What’s that “limited edition present”? When I went to see FBZ a few months ago, they had one of those and it turned out to be a 78 RPM LP! And there have been VK bands that go abroad and release live-distributeds in a foreign country (ALSDEAD comes to mind). Ticket prices are steep and I can’t go anyway, but I am curious about the details of the package.
Also, while these tickets aren’t the most expensive ones I’ve seen, they certainly aren’t cheap. Middle of the pack for certain. I hope they bring good merch.
Isn’t that always a question of perspectiv? How much do you like the band, how likely is it for you to be able to see them elsewhere (Japan), how much money are you able to spend on leisure?
If they are your favorites and you have spare money it surely will feel less expensive.
That price is probably the only way it’s happening for the organizer. Delkimorph’s got a point about the merch, but I think the organizer isn’t getting a cut off of that + it’s going to be a limited amount of stuff they can sell since it most likely has to be manufactured in Europe.
There’s no way there’ll be non-weeb walk-ins with those prices. The Polish gig is around 35 euros, which is fine, but they’re basically charging double of what anyone else who’d perform in that venue would. If I’m around I’ll probably go for the Polish gig, but absolutely not for the 50 pound (!!), 45 euro shows.
That has only added to the absurdity. Haha. I am now legitimately concerned as to how successful this tour is going to be for them… I know they are growing in popularity but they are still a pretty niche band who probably arent that well known anywhere besides Japan and ticket prices that high putting a lot of people off going who do know them and would have liked to see them makes me wonder how well attendance is going to be… Im not too bothered as have seen them before and will probably see them in future jaunts to Japan but imagine for people who do love them who have never gone and probably wont go to Japan maybe will fork out but other than that i don’t see whos paying those prices.
Just a guess on my side but that might not just be about them.
I guess they do need to come up with these prices because they can’t afford less. Failure won’t get them back on a world tour most likely. And I wonder what about other bands, if these might keep an eye on how that turns out as well for possible own plans …
This might be a take, but I don’t think the pricing will affect the attendance too much –– for Jiluka fans it’s still way cheaper than flying to Japan, and we haven’t had “real” vk bands since COVID. It’ll only eliminate a handful of people on the fence, for whom the ticket price would have to be slashed beyond the breaking point anyway, and random walk-ins.
Visual kei bands outprice themselves, because other than a few exceptions, they’re expecting to be treated like stars both here and in Japan, where gigs from a western standpoint are expensive also (charging more than 20 euros for a local band in most places in Europe is considered absurd). Unlike when Japanese artists from other genres come to Europe, Jiluka isn’t crashing on anyone’s couch, and demand a decent enough hotel accomodation along with more nutritional variety than a bag of crisps and a heineken. tl;dr it is expensive, it probably won’t matter, and we’ll see how dead vk still is 2024 now that we actually got a real young band coming with some hype.
It seems like the VIP additions seem to have gone quickly in a few cities. Now, some of those went to scalpers, but still…
I can’t speak for Europe specifically, but concert ticket prices have been rising in North America too. £45 might be steep, and casuals who pay for a standard ticket may come away from the experience feeling that it was lacking (assuming that Jiluka don’t secure any openers, play for 70~ minutes and then do VIP). Would the price put them off in the first place? Depends on the rest of their finances, I guess.
If they earn more fans, it will definitely be at the Spain and Portugal festival dates.
£45? It’s closer to 60 for the London date… haha. But yeah youre right, is the same here gig prices have definitely been going up. However, there are a lot of high profile bands playing London who are much bigger, more mainstream and some are playing bigger venues who arent charging close to that. Wednesday 13 for example is playing in November and tickets for that are 20 + fees which makes it more like £30 total and thats at the electric ballroom which is WAY bigger than the Underworld and costwise, coming from America cant be cheap either but the prices are being kept as reasonable as possible. I dont buy the above post about “needing luxuries as they expect to be treated like stars” making their costs higher, if that’s the case don’t go on tour as it’s rarely a luxurious situation even at higher levels (unless you are Led Zeppelin and each member can have their own bus) so think if a band is going to tour they need to be prepared to do what they can to be as comfortable as possible without being divas about it and besides they are NOT stars here. I mean even in the live scene here in the UK for extreme metal at least, bands are paid different depending on the city and the demand for them there, a hometown show for example will probably be a bigger payday as you are already established there but going to a city youve never played you cant expect to be paid as much or expect a slot that high as you are virtually unknown there which I feel except for to a select few Jiluka are not well known in the UK at least so that price is ridiculous until they are established here and it is GUARANTEED they will draw in enough people to be able to push for that ticket price. Any way I look at this I cannot see that price being justified and just feel like this isnt going to work for them, i hope im proved wrong.
