After travelling nearly two hours to watch Cigarettes After Sex perform in Bengaluru last year, Ushma Mehrotra was already at the venue when she learnt the concert had been cancelled. While the organisers refunded the ticket, the money spent on travel and the evening she had planned around were gone for good.
For college students, buying a concert ticket is often only the beginning. By the time travel, accommodation, food and other expenses are added, a night of live music can cost several times more than the ticket itself.
International artists such as Dua Lipa, Post Malone and Travis Scott now tour India alongside homegrown acts like Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla, while festivals, including NH7 Weekender, Sunburn and Lollapalooza continue drawing audiences from across the country. Many students now travel between cities for these events, treating them as experiences worth saving for.
A 2024 KPMG India study, cited in the white paper ‘India's Live Events Economy: A Strategic Growth Imperative’, found that more than 70% of Gen Z and millennials in Tier-1 cities attended at least one ticketed live event in 2023-24. General-access tickets typically ranged from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,500, while premium experiences cost anywhere between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000. Industry estimates suggest India hosted around 34,000 live events in 2025, growing by roughly 17% that year, while a 2026 CNBC report found that people under 30 accounted for about 52% of all live-event attendees.
"It was one of the most memorable nights I've experienced," recalls Aditya Sharma, a first-year law student at RV University, describing a recent Def Leppard concert in Bengaluru as "surreal". For many students, however, memories like these come at a considerable cost.
Behind the ticket price
Students often describe concert tickets as increasingly unaffordable, but organisers say the rising prices reflect the economics of staging large-scale events. Artist fees, venue rentals, production, security and taxes account for a significant share of costs long before audiences enter the venue.
"If you're looking at a 10,000-capacity event, I would say the sound, lights and production, including staging and venue, would be one-third to half of the cost borne by the promoter," says Amrith Raghunathan, a front-of-house engineer who has worked on shows for Hanumankind and R&B artist Mary Ann Alexander.
Roshan Abbas, co-founder of the live storytelling collective Kommune, believes India's shortage of purpose-built venues is a major reason ticket prices remain high.
"Venue scarcity is the real culprit nobody wants to talk about," he says. "We have very few purpose-built spaces that can handle serious production, so organisers are constantly paying workaround costs, and those costs eventually land on the ticket buyer."
Those workaround costs include everything from temporary fencing and portable toilets to additional security arrangements and acoustic modifications needed to convert multipurpose venues into concert spaces.
The industry's rapid expansion has also pushed up costs. As more promoters compete to bring international artists to India, tours increasingly include two or three Indian cities, while demand for large venues has intensified. The Economic Survey 2025-26 notes that the live entertainment industry crossed Rs 100 billion in 2024 as it rebounded after the pandemic, becoming an increasingly significant part of India's creative economy.
That growth has also pushed up ticket prices. Festival passes for Rolling Loud India begin at around Rs 7,000, while weekend passes for Lollapalooza India are priced at nearly Rs 10,000 before premium upgrades. Arena concerts by artists such as Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla typically start between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,500, with premium packages reaching Rs 30,000.
"I decide if a concert is worth it based on how much I relate to the artist, not just how big or popular it is," says Soumadri Bhattacharya, a third-year student at Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru. "Quality comes first and price is secondary."
Even then, students draw clear limits. Those interviewed for this story said they were generally willing to spend between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 on a ticket, stretching to around Rs 10,000 only after carefully considering travel and other expenses. Aarav Shisodia, a student at OP Jindal Global University, says he would spend "around Rs 2,000 at most" for an artist he does not know well, but would stretch to "Rs 7,000 for an artist I really love".
In Bengaluru, where a 2025 estimate by housing platform Stanza Living places a student's monthly budget between Rs 14,000 and Rs 30,000, largely covering rent, food and transport, even attending a single concert can require weeks or months of planning.
Beyond the ticket
For many students, the ticket is only the first expense.
A 2026 Airbnb survey found that six in ten young travellers were willing to set aside between 21% and 40% of their monthly income for concert and festival trips, while a smaller proportion said they would spend more than half.
Travel, accommodation and food often cost far more than admission itself. A case study of Coldplay's Ahmedabad concerts in the government-backed white paper ‘India's Live Events Economy: A Strategic Growth Imperative’ found that audiences spent an additional Rs 585 on travel, food, shopping and other local expenses for every Rs 100 spent on tickets. For a student buying a Rs 2,000 ticket, the overall cost can easily run into five figures.
Those expenses are difficult to justify on a student's budget. Yet many continue to save for concerts because they see them as rare experiences rather than discretionary spending.
The price of a cancellation
If rising costs are one concern, last-minute cancellations have become another.
Students often plan weeks or even months in advance, booking transport and accommodation that may not be refundable. When a concert is called off, ticket refunds rarely cover everything else they have already spent.
Ye's, formerly Kanye West's, much-anticipated Delhi concert, which had already been postponed once because of "geopolitical situations and regional tensions", was eventually cancelled over security concerns.
A similar experience unfolded in Bengaluru last year when the Cigarettes After Sex concert was called off just minutes before it was due to begin, with organisers citing "local production" issues.
