[HN Gopher] Blink-182 tickets are so expensive because Ticketmas...
___________________________________________________________________
Blink-182 tickets are so expensive because Ticketmaster is a
monopoly
Author : Victerius
Score : 274 points
Date : 2022-10-21 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| mike503 wrote:
| https://mashable.com/video/john-oliver-ticketmaster
| gojomo wrote:
| Ticketmaster has monopolistic dominance here, yes. However, the
| strongest monopoly involved is Blink-182 themselves, with
| absolute control over how they sell "Blink-182" live
| performances.
|
| They may be quite happy with some other big, bad corporation
| taking the hit for policies which manage to capture more of the
| full willingness-to-pay for the band and official partners,
| rather than secondary sellers (scalpers).
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Right. If they want lower prices the solution is obvious. Play
| more shows or larger venues if available.
| r2sk5t wrote:
| In many cases TM pays venues to be their exclusive ticketing
| company. Before TM, venues purchased hardware and software. One
| of the most genius business moves of all time was this business
| model innovation.
|
| TM does not keep all the fees they collect, but since the market
| views them as predatory they are providing "hated company" as a
| service for their customers.
|
| With respect to dynamic pricing or pricing in general, TM is
| going to charge a percentage of the transaction as a fee and thus
| make more when demand is high along with their customer (the
| venue) and the producer/talent (the venue's customer). It's a
| complex supply chain.
| jandrese wrote:
| Ticketmaster often puts out that "we're just pretending to be
| the bad guys so people can still love their bands" story and I
| don't buy it. They are unregulated monopolists so one must
| never give them the benefit of the doubt. It's pretty clear
| that the bands themselves are under strict NDAs about the
| relationship so the only word we only ever get Ticketmaster's
| side the story.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Slightly tangential but I just recently went to my first concert
| since COVID hit and ticket master is using digital tickets now?
| Before you could print a paper copy and get it scanned at the
| door but now the barcode in the app/webpage is changing every 60
| seconds, like the code on an RSA fob. Seems like that on its own
| is enough to block scalpers.
| soverance wrote:
| Yeah I hated Ticketmaster for many years, but this is the
| primary reason I didn't care too much, because I could just
| print the ticket and not deal with any of their tech gimmicks.
| Printing concert tickets was basically the only thing I still
| used a printer for, because a printed ticket was still the most
| reliable means of getting into the show.
|
| Ever got down to a venue and had shitty mobile service? Ever
| had your phone die or crash at an inconvenient time? Ever lost
| data?
|
| Even worse, turns out if you don't have Chrome set as the
| default browser app on your mobile device then the app is
| completely worthless and loads no pages (tested on Surface Duo
| 2). The same problem exists with their website when viewed from
| Edge on Android: you can't load your account page or tickets at
| all. Chrome only. Don't worry, there's zero mention of this
| anywhere on the app store so if you're trying to figure this
| out while in line at a venue, well fuck you.
|
| So now we have to deal with all this bullshit simply because we
| can no longer print my tickets.
| skellera wrote:
| You can usually transfer or resell those tickets on TM.
|
| It just requires you to stay in their system instead of selling
| (taking a screenshot of the code) elsewhere.
|
| If they locked the ticket to your name, that would actually
| block the scalpers but they don't.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| By forcing you to stay in their system it makes it easy to
| identify scalpers by account behaviour. No need to pin
| tickets to your name, just bring down the banhammer on
| accounts with suspicious activity.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| there's also a feature in the ticket master app to just send
| the tickets to someone digitally so you can still sell them
| other ways. /i just got rid of a spare ticket i had on cash
| or trade.
|
| edit to add: my friend couldn't make the concert, I'm not a
| scalper!
| jrmg wrote:
| Lots of comments here from people who haven't read the article
| and don't know about the scalper-eliminating on-demand pricing
| it's actually about. Or that it addresses supply-and-demand near
| the end with some interesting comments on Garth Brooks:
|
| _Country superstar Garth Brooks--who has called out dynamic
| pricing as well as suggested that the secondary market should be
| "illegal," has more or less solved the problem for his fans with
| one simple trick: He adds shows until they no longer sell out. In
| recent years, on single tours, Brooks has done the following: He
| played nine concerts in a row in Edmonton, Canada. He played a
| dozen shows in Chicago. He played six in Kansas, nine in Tulsa,
| and eight in Denver._
|
| Indeed, the headline doesn't seem particularly supported by the
| actual article to me.
