After 149 performances, Taylor Swift has brought the curtain down on her record-breaking Eras Tour. While her shows may be over, the tour's impact on concert culture will long outlive it.

The Eras Tour saw Taylor take the stage for over three hours every night as she performed songs from each of her 10 albums.

Each album "era" was given its own costumes and set design, and when the 34-year-old pop star added an 11th record to the collection in April 2024, the show managed to expand to give The Tortured Poets Department its own moment in the sun as well.

As ambitious as the format was, it made sense given Taylor's near-constant churning out of acclaimed albums. By the time she was able to return to the stage post-pandemic, she had three new albums and two re-recordings that had not yet been toured.

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And without a doubt, Taylor's ambition paid off. After two years on the road, The Eras Tour has become the first tour to gross over $2 billion.

The ticket prices – with Ticketmaster's system pushing them as steep as they could go – were considered worth it for most Swifties, as the chance to see their favorite artist perform hits from her entire discography was truly a can't-miss opportunity.

But now that the tour has come to a close, it's growing clearer and clearer that The Eras Tour has completely changed the game.

While a "greatest hits" tour isn't a new phenomenon, Taylor has undoubtedly redefined what such a concert can be.

Her efforts have raised the bar, inspiring fellow artists like the Jonas Brothers to adopt similar career-spanning tour concepts.

The Eras Tour has also cemented the notion of concerts as a true experience, with Swifties flocking to the stadiums dressed to the nines in 'fits inspired by Taylor herself, exchanging friendship bracelets and taking photos galore.

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It was an unabashed display of passion, allowing fans to connect with one another on new levels.

But as much as The Eras Tour has changed concert culture for the better, the brutal prices instituted by ticket sites – and willingly paid by loyal fans – may have inadvertently turbocharged a troubling trend.

Despite attempts by the US government to rein in Ticketmaster's price gouging, tickets are as expensive as ever.

Artists like Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter, who have both recently embarked on tours of the more traditional 90-minute variety, still saw tickets cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

The Eras Tour tickets should not have been the prices so many Swifties paid in the first place, no matter how worth it the elaborate show may have felt in the end.

And while sky-high service fees (for services that, as in the case of The Eras Tour, often fail) now must be disclosed upfront, these improvements continue to ignore the larger issue: concert tickets are becoming unaffordable.

Earlier this week, Taylor Swift's opening act on The Eras Tour, Gracie Abrams, left fans reeling when they made it through Ticketmaster queues to find that tickets cost at least $200 apiece, with the closer sections costing $400 or even over $600 for VIP packages.

If there were any left by the time they reached the end of the hour-long queue, that is.

"Concerts aren't worth it anymore. Ticketmaster ruined them," one fan wrote on X. "Having to go [into] debt to get decent seats is not what it's about. I used to pay $200 for VIP and that was considered splurging. Now it's $200 for crap seats."

"It's not a fun experience anymore when you have to go broke."