"I thought she was pranking us," recalls Ushma Mehrotra, describing the moment she learnt the show had been cancelled after calling a friend to check whether she had reached the venue.
By then, Ushma had already travelled for nearly two hours. Her sister, Urja, had flown from Pune specifically for the concert and skipped an early morning flight home because she was too exhausted to travel back immediately. Although both eventually received ticket refunds, they were left to absorb the costs of transport, accommodation and lost time.
Such incidents have chipped away at audience confidence, according to Roshan Abbas.
"Cancellations are doing real damage to audience trust, and most of them are avoidable," he says.
One of the biggest hurdles is India's fragmented approvals process. Concert organisers often need permissions from multiple authorities, including the police, fire department, municipal bodies, environmental agencies and, in some cases, heritage authorities. Delays or last-minute changes at any stage can derail an event.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting established the Live Events Development Cell in 2025 to streamline approvals through a single-window system on the India Cine Hub portal. But organisers say implementation remains uneven.
"You know how it works in India. Nothing moves," says Mayur Pathre, managing partner at Greenstone Entertainment.
He contrasts India's process with Dubai, where a single department issues licences for public events. In India, he says, organisers often submit applications through the designated single-window system while simultaneously approaching local police stations directly, uncertain whether approvals will reach the relevant officials in time.
For students, these bureaucratic hurdles remain largely invisible until something goes wrong. By then, refunds may cover the ticket, but not the money or effort invested in making the trip.
The reselling gamble
Even before the cheapest tickets sell out, many reappear on social media and messaging groups at double or triple their original price. Students desperate not to miss out often buy them without verifying the seller, leaving them vulnerable to scams.
Surya Abishek, a professor at Mount Carmel College and a self-described "concert geek", says he knows around 13 college students who were cheated while trying to buy tickets for Linkin Park's Bengaluru concert.
Legally, ticket scalping occupies a grey area in India. While there is no dedicated anti-scalping law, authorities can act against resellers under provisions related to cheating and unfair trade practices, particularly when fake tickets are sold or bots are used to corner inventory. In practice, however, enforcement largely targets organised operators rather than individuals reselling a spare ticket.
Students themselves are not always just victims of the resale market. Some admit to buying multiple early-bird or presale tickets, hoping demand will allow them to sell the extras at a profit once shows sell out.
"Who doesn't want easy money these days?" says Dheeraj (name changed), who has started reselling tickets. "But it depends on how you play the market. A small misjudgment can leave you stuck with unsold tickets."
"Obviously we'd sell it at a higher price," says another student, Suhas (name changed), who has previously resold tickets. "I once sold a ticket for twice its value because of the demand. But you're always dealing with the possibility of losses and uncertainty, which is exactly why I don't really prefer doing it."
The scale of India's resale market has become particularly visible for blockbuster concerts. Tickets for Coldplay's Ahmedabad shows, originally priced at around Rs 4,000, were listed online for several lakhs, with some lounge and premium passes advertised at more than 200 times their face value. Travis Scott's Delhi concert followed a similar pattern, with resale prices soaring before eventually crashing closer to the event, leaving sections of the venue visibly empty despite the show being declared sold out.
For students, these inflated prices often place concerts even further out of reach, forcing them to choose between paying far above face value or missing out altogether. But affordability is only one part of the equation.
Fear of missing out
Increasingly, students also describe a social pressure to attend. When the lights come on after a concert, classmates often return to campus divided into two quiet groups: those who were there and those who watched from their phones.
"That's all because of social media, nothing else," says Surya Abishek. "These days, most people at concerts are more focused on recording videos than actually watching the show."
He says some students avoid cheaper seats because they believe the view is not good enough for social media, while others have even asked him to share his videos so they could post them as though they had attended.
For many students, concerts have become shared cultural moments. Missing one often means missing conversations, inside jokes and memories long after the lights go down.
"It saddens me when I miss out on concerts by my favourite artists," says Ansh Kumar Chokhani, a student at BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru. "It feels as if I am missing out on the best time of my life, singing along and cherishing those memories with a live audience I feel I should be part of."
For a few hours, concerts offer an escape from assignments, internships and the uncertainty of what comes after college. That is precisely why so many students continue to save for them despite the financial strain.
Yet India's live music boom has exposed a growing gap between demand and the systems needed to support it. Ticket prices have risen alongside production costs, venues remain scarce, permissions are often unpredictable and the resale market continues to thrive. Students, the audience that fills the cheapest sections and travels the furthest, absorb many of those costs when things go wrong.
Roshan Abbas believes the solutions are straightforward, even if they require long-term investment.
"The fix isn't complicated," he says. "Build mid-size venues. Enforce anti-scalping with real penalties. Fix the permissions infrastructure. And price young audiences deliberately, not as charity but as investment. The 22-year-old you make room for today is the culture-maker you'll be chasing at 32."
With more international artists, including Gorillaz, Guns N' Roses and Fred again.., announcing India shows, the country's live music calendar is only getting busier. Some organisers have begun experimenting with initiatives such as dedicated student passes, acknowledging that young audiences are central to the industry's growth.
This article was written by a student interning with TNM.