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Brain rot was word of the year, dynamic pricing was also a contender

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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.

How and when artists use dynamic pricing

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 performs at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium on June 07, 2024 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Swift’s Eras World Tour plays 15 dates across Scotland, Wales and England in June and August.

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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.

‘A capitalist inevitability’

“We all know that if you are looking for an Uber or Lyft, there are certain times of night when it’s more expensive. The market seems to have adapted to that,” said Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music. “But concert tickets were generally a fixed price.”

Slowly, however, a change was taking hold.

Throughout the 21st 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.”

Chalk it up to ‘funflation’

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.”

Why dynamic pricing won’t go away

“Consumers don’t like the idea of dynamic pricing, but there is a renewed ‘YOLO’ [you only live once] attitude over the past few years since the pandemic and, increasingly, that drives a devil-may-care approach when it comes to spending on discretionary experiences,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

Even with household budgets strained, “you get to a point where there are just some experiences where consumers draw the line and say, that’s not something I’m willing to give up,” he said.

Live Nation CEO: Live entertainment is a very scarce commodity

Ticket sellers are well aware of this mentality, too.

“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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Student loan borrowers struggle to get into income-driven repayment plan

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Nearly 2 million federal student loan borrowers who’ve requested to be in an affordable repayment plan are stuck in a backlog of applications, waiting to be approved or denied, according to new data recently shared by the U.S. Department of Education.

The Education Department disclosed the information in a May 15 court filing in response to a legal challenge lodged by the American Federation of Teachers. The teachers’ union sued the Trump administration in March for shutting down access to income-driven repayment plan applications on the Education Department’s website.

IDR plans cap borrowers’ monthly bills at a share of their discretionary income with the aim of making their payments manageable.

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In late March, the Trump administration made the online applications available again, and said that it pulled the forms because it needed to make sure all repayment plans complied with a court order that blocked the Biden administration’s new IDR plan, known as SAVE, or the Saving on a Valuable Education plan.

Trump officials argued that the ruling had broader implications for other IDR plans, and it ended up removing the loan forgiveness component under some of the options.

The backlog complicates things for borrowers as the Trump administration restarts collection activity. The Education Department estimates that nearly 10 million people could be in default on their student loans within months.

Without access to an affordable repayment plan, student loan borrowers can be suspended on their timeline to loan forgiveness and at risk of falling behind and facing collection activity.

‘The opposite of government efficiency’

In the May court document, the Education Department disclosed that more than 1.98 million IDR applications remained pending as of the end of April. Only roughly 79,000 requests had been approved or denied during that month.

Consumer advocates slammed the findings.

“This filing confirms what borrowers have known for months: Their applications for loan relief have effectively been going into a void,” said Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at the Student Borrower Protection Center.

The Center said that if the Education Department continued to move at its current rate, it would take more than two years to process the existing applications.

AFT President Randi Weingarten called the backlog “outrageous and unacceptable.”

“This is the opposite of government efficiency,” Weingarten said. “Millions of borrowers are being denied their legal right to an affordable repayment option.”

What’s behind the backlog

A spokesperson for the Education Dept. blamed the backlog on the Biden administration, saying that it “failed to process income-driven repayment applications for borrowers, artificially masking rising delinquency and default rates and promising illegal student loan forgiveness to win points with voters.”

“The Trump Administration is actively working with federal student loan servicers and hopes to clear the Biden backlog over the next few months,” they said.

The Biden administration put the student loan borrowers who’d enrolled in its new IDR plan, SAVE, into an interest-free forbearance while the GOP-led legal challenges to the program unfolded. Many of the currently pending IDR requests are likely from borrowers who are trying to leave that blocked plan to get into an available one.

Sarah Sattlemeyer, a project director at New America and senior advisor under the Biden administration, said that the current backlog began last year “and has existed across both the Biden and Trump administrations” as a result of the legal battle over the SAVE plan.

“It is a demonstration of how complicated the loan system is, how much uncertainty there has been over the last few years and what is at stake,” Sattlemeyer said. “There also isn’t clarity around how some applications in the backlog should or will be handled, such as those where a borrower chose an option that no longer exists on the application.”

Student loan default collection restarting

In recent months, the Trump administration has terminated around half of the Education Department’s staff, including many of the people who helped assist borrowers.

That is also likely one reason why so many of the applications haven’t been processed, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

“Perhaps the reduction in staff is affecting their ability to process the forms,” Kantrowitz said.

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Student loan delinquencies risk ‘spillovers’ to other debts, NY Fed

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Student loan default collection restarting

The Trump administration’s resumption of collection efforts on defaulted federal student loans has far-reaching consequences for delinquent borrowers.

For starters, borrowers who are in default may have wages, tax returns and Social Security payments garnished.

