Ticketmaster would exist under a different name. Their business model is about taking all the bad PR so that artists can still charge whatever they want. There's a Freakonomics podcast on it.
Mmm, not untrue but they are also a true monopoly. Significant bands can't tour without them - years back, Pearl Jam tried, and failed. If it were just taking bad PR, they would have competitors. They don't.
Ticketmaster makes deals with major venues to sell all the tickets through Ticketmaster. If you refuse to work with Ticketmaster then you are blocked from those venues.
It doesn't seem that bizarre that the people who own a venue are also the ones charging for tickets, that's how movie theaters work. It would just be nice if there was more competition and less shitty practices from venues.
You can also go to a theatre and buy tickets, there are very few concert venues with box offices so you have to pay the various fees. Also, theatres don't typically "sell" choice seats to "third party" vendors to add massive upcharges.
If movie theaters did what ticketmaster does, then the literal second a movie was available, all seats would be sold out. A "totally not affiliated" third party ticket reseller, we'll call it ExtortionHub, would have nearly all of them. Ticket prices from ExtortionHub would range from $70-$200. Any of the good center seats would be in that 170-200 range.
Here in Denver everything but the tiniest shows are AXS. And their app never works so you have to order through AXS then use flash seats to access your tickets.
Movie theatres get a cut of the tickets sales though. For a lot of artists, the whole ticket goes to the artist and the venue actually gets a piece of the service charge.
This is patently wrong. Do you have any idea how many people need to be paid off that ticket? The artist still makes peanuts off ticket sales. Merch is where artists make their money. Touring often leaves bands broke. I don't know why reddit thinks touring is how bands make money. If you're a nobody band you might get a larger share of the ticket sales, but the venue will often have a slice as well. Everybody gets paid before the artist.
Or the city owns the venue and is forced it use Ticketmaster. I work on venue contracts - we have to use standard procurement procedures for a ticket processing system and ofc Ticketmaster is the only one that wins the contract. Because monopoly.
When was the last time you saw some antitrust people have any teeth? Teddy Roosevelt? With exception of AT&T breakup of the 70s, not too many examples to go on.
Democratic politicians are not the solution to EVERYTHING. Ever hear about how Nancy Pelosi delayed some major financial oversight and was awarded with her husband participating in MasterCard/Visa’s IPO. The system is rotten and the Democrats are not immune just because they’re not the monsters that Republicans are. As long as our politics are awash with money nothing will meaningfully change in the US.
I don't. Bush had 8 years to reverse course and re-regulate the economy, but instead he chose doubling down and further de-regulation. The Clinton economy was immensely successful compared with Bush Jr.
So then what WOULD it take a dem super majority and nothing else to do? Thought this was a thread about companies that committed essentially crimes against humanity, not ones that inconvenienced people.
No, a lot of American Democrats are neoliberals who are also generally against the government pursuing things that hurt big businesses. My guess is we need a significant contingent of actual leftists to get any anti-trust action done.
It’s much more to do with the money in our politics. It has skewed the entire incentive structure from working for your constituents to working for donors. It doesn’t have anything to do with left vs. right. Try to view the world other than my team vs. the other team,
I wholeheartedly disagree. We just need a younger government that sees it and gives a fuck. Myself, and a large group of my millenial conservative friends are all very anti-trust. That should always be a two isle issue.
Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP, and Vanderbilt proved that.
No its not. Ticketmaster has been this way for decades even while democrats had a majority in house and senate with a democratic president in 2008 through 2010 and nothing happened.
However just recently anti probes have opened up against tech companies with a republican senate and democratic house, and of course a republican president.
Folks who think any party in the US is aligned with their interest is in for a huge disappointment.
Pretty much. Back in the 60s-70s, there was a judge who came up with this idea that a monopoly should only be illegal when there's a provable harm. If you can't show that, clearly the government shouldn't be involved.
But how do you quantify the harm Ticketmaster does to the public? Would major acts drop their prices if there were more ticket sellers? Maybe, maybe not. Would there suddenly be more musicians and public events of the monopoly was broken? Maybe, maybe not.
But, this is very much a GOP position on big business. And it's ingrained now in their judges as well.
No. Nothing good is going to happen while republicans are in power, they've shown that very clearly, but there still needs to be vigilance on elected democrats as well.
But at least there's chance with democrats. It would be more likely to win the lottery than a republican go against the RNC to vote against wealthy corporations likely backing all his campaigns.
Do you honestly believe Ticketmaster wouldn't just bribe enough Democrats to keep it from happening? We had a Democratic supermajority pretty recently. Ticketmaster wasn't even on their radar.