| jbellis wrote:
| My understanding is that it's absolutely normal for the
| headline to be written by an editor maximizing for clicks,
| rather than by the article author.
| jahsome wrote:
| Former reporter. Can confirm -- If you only knew...
| [deleted]
| cbsmith wrote:
| Worth mentioning...
|
| The platform Garth Brooks uses to sell tickets the way he does:
| Ticketmaster. So it's available to other artists/promoters, if
| they want to do it. The nickname for that approach is "Garth
| mode".
| vlunkr wrote:
| There's lots of back-and-forth in these comments about
| whether Ticketmaster is the villain, or just the scapegoat
| for venues and artists to take more money. Without any
| insider information, I lean towards the latter.
|
| This is a supply and demand issue where the limit on supply
| is how much Blink-182 wants to perform. Maybe there's a good
| logistical reason why they don't do "Garth mode", or maybe
| this tour is just a quick cash grab.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Without any insider information, I lean towards the
| latter.
|
| With insider information, I believe you are correct. ;-)
|
| The question that people don't like accessing is, "who is
| making these decisions?", because the answers don't point
| to the people they want them to point to. Ticketmaster is
| effectively an arms maker, and while that is not without
| moral/ethical concerns, the arms maker builds and sells
| tools that the people doing the fighting want; it's kind of
| weird to pretend the arms maker is the one actually _using_
| them.
| matwood wrote:
| Garth increased supply to match whatever ticket price he wanted
| to hit.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| My wife has been a member of the Pearl Jam Ten Club for years.
| Pearl Jam reserves seats for club members. Members put in
| requests for tickets to shows, including credit card information.
| These requests are filled following the process detailed here:
| https://pearljam.com/news/ten-club-ticket-presale-info. If your
| ticket request was filled, your credit card is charged, and you
| now have a valid ticket (or multiple tickets, depending on the
| request).
|
| You can sell tickets for face value, but not above or they'll be
| invalid and you might be kicked out of the club.
|
| I'm going to guess that not all artists have the ability to make
| this happen, but it's helped us avoid the Ticketmaster and
| scalping craziness.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Every artist has the moral ability to do that, but not every
| artist has the financial ability to do that. Ticketmaster draws
| a lot of (well-earned) hate for their scuzzy practices, but
| those same practices make artists a _lot_ of money.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| > not every artist has the financial ability to do that
|
| Yes. I went to see a band maybe six to eight years ago. The
| lead singer asked the crowd to buy some merchandise a few
| times, and went on to explain that since the shift to
| streaming happened, they don't make nearly as much from radio
| play and album sales, so depend on touring income much more
| than they used to.
|
| At least dynamic pricing gets money to the artist that would
| have just gone to the scalper before. Ticketmaster also has a
| "Verified Fan" feature where you can request tickets
| (https://blog.ticketmaster.com/verifiedfan-faq/), with the
| goal of preventing bots from buying them in the first few
| seconds when they are made available. While tickets can be
| sold/transferred for Verified Fan events, I'm not sure if
| there's an option to prevent sales over face value.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| cbsmith wrote:
| It's hard to believe, but maybe, just maybe, scalpers might
| sign up for artist clubs?
|
| Also Pearl Jam uses Ticketmaster now:
| https://www.barrons.com/articles/ticketmaster-pearl-jam-good...
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| > scalpers might sign up for artist clubs?
|
| Yes, which is why selling tickets for more than face value
| can get you kicked out of the club.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Let's just say that scalpers still manage to represent a
| significant portion of artist clubs.
| haunter wrote:
| And that's why festivals are more popular. More tickets available
| and the price / band is significantly lower.
| miki123211 wrote:
| There's a simple way to solve this.
|
| Companies could just require everybody to enter a name and
| surname of the person the ticket is bought for. There's the issue
| of people who later discover that they can't go to a show they
| have a ticket for, but that can be solved by allowing them to
| return their tickets to the general pool and giving them (some
| of) their money back.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| TM already does KYC on every customer now, as if you're
| boarding an international flight.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| There is a solution here, and Rammstein is one Band that uses it:
| Don't sell via Ticketmaster and sell personalized tickets only
| that are not allowed to be resold.