But involuntary collections could also have a “spillover effect,” which puts consumers at risk of falling behind on other debt repayments, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,

As collection activity restarts, disposable income falls

‘It’s just money that can’t go to other financial things’

Until earlier this month, the Department of Education had not collected on defaulted student loans since March 2020. After the Covid pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments expired in September 2023, the Biden administration offered borrowers another year in which they would be shielded from the impacts of missed payments. That on-ramp officially ended on Sept. 30, 2024, and the Education Department restarted collection efforts on defaulted student loans on May 5.

Whether borrowers face garnishment, or opt to resume payments to get current on their loan, that’s likely to have a significant impact on their wallet.

“It’s just money that can’t go to other financial things,” said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree. 

After the five-year pause ended and collections are resumed, the delinquency rate for student loan balances spiked, the New York Fed found. Nearly 8% of total student debt was reported as 90 days past due in the first quarter of 2025, compared to less than 1% in the previous quarter.

Currently, around 42 million Americans hold federal student loans and roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default, according to the Education Department. Another 4 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or over 90 days past due on payments.

Among borrowers who are now required to make payments — not including those who are in deferment or forbearance or are currently enrolled in school — nearly one in four student loan borrowers are behind in their payments, the New York Fed found.  

As borrowers transition out of forbearance and into repayment, those borrowers may also face challenges making payments, according to a separate research note by Bank of America. “This transition will likely drive delinquencies and defaults on student loans higher and could have further knock-on effects for consumer finance companies,” Bank of America analyst Mihir Bhatia wrote to clients on May 15.

In a blog post, the New York Fed researchers noted that “it is unclear whether these penalties will spill over into payment difficulties in other credit products, but we will continue to monitor this space in the coming months.”

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3 red flags to avoid

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‘People don’t know a lot about tariffs’

Tariffs are taxes on goods imported from other countries, paid by the entity importing those goods. Businesses in turn often pass the cost of tariffs along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In April, U.S. President Donald Trump enacted sweeping tariffs of varying rates affecting more than 180 countries and territories. Last week, the U.S. and China struck a deal to temporarily suspend most tariffs on each other’s goods. The U.S. also recently unveiled a trade agreement with the United Kingdom. 

Despite the recent trade agreements and deals, consumers still face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.8%, the highest since 1934, according to a recent report by the Yale Budget Lab. 

James Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said it’s not unusual for scammers to take a government action — whether that’s a new program or policy — and use it for the basis of a scam.

Scammers “will use the fact that people don’t know a lot about tariffs,” Lee said.

AI generated deepfake scam is 'phishing with a twist', says Fortalice Solutions CEO Theresa Payton

The PreCrime Labs team at BforeAI, a cybersecurity company, discovered about 300 domain registrations from cybercriminals related to tariffs in the first few months of the year. Some spread misinformation while others are financial scams aimed at businesses and consumers.

One site the company found was a newly registered phishing domain positioned to lead consumers to believe they are required to make payments to a legitimate governmental entity.

“Such payment requests are likely to be spread using email or messaging campaigns with a theme of urgent, pending payments, directing victims to the fraudulent site where their actions will result in financial losses,” researchers noted.

Some package payment requests are real

There are some cases where consumers might legitimately pay for products purchased from another country, namely, customs duties. Sometimes the U.S. Customs and Border Protection will charge consumers a processing fee in order to release an imported good. 

“That’s not common, but it’s also not unusual,” said Lee. “It really does depend on what it is, where it’s coming from.”

Some consumers have also recently reported receiving legitimate payment requests from carrier companies after a purchase in order to receive their shipments, the Washington Post reports.

Some carriers are acting as the importer of record, meaning they are responsible for any duties, taxes and fees that are applied to the delivery, said Bernie Hart, vice president of customs of Flexport, a logistics firm.

If the carrier did not collect those additional fees for the product up front, the carrier will charge the end consumer those additional costs through a follow-up bill, he said.

This tactic might not last, because it creates a lot of inconvenience for both companies and shoppers, Hart said: “It’s not good for anybody in this process to give somebody a surprise bill.”

Tariff scam red flags

It’s easy for anyone to fall victim to a fraud scheme, said Ruth Susswein, director of consumer protection at Consumer Action. 

If tariff policies continue to be in flux for longer, criminals will have more time to craft sophisticated attacks on consumers, said the ITRC’s Lee. 

Your top priority is to avoid sharing personal information like Social Security numbers, bank details or account login credentials, especially under the guise of “tariff processing,” said Payton.

Here are three red flags to watch out for, according to scam experts:

1. Unsolicited and urgent messages

2. Suspicious site links, emails

Scammers will create fake websites, emails and phone numbers to mimic retailers or government agencies, Payton said. If you receive a message, check for misspellings and URLs or email addresses that don’t match that of the supposed company or entity — say, a message from a “U.S. government official” that does not come from a dot-gov email.

You can use tools like WHOIS, a database that stores information about registered domain names and IP addresses, to authenticate the website and confirm registration details, she said.

3. Lack of transparency

Reputable merchants would clearly label tariff-related fees at checkout and provide contact information for inquiries, Payton said. Otherwise, the “lack of transparency is a red flag.”

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