There is nothing better than attending your favorite band or artist’s concert. There’s nothing quite like the energy in a sold-out venue or the excitement of hearing your favorite songs played live.

But what once was a fun and thrilling way to spend an evening has now been turned into an expensive endeavor.

The prices of concert tickets are outrageous nowadays. Depending on the artist or band, the venue and the section fans choose to sit in, concert goers can end up paying an arm and a leg for tickets.

In fact, according to an ABC News article, at the beginning of the year the average price of a concert ticket had risen 4.2 percent since 2012, becoming on average $46.69 per ticket.

Ticket prices were so high this summer that Forbes released a list of the most expensive summer concerts. If fans wanted to see Beyoncé, One Direction, Taylor Swift or Pink they had to shell out quite a bit of money to do so.

One Direction topped the list, their average ticket price being $674.23. Just imagine how many hours of chores tweens had to do to cough up $674.23 for a single ticket.

According to the article, “Three of One Direction’s shows have an average price of over $1,000 and nine have an average price above $750”.  Needless to say, the British boy band made a killing off of parents who spoiled their children this summer.

As far as U.S. concerts go, Beyoncé had the most expensive ticket prices, the average ticket costing $358.97. Compared to One Direction, the price doesn’t seem so steep, but it was still way too much money for an evening with Mrs. Carter.

It seems like the days of attending your favorite artist and band’s concerts are a thing of the past.

Even if you aren’t shelling out $600 per ticket, you still have to pay at least $100 to get decent seats. When it comes to artists like Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Drake, concert goers are lucky if they can even afford any type of ticket at all.

Honestly though, we can only really blame ourselves for the high cost of concert tickets. With the ability to illegally download music, not as many people are buying albums anymore. This, believe it or not, actually does hurt the music industry.

According to the Rolling Stones, “At the end of July, U.S. albums sold just 4.68 million copies, the lowest weekly total since Nielsen SoundScan began keeping track in 1991, and for the first time ever, labels sold fewer than 5 million albums in each of five straight weeks.”

Because of these low sales, artists and record labels had to raise the price of their tickets in order to make up for the loss. And how can we really blame them?

If you think about it, it really is a great business strategy. Labels and artists can now make a killing from just one sold out show, let alone a tour full of them.

With the increase in prices, the only solution for concert goers is to pick and choose which concerts they attend and save up the money to get awesome seats. After all, a night with your favorite artist can be well worth the money.