From Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter to Kendrick Lamar and SZA, 2025 promises to be another big year for live music events. That may also mean concert-goers will be shelling out more for their favorite shows.

After rising steadily post-pandemic, admission to movies, theaters, and concerts jumped 20% since 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data.

And yet, consumers have demonstrated a high tolerance for the increasing price tag, also known as “funflation.”

Concert goers attended an average of seven shows in 2024, and most plan to see more in 2025, according to a recent report by CouponCabin.

The survey of more than 1,000 music fans in December found that nearly 36% said they will spend $100 to $499 on concert tickets in 2025, while over 17% plan to spend up to $1,000.

After testing new limits in 2024, Americans proved a willingness to splurge — even travel abroad — to catch shows like Taylor Swift’s Era Tour, bringing so-called “passion tourism” into the spotlight, some experts say.

Younger adults, particularly Generation Z and millennials, have even said they would go into debt to pursue some of these experiences, other 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.

“Dynamic pricing” is partly to blame for the escalating price tag, according to Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music.

Originally coined by economists in the late 1920s, dynamic pricing refers the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand. Consumers often associate it with shifting airline ticket prices or how ride-hailing services adjust fares at busy times, Bennett said.

“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,” he said. “But concert tickets were generally a fixed price.”

That’s no longer the case. And now there is heightened awareness — and controversy — around the practice when it comes to buying highly sought-after event tickets.

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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 is 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 recently told CNBC.

Ticketmaster is under investigation in the U.K. for its recent use of dynamic pricing in sales of 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.

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.

Ticketmaster in 2011 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 $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, according to Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief credit analyst.

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

“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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David Thomas, the president of Morehouse College, said his office fielded a surge of calls this week from worried students and their families concerned the Trump Administration’s “federal funding freeze” would directly impact college access. 

The sudden scramble was “perhaps only rivaled by what happened in March of 2020 when we realized that the Covid pandemic was truly a threat,” Thomas told CNBC. He became president of Morehouse, one of the country’s top historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, in 2018.

This freeze on federal aid “would create another existential threat as great as the pandemic,” he said.

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Thomas’ comments come amid ongoing confusion about how a freeze on federal grants and loans could potentially impact students and schools.

A Jan. 27 memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget, which would affect billions of dollars in aid, said the pause on federal grants and loans “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.”

Although the memo was later rescinded, the White House said a “federal funding freeze” remains in “full force and effect.” It is currently on hold amid legal challenges.

Thomas, who is also on the Board of Trustees at Yale University, said college leaders across the country have spent the better part of the week focused on “the consequences of this action.” Morehouse immediately initiated a hiring freeze in preparation for a potentially significant financial disruption.

“All of the institutions are still in limbo,” he said.

Following the memo’s release, the Education Department announced that the freeze would not affect student loans or Pell Grants.

“The temporary pause does not impact Title I, IDEA, or other formula grants, nor does it apply to Federal Pell Grants and Direct Loans under Title IV [of the Higher Education Act],” Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said in a statement.

In addition to the federal financial aid programs that fall under Title IV, Title I provides financial assistance to school districts with children from low-income families. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, provides funding for students with disabilities.

The funding pause “only applies to discretionary grants at the Department of Education,” Biedermann said. “These will be reviewed by Department leadership for alignment with Trump Administration priorities.”

But questions remain about other aid for college.

The freeze could affect federal work-study programs and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, which are provided in bulk to colleges to provide to students, according to Kalman Chany, a financial aid consultant and author of The Princeton Review’s “Paying for College.”

The disruption to federally backed research funding also poses a threat to college programs and staff.

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The Trump administration emailed more than 2 million federal workers this week, giving them the option to resign now and get pay and benefits through Sept. 30.

Workers have until Feb. 6 to accept the “deferred resignation” offer.

The payouts come on the heels of President Donald Trump‘s executive order to end DEI programs. On Wednesday, he said federal workers need to return to the office five days a week “or be terminated.”

“We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” Trump said at the signing of an immigration detention law.

Experts advise federal employees to take their time before accepting the offer. By accepting the resignation, tenured federal employees could lose certain rights they may have.

“If you resign, it’s deemed voluntary,” said Michael L. Vogelsang, Jr., a principal of The Employment Law Group, P.C. “If you are a permanent, tenured employee in the government and the administration wants you out, laws still exist that federal employees cannot just be fired on a whim.”

Meanwhile, some lawmakers question whether the president can make this offer without Congressional approval.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, said federal employees should not be “fooled” by Trump’s proposal.

“If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you,” Kaine said. “He doesn’t have any authority to do this.” 

The Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority gives federal agencies the authority to offer buyout incentives for some employees to resign or retire, but it is capped at $25,000.

Asked for more detail on the payouts, including what authority the president has to offer to pay through September 30, the White House referred back to its statement given on Tuesday.

“If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of eight months,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

There is already uncertainty around current funding for the federal government. It’s operating under a short-term continuing resolution passed in December. Unless Congress acts, the federal government could shut down on March 14. 

Unlike with corporate buyouts, federal employees who received this offer can’t appeal for a better deal, experts say.

“Usually with buyouts, I think of more severance, and usually it’s sort of some kind of negotiation. This isn’t really negotiation. It’s sort of a unilateral offer,” Vogelsang said.

Still, some of the factors to consider for weighing the government’s deferred resignation offer are similar to what one would weigh in a corporate buyout, experts say: