AC/DC: For Those About To Rock... We Reward You

AC/DC has proven themselves to be like a foreign car company. You can find certain American car models for the same price or cheaper, but the average person may want to dish out a tad more cash for a better made vehicle and one whose long term rewards far outweigh the short term crunch in your pocket. It's becoming apparent that the hunger for classic rock is truly insatiable. AC/DC's seven years away from the limelight only made the desire for new music from them greater; a rarity for a band that is coming close to their fifth decade in the business. Kid Rock a few months ago compared physical cd sales versus downloads as to eating at a high scale restaurant versus eating at McDonalds. What AC/DC is proving that people will indeed pay for quality music and download (often illegally) the music that doesn't move them as profoundly. I can't tell you the last time I paid more than $9.99 for a single disc, but over a million people decided $11.99 was the right price point. AC/DC has proven themselves to be a brand name associated with quality and people will go out of their way to get it, the same way they would visit a great restaurant that isn't local.

The campaign for Black Ice was nothing short of brilliant in terms of how it was executed; nothing was overlooked or missed in setting up the marketing campaign for this. Despite being downloaded by over 400,000 individuals on P2P sites the week before the album came out, the album still shifted a million in under two-weeks. Not only that, the band sold-out their entire tour with one universal ticket price; $89.50. I've railed against Springsteen in recent years as to how his lack of tiered prices is foolish (he didn't sell out any of the three Boston dates on his last tour, arguably one of his strongest markets). However, since AC/DC completed their last tour in 2001, Springsteen started and completed four separate tours which caused a severe case of overexposure (and a fifth one starts up in February next year). However, AC/DC has been lying low and while they sorted out a switch in record companies, something unexpected happened. An entire generation of fans discovered this band through P2P file sharing. A few years back, I noticed that a bunch of kids at the junior high across the street from where I live had AC/DC shirts. I thought to myself as to how these kids could have known about this band who, at the time, had not toured in over four-years? I bumped into one and asked him one day and he told me that he downloaded all of their albums from the internet and that they were "unlike any other band out there today".

An argument can be made that AC/DC is the world's greatest living rock n' roll band. Yes, the Rolling Stones are Gods, but ultimately, when you're charging upwards of $500 for tickets, you leave many out in the cold and let me tell you, no Stones concert I have ever been to was as rousing as AC/DC one I experienced recently. Most importantly, it was a rare show that you didn't need great seats to have a great time. It was an experience to just be there. When was the last time you could say that about a show? All too often in the last few years I have had friends who sat in the balcony and told me they felt a million miles away from "the action". We all like being close and intimate, but the power of a truly great act is their ability to play to the nosebleeds and this is proving to be a larger obstacle for artists these days. The higher the ticket price, the higher the expectation. Make no mistake, AC/DC's tickets are by no means cheap, but they are fair, especially considering it's been seven-years since their last tour and their popularity and legacy are at all time highs. Isn't it ironic that the preeminent and most luminous crowds appear to be the ones with the most affordable tickets where everyone one all ages and wealth demographics can afford it? I saw the Eagles last month and the crowd sat for the majority of the three-hour concert. I didn't see a single person under the age of thirty there and ninety-percent of the audience was over forty-five-years-old. Ultimately, it's far better to sell seventeen-thousand seats at $89.50 and have a secondary market where only nosebleeds are available than to sell five-thousand seats a $300 a piece and have them selling for less than half the face value price outside the arena. AC/DC's fans are rewarding them for not taking advantage of them. Fan club members scored good seats, scalpers didn't have prime ones to offer and all of the prime seats were reasonable. People feel that AC/DC is like a Five-Star restaurant that is worth the extra hassle and money.

The current issue of Rolling Stone has AC/DC on the cover and one of the amusing and insightful parts of the article is when David Fricke reviews their "Five Best" albums and even he admits, that The Razor Edge is far from perfect but good enough to make the cut. AC/DC, aside from Back In Black and maybe High Voltage don't have a lot of legendary or truly untouchable albums, but the flipside is that they don't really have any bad ones either. Fly On The Wall, Blow Up Your Video and Ballbreaker may all be imperfect, but they all have at least a few indelible tunes on them. One thing I noticed when I was at the AC/DC concert was that people were just happy to be there. I can't say the same about the Eagles, Rolling Stones, Madonna, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith concerts I have been to in recent years. Most fans I have talked to ultimately felt ripped off at the end of it. Many people are beginning to realize that not every concert is worth $100, especially when those seats are nosebleeds. AC/DC was able to get away with it because it was a level playing field for everyone. Let's just hope that when they return next summer and player sheds or stadiums that there is a tiered ticketing system. Until then, AC/DC may be the best deal on the road at this very moment. I've always judged how well a show has sold by what's on the secondary market. AC/DC nosebleed tickets were going for fifty-percent above face value in Chicago last week and for once in my life, that seemed to be right because there were no good prime lower levels available. Once you break the $100 barrier on a ticket price, it better be a once in a lifetime event or else there will be plenty of tickets outside the arena for far less than face value. Tina Turner hasn't toured in eight years, so I understand why she charged what she did, ditto AC/DC, but the day and age of fans paying hundreds of hundreds of dollars for multiple events every year that only last two-hours is coming to a close.

As the economy tightens, look for the acts that have a catalog and quarter century of hits behind them to benefit. What will differentiate them is whether they take care of their fans. It always begins and ends with the fans. Good deeds will be rewarded. AC/DC's Black Ice was widely available on the internet ten days before it hit store shelves and yet they managed to sell over a million copies in two weeks, all because people feel a part of something larger. P2P increased the legend and lore of AC/DC more in the last seven years than anyone could have imagined. Despite this, their catalog still sells in massive amounts; Back In Black shifted 41,000 copies two weeks ago and by the end of the year, AC/DC's total worldwide sales will be more than ten-million. Find me any act on the planet who can match half of that. AC/DC offers a quality product at a reasonable price and while other acts make their best seats unobtainable due to extremely high prices and fans often feel like sitting the show out all together. In the next few years look for many promoters to ultimately lose money as a result while AC/DC leaves money on the table, because they understand that the money will come back to them in another form whether it is merchandise or cd sales. They appear to be one of the few acts to understand this. It's not about making as much as you can in that moment, but how much can be derived and made in the long run. The acts who follow and understand this model will be the ones who thrive and survive and those who take the money and run, well, what comes around goes around.

Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.

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