As it turns out, when you look at when and how dynamic pricing provokes outrage, you detect some patterns — and a guidebook on getting some of the benefits of economic efficiency without fueling outrage that dooms the entire project.

Musicians taking the long view

The underpricing of popular concert tickets is nothing new. In an earlier era, this was visible in long lines of fans camping out to buy them. Now, the gap between fans’ willingness to pay and the official price drives online ticket marketplaces, and a constant cat-and-mouse game pitting concert promoters against ticket brokers. And Mr. Springsteen’s show is grappling with the same challenge that “Hamilton,” and other hot tickets on Broadway have faced: limited seating, seemingly limitless demand.

Research by the economists Marie Connolly of the University of Quebec and Alan Krueger of Princeton based on a sample of major concerts in 2006 estimated that artists and promoters left about 5 percent of potential income (or around $200 million) on the table by underpricing tickets relative to the market rate.

Some in the music business see this as the height of irrationality. “Most concert tickets are not priced to market,” said Marc Geiger, a leading agent to musicians with WME Entertainment. He described showing an artist that the front-row concert tickets, priced flat at $125, were selling for $900 to $1,300 on the secondary market.

“I say, please, let me take some of those and price them at market,” Mr. Geiger said at the Music Industry Research Association conference in August in Los Angeles. Confoundingly, he said, the same artist might chafe at discounting the back rows of an arena to ensure a sellout, for fear of appearing to give away tickets too cheaply.

“We are still coming out of the era of rock ’n’ roll socialism,” he said. “I think the concert industry is still in a bit of head-in-the-sand economics.”

But given that the apparent underpricing has been so widespread and so persistent, is it possible the strategy is more rational than it seems? That’s what Ms. Connolly and Mr. Krueger argue. For artists, no one show exists in a vacuum. And the things that might maximize revenue for any given night might not be the elements that matter in the longer term in developing devoted fans.