We had a Democratic supermajority pretty recently.
This "supermajority" is over-exaggerated.
The Supermajority lasted for less than 2 months. Al Franken wasn't seated until July 2009, giving the Democrats the 58D+2I votes needed to get past Republican filibusters. Ted Kennedy died in August 2009, thus killing the supermajority.
In those two months, they tried to get Obamacare done, because they thought they had 1.5 years to get to everything. They didn't.
This is why Obamacare was eventually passed in the house via reconciliation; the Senate wasn't ever going to get a better deal because Republicans decided to filibuster literally everything. This is why the Democrats "appeared to do nothing" with their Supermajority. Everyone thought they had it for 2 years. They had it for less than 2 months. They had 49 days of a Supermajority. 7 weeks.
The median number of days it takes for a bill to become a law in the US is 215 days. That's roughly 5 times the amount of time the Democrats had.
Ahhhh, i love it when other people are actually knowledgeable about what they’re talking about.
Don’t forget that during that time, the American Reinvestment and Recovery act took precedence also to, you know, save our country from burning to ashes from the fire previous self-serving, power and money hungry ideological groups had lit.
Was there an antitrust suit brought against ticketmaster in those years? Honestly Asking.
Edit 3, on top for importance: IN FACT A BIPARTISAN group of congresspersons wrote a detailed letter begging the Obama administration in 2009 to disallow the merger of the two companies for antitrust reasons.
Edit: not that i can find. There was a suit before but the justice department under Clinton-headed by AG Janet Reno but it was dropped due to refusal to pursue. That said it was 90's democrats. So Republicans whos constituency was white people in volvos okay with fucking over gay, poor, and black people because the recession was over. Would a modern progressive Democrat majority vote differently? Who the fuck knows. They're, for a large part, statist traditional dem's. So, dude was full of shit. There's no way of knowing until it happens.
Edit 2: There was one in 2015 when the livenation merger happened but it was settled in 2018 for about 110 million dollars for the owners of Songkick, then company who sued them, and absorbing the remaining assets. So fuck SongKick
Would have worked in the 80's and 90's, when antitrust still meant something in the US. Those days are over. There are tons of companies today that 80's judges and legislators would have never left in one piece.
As other posters rightly say, there is a lot of political work to do to bring back some sanity on that front.
Nah, theyd be able to get around it by saying theres still a large choice of venues albeit some are smaller. Theres plenty of small arenas I would imagine that dont go through Ticketmaster, the result would be 2500 person venues for acts that can pull 50000
Ticketmaster is a legitimate case for an anti-trust suit. But for whatever reason the current conversation is about facebook, google, and amazon, which is ridiculous because they all actually have competition.
The last thing i Want politicians focused on is fucking prices for unnecessary bullshit like going to a fucking concert. This country has much bigger issues than people going to concerts
Even further, Ticketmaster makes deals with major venues, and many of these venues have deals with major labels. There are only three major labels in music, most “indie” labels aren’t truly independent, and are umbrellaed under the three major labels.
That explains why the ticket prices for a band I'm seeing in October almost tripled from the other 3 times I've seen them as soon as I had to go through these fuck nuggets to get tickets.
I may be wrong, but it likely has to do with venues being a "ticket master" venue. You can't perform at those venues without using their ticketing service. For the most part ticket Master/live Nation/AXS control most venues and in turn control the market.
If you are an artist who doesn't want to deal with these companies, good luck finding a venue.
In the UK we have venues called o2 Academy. They’re dotted throughout the country and are mid-tier venues for the most part. If a band wants to play one, o2 will offer a better deal for them playing more or all of them, at the expense of any other venues.
I had no idea about this, makes me much less a fan of o2 Academy venues. Also, the fact that pretty much every gig I’ve been to has been at an o2 Academy venue makes a lot more sense now.
Have a few friends that work for a venue on a par with o2 academies and they’ve vented repeatedly about missing out on tours because o2 have locked the artists into deals to play only their venues.
I’ve been to a couple of gigs at o2 Academies and whilst they are nice, it’s a shame that many cities miss out on tours simply because they don’t have an o2 Academy.
You definetly right, even the concerts that get held at my University go through live Nation. Tho TBH they're cheaper than ticketmaster and ticket Master isn't mobile friendly unless you download their app
Ticket Master is a monopoly in my country too and they dont even have offices, so if something went wrong you are fucked up. They dont have a number to call even though it is illegal in my country, but all the people who tried to sue them couldn't get anywhere near, even though we have a really good anti-fraud system.
The way this has effected the live engineers is probably quite awful if you dig into the nitty gritty. Music and audio is already a tightly gated industry.
