No Refund For Maiden Fans

The disgruntled fans set up a Facebook group and filed a claim to Sweden’s National Board for Consumer Disputes to get a refund.

The consumer watchdog dropped the case Oct. 16 on the grounds that there was no way it could prove whether the sound was good, bad or indifferent.

Live Nation, which promoted the sold-out show at the 50,000-capacity venue, said “sound experience is subjective,” although it did set up an internal investigation with concert staff who worked on the gig.

They concluded that the sound quality was up to scratch but did express regret that some concertgoers didn’t enjoy the show.

“The sound was as always with maiden fine,” Thomas Johansson, LN’s Stockholm-based chairman of international music, told Pollstar.

He said Live Nation had received fewer than 100 complaints.

Apart from setting up the Facebook group, the fans also voiced the displeasure to a sympathetic Swedish media.

“It’s the worst sound I’ve heard in 40 years. I felt that I had been completely duped out of all my money,” one unhappy fan told Sveriges Television.

Mattias Kling, a music critic for leading newspaper Aftonbladet, was also scathing about the quality of the sound in his post-gig review.

“The sound at Friends Arena was deplorable. Really awful in a way that just seemed to get worse the longer the concert went on,” he wrote.