Concert photography is a fun gig, yet super niche. Musicians and performers love being photographed and getting those wowing images. Or having a photographer close to them to shoot album covers and social media marketing. But many do not understand the pricing for such photography services.
So for me as a photographer my unique understanding of concert photography is that performers will like a handful of images and will use them but not every image you take or even the photographers personal favorites. So the pricing is more representative of time and then cost of the images.
I personally charge a shoot fee, so by the hour is $75. Which I may only shoot for an hour at most so it is relatively inexpensive unless travel fees are added in. The bulk of my costs comes from the images I sell them for $45 an image with a two year marketing contract on them. I do this because performers typically only purchases 2-5 images from an entire concert.
Concert photography usually ends up being couple hundred to thousand plus images and then a day or so of editing before product delivery. It’s a lot of work for performers to choose 2-5 images which accounts for the price.
Concert photography is rewarding and challenging but like the performers photographers put a lot into it. We build connections with performers and hope to follow their careers, hope they make it so our work can also see a bigger stage. At any rate the cost is what we need to make the hours and travel and splitting headaches from loud music worth it. Try not to ask for freebies and support us like we support you.