It’s 2025. We’re in year three (maybe four? Time isn’t real anymore) of constantly increasing ticket prices and, by extension, ticket price discourse. I’ll be the first to say it — “just go to smaller shows” is actually a terrible answer to the incredibly rational reaction to a standard arena nosebleed ticket costing $100. That’s an entire larger discussion that would probably get me put on some kind of list, so we’ll tackle that later. What I’m here to tell you is that if you like live music, you absolutely should be going to house (see also: basement, dive bar, insert small noun here) shows.

“It’s just economical”

I know, I know, the last thing a true arena concert goer wants to hear is “instead of dropping $500 on one Lady Gaga floor ticket, you could go to like 35 house shows” — and it’s honestly insulting to think the experience is even remotely the same. It’s not, we know this. In this economy, though? Living off ramen so you can score those sweet floor seats only goes so far, and concert fans have to make some choices right now. Where you may have made it to four or five arena shows in previous years, you now have to pick a precious one or two. So what’s a gal to do when you still have the itch for live music but also have approximately $35 in your checking account?

✨House Shows✨

Let’s take a moment to actually define a house show — for our purposes, a house is not always an actual house, but more of a vibe. Growing up, it was my hometown’s VFW hall. In college, it was the basement of one of the campus dorms or one of the more jam band-y frat houses. Now, it’s most often a church basement in the suburbs of Connecticut. For you, it could be a dive bar, a Taco Bell parking lot (I’m not actually sure Ohio is a real place), or that old rec center in the middle of town. What really matters is that the tickets are usually sub-$20, the highest billed band has maybe 20k monthly Spotify listeners, and there’s almost always a guy slinging sodas and low-quality cans of beer directly out of an Igloo cooler. Most marketing is done via Instagram story shares or word of mouth — especially if you’ve found yourself in a coveted “dm for address” (see also: literally a house) situation — and there’s a solid chance you’ll be introduced to the showrunner at some point during the night.

For the uninitiated, the vibes are decidedly different from a show at a, shall we say, more structured venue. My best advice? Leave your cares at the door. Maybe they’ll start on time. Maybe all of the billed bands will be there. Maybe the physical stage is just a collection of rugs loosely placed in the shape of where a raised stage would normally be. Maybe the drop ceiling looks like it’s suspiciously close to crumbling the second the first moderately tall guy tries to crowd surf.

Feeling stressed because you didn’t familiarize yourself with the setlist ahead of time? Don’t even worry about it. You’ve got a 50/50 shot at finding the undercard on streaming among a sea of other similarly-named bands, and if you do, they’ve probably got 6 songs up. None of this matters, because whoever is going on next is about to absolutely rip. Worst case, maybe they didn’t actually rip (they’re working on it, give them time), but there are much worse ways to spend $20.

Take it from me – take the free stickers, buy the merch if it speaks to you, and follow those local bands on their socials so you know where they’ll be next week. And hey, maybe one day 5 years from now you’ll get to boast to your friends about how you saw that band in a room with 25 other people before they blew up. Or maybe they didn’t. I bet you still had fun though.