RaikuFA said:
Could I ask what is the point of them? You're paying a minimum of $50 to $500 for one night of music that you can hear at home for $10. That seems like a rip off to me.
If that's your experience with concerts, I'm afraid you've been going to the wrong ones. Concerts come in a few different flavors. One flavor is the dancing and visual effect extrrrrrrrravaganza, such as Beyoncé or Lady Gaga.
There's dancing and choreography that you'll get neither from the music alone nor even the music video. Plus, many live arrangements are different from the album arrangements. This version of End of Time made for concert openings is very different from the album version.
Another flavor of concert is the "getting to know the band" concert. Bands often don't have the kind of intense choreography that solo performers have, but what they do have is a dynamic within themselves. They talk and riff on each other between songs, they do special things to interact with the audience, and like the other flavor give different arrangements of songs tailored to take advantage of the fact that they've got an audience to play off of (such as encouraging them to sing along and letting the music taper off at the end, just leaving the audience singing together).
Another flavor is basically like the last one, but specifically bands in smaller venues like bars and clubs. These bands can even more closely interact with the audience by taking requests and talking directly to them without having to bring them up on stage or whatever.
All the flavors of concerts have one thing in common: they take whatever type of music the artist performs and puts it in its ideal environment, or fully realizing it. Beyoncé's music is great, but paired up with her dancing and the deafening boom that concert speakers can produce with the energy of a stadium full of people rely drives home the passion and fun of her music. Enter the Haggis on the other hand, which is a Celtic rock band that specializes in modernized folk tunes, airs with bagpipes and fiddles, and drinking songs is best enjoyed in a bar or pub, with a nice beer in your hand and an audience intimate enough to belt out their favorites arm in arm.
Plus, as you can see at the end there, concerts are a chance for the instrumentalists to just let loose and really savor the performance and the sound of the music.