Going back to other upcoming gigs in London of higher profile bands… I know its not the be all end all of stats but have checked fb events pages for several of these shows in London which are showing hundreds of interactions of people interested in the event. I know its also early as this hasnt been announced and such for that long but last i checked Jilukas engagement is less than 40 people… Maybe it’ll go up and i really wish them success with this tour but honestly feel that their management the promoters are potentially shooting themselves in the foot with that pricing. When i saw they were coming I was hyped and had no doubt at all id go until seeing the price of the tickets… haha. So am sure for other people, especially those who are not as invested in the band or VK in general will also be put off by this. You do also have to keep in mind that a gig is not just ticket price and thats it, people got to pay for travel, hotels, fuel, food, beers, merch or whatever on the day of the event so it is worth keeping all this in mind as well before committing going to a gig. I am 100% the band themselves have no say in the ticket pricing and such so arent blaming them at all, just feel they are being managed fairly poorly in this instance.
I think their mistake was booking venues that hold 500 people. I think that they probably didn’t need venues that hold more than 150 to 200 people. If they’d gone for smaller venues the rental rates would have been so so much cheaper. I might be underestimating them but I can’t imagine that they’re going to sell out 500 capacity venues even in places like London or Paris.
I think a lot of bands and promoters mistake high attendance at conventions for what they could pull at a one man but even XaaXaa had huuuge attendance at Katsucon and I don’t think they could fill a venue with 100 people if they just had a solo show in europe. This is especially true when talking about concerts where they’re part of general admission of the convention and not tickets sold separately but even if the tickets are sold separately they’re super cheap so lots of convention goers will go for the hell of it but would never go to a solo show.
I think Jiluka would have been fine with 100 capacity bars in most places maybe even less.
I suppose we’ll have to see. Honestly, Jiluka aren’t even that big of a deal in Japan either. I saw them opening a birthday Taiban just less than a year ago. They can do the occasional one-man, but they definitely aren’t big enough to do them exclusively.
I’m not sure if they might be hitting above their weight due to the impressions that they’re getting off of online hype from foreigners vs Japanese fans. Online hype helps, but it isn’t necessarily correlated with tour success.
Was a fair while ago when i saw them too at New Side Beach which isn’t a huge venue and despite having decent attendance that was far from packed so yeah good point. I feel like the above post is pretty accurate too, think smaller venues would have been more suitable for them for sure.
There’s probably a balance the band is trying to strike. Going on overseas tours cost a certain amount of money to start. Going to venues that fit only 100-200 people might sell out all the tickets, but it might not be enough to make back their investment. Shooting for a bigger venue, say 500 people, might make sense if they did the math and need only half attendance or so to break even. There’s also the possibility that no smaller venues were available to play on such a short schedule. Lots of factors could have gone into their decision making so I just have to trust the band did their research and has a good feeling this could work out.
I’'m not the biggest JILUKA fan, but I’m paying 100 Euro for the train and 100 Euro for the hotel, so it really doesn’t matter that much at all if I’m paying 20, or 50 Euro for the ticket haha
If you put 999 tickets into your basket on me-shop (the German ticket seller), it says you can order max. 7 VIP tickets (so I think there were about 20-30) and there are 79 early entrance tickets left (it was close to 100 on Saturday, so I assume it was 100). There are only 20 normal tickets left, but they’re also on eventim, so that might just be the hard tickets from me-shop.
So you’re telling me that a very niche band is traveling close to the edge of the world in a brave attempt to keep their dreams alive and present their art to fans that would never have the possibility to travel to Japan for a weird one man they’ll hold in the weirdest dates ever (I’m pointing to the winter dates where no one that works could get the time off) and people complain about the ticket prices? Woah, tell me again how vk is dead pls.
I don’t want to sound snobbish, but these ticket prices are laughable. Either inflation has made me completely insensible but 100 euros is literally nothing. I live in a literal Eastern European hellhole where roughly 600 euros is considered a good wage and above median and could still save in order to see my dream band.
I think there will be plenty of fans that would be of the same thought as me and manage to get and see them regardless of their financial situation.
That being said, the best value for the money is to see their set at Resurrection Fest in Portugal. You get like a lot of top western acts and niche small bands for the same ticket as one concert.
Happy to see I am not the only one who was a bit bewildered by all the complaints here. Vk can be quite an expensive hobby, so I think if people really wanna see them, they will find a way. (Buy one limited edition of a DVD less or something).
Prices are surely to high for walk ins but they probably aimed for western vk and metal fans who do know them already and with their festival attendens the can hope to get a little addional boost of popularity.
While I agree that these venues are way too big and definitely higher capacity than what they usually play in Japan, and the prices are higher than reasonable (although I’m basing this on my personal perspective from a weakened yen) everything about the oneman portion of the European leg was booked and decided by Kinetic Vibe, the Italian promoters.
I had a talk to their manager and they didn’t even know how much tickets were. Same happened last year for the anime con, they were pretty shocked when we told them how much it was in JPY. They have not much say in it and I assume that because the promoters likely won’t be able to take a substantial merch cut they’re making it up with the ticket prices. And I suspect that also played a part in negotiating which countries they’d perform at as well.
They were also warned that if it doesn’t sell well it will be cancelled, so the pressure is on for them.