Indeed this I do not understand, nor do I understand why bands sell tickets so cheaply when they can be resold by touts outside the door for many times that price.
Kid Rock is tired of scalpers taking tickets away from his biggest fans.
One way to stop that: Raise ticket prices. If Kid Rock charged more for his tickets, scalpers wouldn't be able to sell them at such a big markup.
But Kid Rock doesn't want to raise prices.
"I don't want to break you by coming to see me, " he says. "I want to make as much money as I can, but I don't need to drive around in a tinted down Rolls-Royce or Maybach and hide from people because I felt like I ripped them off."
That interview was a great summary of what's going on in the industry. Kid Rock realizes that keeping his die-hard fans happy works out better for him on the tour circuit, since they'll spend more on t-shirts and other things while they're at the show. If they have to pay $400 for a ticket, there's no budget left for a high-margin souvenir.
It's the internet age as well and he realizes that. The moment he tries to charge a market price for every ticket, he starts eroding his fan base.
I'll leave inviting the Market Economics Fairy here to Eliezer; I just want to point out, that he won't "break you by coming to him", you just won't come. Instead, someone richer, who can afford the ticket without breaking, will come.
EDIT:
The real ideas of Kid are described not in the quote but in the rest of article; it's worth taking a look at.
Because people aren't generally motivated purely by money? Surely it's not hard to imagine why a band, once they're making enough money, might also want to consider factors like letting in the people who love them the most, regardless of whether they happen to be loaded?
Surely it wouldn't surprise you, for example, if someone accepted a lower salary for a job that they enjoyed more than a better paying job?
The demand doesn't scale, this is a fashion market where new restaurants are in incredible demand until ... the next hot new restaurant gets it's day in the sun.
Sure, that's one kind of restaurant. I've never heard of anyone trying to get a reservation there, though, and I'm pretty sure there's a direct relationship between the lack of demand for reservations, and the restaurant's ability to scale.
If they only had one restaurant, over 99 billion wouldn't have been served, and a good fraction of them would probably be on the waitlist for a reservation.
If they only had one restaurant because they were incapable of scaling, then perhaps people would get reservations there.... ...but that is not the sort of restaurant they are. They are a restaurant that can scale, and if they only had a single location despite that, they would not have a waitlist.
Or to put it more crudely: If your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle.
I doubt it; I doubt many would do that at all. In some situations corporate fast-food joints do take reservations (White Castle on Valentine's Day evening is the only example I can think of at the moment) but in those situations they are cashing in on people considering it a novelty. The novelty drives demand to levels that it otherwise never achieves.
If there were only a single Chipotle in NYC, there would almost certainly not be enough demand to require a reservation system (and if they used one anyway, their business would surely suffer). Perhaps you would be willing to call in a reservation for Chipotle, but one person calling in reservations for fast-food isn't going to sustain a business.
Sorry. Restaurants serving food fit for human consumption don't scale.
You essentially need a completely new staff--including a completely new creative staff. This is important, and a large part of why most chefs who own multiple restaurants generally have fairly diverse properties that present different menus. But diversification still requires wheelbarrows of money; "the fastest way to make half a million dollars is to start a restaurant with a million" probably applies even more acutely to opening more than one.