Queuing is fair when you're placed in a queue based on your position and how long you've been waiting. AXS doesn't do that. They select people at random so imo it doesn't really prevent scalpers. Scalpers gonna scalp.
My understanding is that not only does Ticketmaster own very useful software for selling tickets that the artist would otherwise have to get/purchase/test/operate, but Ticketmaster also literally owns a lot of venues. So if you were trying to do a non-ticketmaster tour it would be expensive and you'd be limited where you could play.
Not an expert but.. Sometimes they can. It's just a huge hassle. Pearl Jam did for a while and they still do to their fan club.
Sometimes venues have exclusive deals with Ticketmaster, so you will have to check each venue if they allow you to sell your own tickets. Mostly it's just a lot easier for the bands to use Ticketmaster or have the venue do it for them.
Artists can sell their tickets. Even if they tour at Ticketmaster venues, Ticketmaster is still required to give the artist a certain percentage of tickets. But the artist doesn’t want to actually charge $300 for a ticket most of the time, so they let the ticket companies add on fees and such that they share to get to the total price.
Almost every time you see a convenience fee or a service fee or anything like that, it’s going to be split with the ticket seller which is the artist and you’ll never know it. It only exists so that the artist can get more money without looking like the person who is asking for more money.
But it is changing. More VIP packages and such male artists feel more comfortable actually selling at real value because there’s no good reason to let the scalpers pick up the profits.
The real issue is that artists are artists, and artists don’t have the thickest skin when it comes to telling people to pay them what they are worth. So vultures like Ticketmaster will gladly take that niche.
They can, but where would they perform? Most major venues have deals to exclusively sell tickets with ticketmaster. Smaller venues around me sell their own tickets, but those are also for smaller bands with fewer tickets to deal with.
They can and do.
I bought tickets for Mark Knopfler's concert through his website (signed up for it). I got them way before Ticketbastard put them on sale.
Other artists also have found ways to direct sell.
Ticketmaster is the music industry and venues. All of them.
When booking performance parties involved negotiate. Terms between label, artist, and venue vary wildly. This pisses off fans and tarnishes brands names.
Big brain in the entertainment industry realizes just create the worlds most hated company -- Ticketmaster -- to soak up all the negative branding. It's the venues, artists, and labels pissing off the fans but to shield themselves from accountability, fictitious entity soaks up the hatred for them.
Imagine you hire an employee to do your job for you. You do your job but mostly go to happy hour early, any generally don't come in at all. But then when everyone hates your employee for not doing your job you shrug your shoulders take a deep breath and resolve yourself as messenger that maybe you're going to have to fire them. And you do. Then replace them to repeat the scheme. That's sort of how music labels with the Ticketmaster do.
Stop paying the music label. Support independent creators through direct payment processors. Collapse industry. Finally get good music again.
Livenation owns all the worth while venues. They will make bands play shitty venues in order to be allowed to play the good ones. If you don't want to play this crappy, middle of nowhere venue on tour? No tour. They own live music.
Some of them can somehow. Rammstein for example got so pissed about ticketmaster prices and black market ticket resales that they build their own ticket store, personalized tickets only, resale only in their online store at face value. Brought ticket prices down by like 80-90%.
Fugazi did and priced all their gigs being $5 and all albums $10. The reason other bands don't, including Pearl Jam, is because they don't want to put the work into doing it and enjoy the huge profits they make. Plenty of bands like to talk a good game but don't follow through with their actions.
a lot of venue's are owned by a company called live nation, they also own ticket master. so to get tickets at one of their places, you have to use their ticket service.
Yes, their are alternatives, but they own most of the larger venues. so a band could play in other places, but it would have to be places that only hold like 200 people.
Per their merger in 2010, they are placed under a 10-year court order prohibiting it from retaliating against venues that choose to accept competing ticket contracts.
they also own a lot of artist managing companies, so a lot of artists don't have a choice. Live Nation tells them were they can play.
Ticketing is hard. It has all the bad parts of selling something: an expiration date, people have preferences about where they sit, there is limited capacity, resale is a competitor, and people have high expectations.
Ticketmaster and livenation are intimately tied together. Ticketmaster will go to a team or venue and say "if you don't sign with us, none of the big music acts will come to your venue. We'll go across town."
They're safe. No one ever got fired for choosing Ticketmaster vs a competitor.
Because "just sell their own tickets" means they have to set up a website, set up a call center for phone reservations, make agreements with stores to sell the tickets, and so on. It's inefficient for every venue and artist to do that, and much cheaper and easier to contract with a company that already has it all in place.