| rjmunro wrote:
| Surely if the prices are dynamic and too expensive, just wait
| until nearer the date of the show and the prices will come down.
| An artist can make prices cheaper by just adding more dates until
| everyone who wants to see them can see them.
|
| When the prices are dynamic, the game is no longer about getting
| to the site the moment the tickets go on sale and buying them as
| soon as possible, as it used to be, the game is wait as long as
| you dare while the price decreases until just before it sells
| out. I think once fans get used to this new game, everyone will
| be happier (except scalpers).
|
| If Live Nation-TicketMaster are screwing over bands by not paying
| them their fair share of ticket revenue, they can go to AXS or
| other venue owners instead and the Live Nation venues will lie
| empty. They might have to go to smaller venues, so it's a case of
| balancing the loss of revenue from that with the increase from
| getting a fairer share.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The prices are high because there aren't any tickets available
| right before the show starts. They sell every ticket for the
| most they think they can get. Blink-182 doesn't play enough
| shows, so they have to filter some of the fans out.
| [deleted]
| hemloc_io wrote:
| I think dynamic pricing systems are going to come across a lot of
| scrutiny (even if they don't deserve it.)
|
| Between this and the rental pricing thing, lots of bad press
| about them.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Ticketmaster exists as a blame absorber. Their business model is
| to charge huge fees, pass 80% plus of the cash back to bands and
| managers, but absorb 100% of the blame for tickets being
| expensive. This is why bands and their managers keep using them
| despite them being universally hated. You are being tricked, and
| not (just) by ticketmaster...
| jandrese wrote:
| Yeah, if the bands didn't like the situation they would just
| switch to one of the competitors like...um...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Or they could just sell their own tickets? eBay lets you sell
| things, they could start there. There is nothing magic about
| Ticketmaster.
|
| Or they could insist on set prices. Bruce Springsteen did
| this decades ago. He even insisted on beers at the venue
| costing no more than a certain amount.
| jandrese wrote:
| You can't sell your own tickets if you want to play in a
| large venue. Those venues all have exclusive Ticketmaster
| agreements.
| [deleted]
| scohesc wrote:
| More and more our culture and arts become exclusively for the
| upper classes.
|
| Less and less people will be able to see their favorite bands
| perform live.
|
| Less and less people will be able to travel to see pieces of
| art/culture/history.
|
| Less and less people will be able to afford tickets to sports
| games - Hockey, Football, Soccer, etc. - all reserved for the
| wealthy who can afford $200 a ticket, $15 a beer, and $12 for a
| slice of pizza.
|
| Society is breaking down and nobody seems to notice or care.
|
| Only the rich and the lucky will be able to experience real in-
| person concerts, events, shows, history. Leaving the poor and
| downtrodden left to experience their favorite band through a 7"
| phone screen and a tinny speaker.
| fakethenews2022 wrote:
| Create your own culture.
| racl101 wrote:
| Then sell out.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Rest assured that Ticketmaster is doing all this pricing, fees,
| and ticket availability at the discretion of the artists and
| artist's management. Ticketmaster is happy to play the bad guy.
| Many tickets are never sold at the original face price but go
| directly to the 'verified resale' market with TM sharing the
| profits with the teams\artists.
|
| Example, The Black Keys were scalping their own tickets for 20x
| and ordered Ticketmaster to revoke tickets resold on the
| secondary market.
|
| https://www.ticketnews.com/2019/09/black-keys-wiltern-premiu...
| jacamera wrote:
| Really terrible headline for a totally decent article.
|
| The Garth Brooks solution is super interesting.
|
| > He adds shows until they no longer sell out. In recent years,
| on single tours, Brooks has done the following: He played nine
| concerts in a row in Edmonton, Canada. He played a dozen shows in
| Chicago. He played six in Kansas, nine in Tulsa, and eight in
| Denver.
|
| I'm wondering how many shows he does in total per tour compared
| to other artists. It seems likely to me that he wouldn't be able
| to visit as many locations which still results in some fans not
| being able to see him.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Isn't TicketMasters service to be the bad guy. Bands and venues
| get to blame them for the prices and in turn ticketmaster gets a
| cut. Company to blame as a service.
| bombcar wrote:
| This isn't only Ticketmaster! A registration tool I've used
| lets you add a fee that ostensibly is to pay for the
| registration processing but if you set it above X + 3% you get
| all the extra. Very sneaky!
