“Disillusioned” Bruce Springsteen fanzine ‘Backstreets’ shuts down after 43 years
The Bruce Springsteen fanzine, Backstreets, is set to cease publication after 43 years. The periodic magazine has been covering Springsteen’s activities with the E Street Band since the 1980s. Sadly a growing disillusionment with the musician’s dynamic pricing system and soaring ticket prices had led to what the creators of the fanzine have referred to as a fan “freeze out”.
Fans were asked to pay up to $5,000 (£4,152) for tickets to Springsteen’s 2023 world tour dates. The gargantuan price hike was due to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model, which allows the seller to charge more for tickets when they first go on sale.
The model responds to demand and subsequently increases or decreases prices to reflect what a person re-selling a ticket for profit would sell them for. The money is then split between the seller and the artist. It’s proved incredibly unpopular with fans, with publisher and editor-in-chief of Backstreet, Christopher Williams, deciding to shut up shop after 43 years of writing about Springsteen.
Phillips announced the closure in a recent editorial: “After 43 years of publishing in one form or another, by fans for fans of Bruce Springsteen, it’s with mixed emotions that we announce Backstreets has reached the end of the road,” he began. “We are immensely proud of the work Backstreets has done, and we are forever grateful to the worldwide community of fellow fans who have contributed to and supported our efforts all these years, but we know our time has come.”
Explaining the motivation behind the decision, Phillips continued: “If you read the editorial Backstreets published last summer in the aftermath of the U.S. ticket sales, you have a sense of where our heads and hearts have been: dispirited, downhearted, and, yes, disillusioned. It’s not a feeling we’re at all accustomed to while anticipating a new Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tour…”
The editor-in-chief concluded: “There’s no denying that the new ticket price range has in and of itself been a determining factor in our outlook as the 2023 tour approached — certainly in terms of the experience that hardcore fans have been accustomed to for, as Springsteen noted, 49 years. Six months after the on-sales, we still faced this three-part predicament: These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.”
Springsteen has previously defended the dynamic pricing model, alienating many fans. “I know it was unpopular with some fans”. In an interview for Rolling Stone, the Boss said that he decided to use the model because it’s “what everybody else is doing”.
Adding: “This time I told them, ‘Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.’ So that’s what happened.”
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