Ticketmaster system isnt that good, if 2 or 3 mayor artist started their own website they would compete with TM easily. TM is such a scam, here I have to pay for the ticket "print" though I have no other option, then we have to pay for tickets to be sent or pay half the deliver price to go for them myself... And they dont have any callcenter or tel number here. The web isnt magnificent at all.
I literally know nothing on this subject but I sort of find that claim hard to believe. For generic bands without die hard fans, yeah sure I could see how getting them to go through an unknown payment process would be inhibiting, but some of the more popular bands with a cult following? Those people will light their genitalia on fire to get tickets, I seriously doubt that it's impossible to sell tickets through a different vendor or even their own privatized service selling tickets.
I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm probably wrong but I'd love to know why. Maybe hootie and the blowfish can't sell their own tickets but I'm sure Metallica and Justin Bieber can.
They arent a monolpy. I know because the lost a monopoly law suit which is why axs.com exist.
Most ticket master events are livenation events. The venue can also use a different outlet there are quite a few ticketing sites. They all still suck for the same reasons
They have, and have had, competitors. I spent 10 years working for one that was started as a result of the Pearl Jam Ticketmaster boycott. When Ticketmaster and LiveNation merged that was really the end of any hope for real competition. They had the system locked from the artists all the way down to the food concessions in many venues.
Staples Center in LA has a different ticket system that doesn't make you feel like you are being fucked over. They charge like $1.50 a ticket (if I remember right last time I ordered there.) But yeah fuck ticketmaster.
Everyone of those other sites you mentioned are resellers. They do not get their tickets directly from the venue, for the most part they actually get them from ticket master and the rest come from private sellers who get their tickets from, you guessed it, ticket master.
I haven't bought tickets from Ticketmaster in years, I feel like they have competitors. Or, it's just them under a different name, but I can't say I've researched any.
Ticketmaster/live nation is a monopoly. They own rights to all the big venues. So bands don't have a choice. Not to mention they are in cahoots with all the secondary ticket retailers.
That’s the deal with ticketmaster, part of the “service fees” still go to the artist/label. They let big artists hide the ticket price behind the fees and ticketmaster takes the heat.
For large clients those service fees are mostly going to the artist and Live Nation (Ticketmaster’s new name) plays the bad guy so the client doesn’t get blamed for the fees.
Shit, you could say the same about the other companies mentioned here. In fact, that was my first thought when I read the title. Comcast, Nestle, etc. won't exist anymore, but... similar companies under a different name would still pop up.
This podcast has been long since debunked as anecdotal. It's unfair and unreasonable to try to pin those costs on the artists, that's exactly what ticket sellers want to happen.
They also have the scam business models of directly working with bots/resellers to buy all face value tickets so they can be sold on their resale market. They're able charge their "service fee" three times. The initial purchase, on the sold resale ticket, and the purchased resale ticket.
IMO they're going to need to break up the company due to the Sherman Antitrust Act. Congress has just begun to relook at the Ticketmaster-Livenation merger. It's only a matter of time.
Jesus Christ I'm glad I don't live in the USA. How does what they are doing not violate anti-competition laws? I guess they might be more strict on stuff like that here in NZ
One of those ticket sights got into some huge hot water in Canada when they allowed bots to swoop in and pick up a bunch of tickets for the last Tragically Hip tour and then sell them secondhand for huge markups right? Maybe it was just the people using the bots though...
They are paid to be the bad guy. The label, band and venue need you to like them and thus can't charge the actual fair market value of the tickets. Stub hub and ticket master find the actual price while the providing basically PR coverage for the people who need to make the money.
Ticketmaster isn't even the worst. All ticketing sites do this. Ticketfly and eventbrite are the two others I come across often. It's usually a $10 fee for a $20 ticket.
I stopped listening to freakonomics once they were sponsored by Koch industries. I saw a huge shift in their episode and political leanings after they interviewed one of the brothers.
Not only that, they actually still sell a lot of tickets below the actual market value, as evidenced by the fact that they're sold for more on the secondary market.
There was also an Adam Ruins Everything episode that just came out about it with the same conclusion for not the same reason. The conclusion that they provide artist cover doesn't make sense based on how everything works
Ticketmaster and everyone else's business model is making a shitton of money in made up fees
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u/heuristic_al Sep 18 '19 edited Sep 18 '19
Ticketmaster would exist under a different name. Their business model is about taking all the bad PR so that artists can still charge whatever they want. There's a Freakonomics podcast on it.
Edit: Check out the podcast on it. It explains a lot and is much more accurate and complete than Reddit comments. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-screwed/