The American rock band Aerosmith cancelled their Shanghai concert three days before their scheduled appearance at Hongkou Football Stadium Wednesday.

The ticket agent, Damai.cn, published a cancellation notice released by the local show organizers on its booking website. It said the show had to be cancelled due to "an urgent cause," but did not elaborate.

The band announced the cancellation on its website late Sunday night, along with the cancellation of its Taipei show, which had been scheduled for Saturday. The band said the show was cancelled because the local promoter could not meet its contractual obligations.

The local organizers, the Taiwan-based Very Aspect Culture Group, had not issued any notice about the cancellations on its website or microblog as of Monday evening. Very Aspect Culture Group and the show's other organizer, SCEA, could not be reached for comment Monday.

A hotline employee from Damai.cn said that ticket holders could get refunds by sending their tickets to the agent's office on Ninghai Road East by August 31 or by going to the ticket office at Hongkou Football Stadium on August 21.

Music critic Sun Mengjin broke the news about the cancellation on his microblog Saturday. Sun said the show got cancelled because the organizer drove up the band's performance fee to $2.5 million. Furthermore, only 5,000 of the 30,000 available tickets had been sold and most of those were cheap seats.

Sun said that Very Aspect cancelled the show to cut its losses.

According to piao.com.cn, ticket prices ranged from 280 yuan ($45.70) to 2,680 yuan, or $437.69.  Tickets for the band's show scheduled at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 30 cost from $41.75 to $121, according to ticketmaster.com, the US ticket agent.

Milwaukee is the band's next scheduled concert. Tickets are still available.

A fan named rhox commented on Damai.cn that he bought two tickets to the Aerosmith show in Shanghai, two round-trip bullet train tickets from Beijing and booked hotel reservations at full-price. He wondered in his post who would compensate him for the loss.

The Damai.cn employee said there were no plans to offer extra compensation to out-of-town ticket holders.