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Man, I hope all the electronic food ordering sites are like
| that
|
| Every restaurant here takes online orders, but ordering
| online tacks on 10% or more in fees. I just call them on the
| phone to avoid the fees, since it seems insane to me to pay
| $8 just for 2 seconds of using a web app
| bombcar wrote:
| Some are, some aren't - you can sometimes dig around and
| find out which they use.
|
| A few of the local restaurants have ones that add nothing
| to the order cost at all, so they must be cheap enough that
| the restaurant doesn't care.
| skellera wrote:
| DoorDash takes up to a 30% cut even on pick up orders.
| Pretty rough deal for restaurants that have to use that
| service to survive. Just makes the costs go up for the rest
| of us.
| bombcar wrote:
| I refuse to use something like doordash for pickup. I'd
| rather call or just go and order and wait than give DD
| such a huge cut for doing nothing useful.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| yeah man, it's friggin crazy
|
| I used to play around with crypto trading bots back when
| the space was new enough that geniuses hadn't come in and
| hogged most of the easy profits. I'd happily run a ton of
| pretty complicated code 24/7 just to net a few free bucks
| per hour
|
| Yet somehow Menufy, Chownow, etc seem to need $3+ just
| for a few microseconds of very simple, straightforward,
| financial-risk-free code.
|
| I guess that's why there are so many of those terrible
| services out there.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| Be careful what number you call, because Grubhub puts their
| own number out there on Yelp pretending it's a direct line
| to the restaurant, when it actually goes through Grubhub's
| systems and they tack on a fee for your order. Google will
| sometimes give you the Yelp number as the restaurant's
| number if you just Google it, and they also create websites
| which scrape the original website and attempt to SEO their
| way above it so that they get their cut.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756878/yelp-grubhub-
| comm...
| garamgatha wrote:
| nice information
| luplex wrote:
| The problem with dynamic pricing and scalping is that it further
| divides people by income. Music and culture should be something
| that brings people together.
|
| I'd like to see a progressive pricing system that somehow forces
| richer people to subsidize cheaper tickets for poor people.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Does that already exist with shitty vs better seats/areas in
| concert venues?
|
| Really the place where this happens, much to the hatred of
| everyone is things like VIP tables at Clubs/Music festivals.
| The ppl leaving a 50k tab for 1000$ worth of stuff eg.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| As opposed to dividing people by income and ability to build a
| scalping bot. Some people get lucky spam refreshing but that's
| still dividing by ability to drop everything for 15 minutes at
| the exact right time which usually means rich-ish.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| There will always be some level of division. Bruce Springsteen
| and the E Street band used to reserve the space front & center
| as standing-room-only, and sold it cheaply ($30, I think) on a
| first-come, first-served basis on the day of the show. But even
| if you do that, you're self-selecting the people who have the
| financial ability to take a day (or even multiple days) off
| from work to maybe get a ticket.
| tablarasa wrote:
| You can usually still go down to the venue during business hours
| and buy tickets without TM fees, right?
|
| What's hilarious is when I get mad at ticketmaster for charging
| me convenience fees when I am actively choosing not to walk,
| bike, or drive down to the venue and circumvent those fees since
| doing so would be inconvenient. I still make that choice while
| shaking my fist, and bask in my irony.
| jandrese wrote:
| Nope. If the venue even has a box office any more, the person
| working is just filling out the Ticketmaster webpage for you
| and getting all of the fees added on.
| tablarasa wrote:
| Ooof yeah that's brutal. My friends and I held onto that for
| a long time though because we liked avoiding the fees but
| also having the hard copy classic tickets to put in scrap
| books and what not. I know you can still do it some places
| but I believe you that their numbers are dwindling.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not really true. You can avoid convenience fees still. at
| our local box office. But TM won't allow anonymous or paper
| tickets any longer.
| postalrat wrote:
| Non-transferable tickets seem to me to be a simple solution. But
| people want be able to sell their tickets.
|
| So now we are stuck with high ticket prices.
| cwmma wrote:
| What radiohead did with Ticket Trust is probably the right
| balance, they made it so you could resell the paperless
| tickets, but only through Ticket Trust which didn't allow you
| to resell them for above face value.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Cash at the door? Or physical tickets sold around town the day
| of?
