Nah this is some whack advice. I go to plenty of shows, small little ones that have 20-50 people or giant stadium tours.
If something is prohibitively expensive and you can’t afford it then that’s different. But going and seeing some of your favorite bands is a memorable experience and usually a social one as well.
Like when Radiohead played my city in 2018 that was the first time they played here since like 1996 or something. I doubt they will again within the next decade. I’m supposed to just go “I don’t like ticket sales practices so I’m gonna miss this opportunity all together”?
I guess if you want to feel special for going to local shows to “stick it to Ticketmaster” go ahead, but that’s a far different experience then seeing big acts. Ticketmaster is not even going to notice that you skipped a concert because you don’t like them. People aren’t going to every concert under the sun, only the bands they like. How well ticket sales do is going to be determined by how popular the band is. That’s all they’ll be considering when they look at sales vs venue vs marketing, etc.
Scalpers are another thing all together. I’ve never purchased one from them. If a show sells out, it sells out and becomes not worth it to me 9 times out of 10.
My friends book a lot of small DIY shows. The kind you pay like $5-20 at the door in cash. They’re usually very niche or underground artists. It’s just a fundamentally different experience.
If a band has any sort of notoriety and it’s at a medium sized venue the concert is almost always being booked by Ticketmaster or livenation anyway.
Like the illegal sports streams? Ehh. I use them to watch games I can’t get over (free) OTA antenna TV. They very frequently cut out and freeze, or get shut down all together and you have to go hunt for a new one. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and can be very annoying when the broadcast is live. I still put up with it because I can’t be assed to pay to watch sports lol.
I wouldn’t bother with a VPN for simply visiting a website and watching a stream. If anything that will make your connection worse, and a lot of those sites detect when you have a VPN active and won’t let you stream.
I highly recommend an antenna TV for picking up local channels if you’re in the states though. I get a few dozen channels, including the major broadcast ones like CBS NBC abc fox, all in HD for free off the air. I actually built one with my dad close to 20 years ago using scrap copper wire, a plank of wood, some PVC pipe to hold the wire, and a coax adapter we got at RadioShack at the mall. You can just buy an antenna on the cheap though if you’d rather not build one.