitable, doesn’t release numbers for crypto donations. But the organization reported that it received 63% of contributions in non-cash assets, such as crypto and stocks, for fiscal year 2024.

Some 56% of the top 100 U.S. charities accepted crypto donations as of Jan. 2024, according to The Giving Block, a platform for digital currency gifts and fundraising.

Most taxpayers use the standard deduction on their returns, which doesn’t allow itemized tax breaks, such as charitable gifts.

But if you itemize and can claim the charitable deduction, it’s generally better to donate profitable assets, like cryptocurrency or stocks, rather than cash, according to Andrew Gordon, a tax attorney, certified public accountant and president of Gordon Law Group.

By gifting appreciated investments, you can avoid triggering capital gains taxes, which saves the donor and charity money. Generally, you can deduct the asset’s fair market value if you’ve owned it for more than one year. The cap on the tax break is 30% of your adjusted gross income for public charities.

“It’s a good strategy, especially with crypto and bitcoin at all-time highs,” Gordon said. “It’s something that we’re going to be suggesting more to people.”

The price of bitcoin was hovering around $95,000 early on Dec. 4, up by nearly 120% year-to-date, according to Coin Metrics. Bitcoin investors saw a post-election rally fueled by President-elect Donald Trump, who promised pro-crypto policy during his campaign.