|
| People have a love/hate relationship with the frenzy I guess.
| dagw wrote:
| That's great for locals, but doesn't really work for people
| who have to travel several hours and book a hotel to get to
| somewhere where many of the bands I want to see play. For
| people like us having a guaranteed ticket far in advance is
| important.
| michaelt wrote:
| Concert tickets sold like flight tickets - provide a full
| name for every ticket booked, at booking time. Queue up at
| the venue to have your ticket checked against your passport.
| matwood wrote:
| They would also need to be market priced, like airline
| tickets.
| [deleted]
| raldi wrote:
| Cash at the door would just mean endless lines -- people
| paying with their time instead of their money, and the value
| of that time is just wasted rather than captured by the
| seller.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| $40 exact change in $20 bills will be faster than scanning
| barcodes.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yup, I think if any act was really passionate about selling
| cheap tickets this is the way. But it is intentionally defying
| the way markets work, the current problem is not because bands
| or TicketMaster are charging too much, it's that people are
| willing to pay these prices.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Moreso it's because Blink 182 is essentially classic rock at this
| point. And classic rock tours have always been absurdly
| expensive. Nobody is going to see them because they just really
| love what Blink 182 is doing. They are paying a premium for a
| shot of nostalgia that can't be had anywhere else, and they can
| charge these prices because the entire fanbase is over the age of
| 30.
| racl101 wrote:
| Pretty much. Late '90s / early 2000s rock is now thee Dad Rock
| and its demo, presumably has more disposable income, than they
| did 20 years ago.
| keb_ wrote:
| Ahh paying $600 for a ticket. Now _that 's_ PUNK ROCK.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| blink-182 isn't punk rock for what it's worth. $600 tickets
| seem pretty normal for a pop artist.
| keb_ wrote:
| For what it's worth, music genre definitions are murky, and
| blink-182 were bred from a punk scene, and, to a lot of folk,
| blink-182 _is_ a punk band (even if they are pop-punk, they
| are related). I was simply ironically pointing out the
| juxtaposition of $600 tickets with the DIY, keep-costs-low
| ethic made popular by punk bands.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Must be some VIP tickets.
|
| I paid $300 in festival tickets this summer to see Metallica,
| Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Kiss, and 60 other bands.
|
| Now, festivals can either suck or be fun as far as sound,
| weather, etc. goes - but anything over 100 bucks to see a
| headliner + warmup gig better be top shelf stuff.
| jahsome wrote:
| I was looking at GA floor tickets for this blink show, and
| the price was $800 at the time.
|
| edit: just checked again. They're much more affordable now at
| $692 each.
| gaws wrote:
| > Ahh paying $600 for a ticket.
|
| lol really? snagged a bunch of decent seats for <$100.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| As long as people are willing to pay these prices, this will
| continue.
|
| If a ticket is priced at $200 and someone is willing to pay as
| much as $500, you can be certain that it will be priced that way.
|
| Stop buying overpriced tickets.
| roflyear wrote:
| The issue is there are a lot of rich people. Shows like this
| used to be <$100 not that long ago.
| trident5000 wrote:
| More like people slowly finding out their quality of life is
| going down in the US. You get to do less fun things now and
| going forward.
| [deleted]
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I thought the whole deal with ticketmaster was that they can
| charge hidden fees on behalf of the band and take the blame?
| anecdotal1 wrote:
| I wanted tickets to see Adam Sandler in the near future. Tickets
| are like $5000 because of this.
| duderific wrote:
| It might come down though. If it's in the near future, maybe
| the tickets are priced "aspirationally" at the moment. I have a
| very hard time believing a large number of people would pay
| $5000 to see Adam Sandler.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Concerts are in huge demand now, post-Covid. I paid way more than
| I should have this past year. Fans are desperate to be back. I am
| part of the problem. The number of top tier, establish bands
| still touring is very small. And they don't want to kill
| themselves touring every night.
|
| Some less than ideal unorthodox solutions. 1) Go to 2nd and 3rd
| tier bands. Maybe not at enjoyable as Blink-182, but still good.
| 2) Go see cover bands. They don't need to. Support the lower tier
| bands, who are also very talented, enjoy the show, and pay a lot
| less. You will also find new music. 3) Wait a few years for the
| post-Covid boom to end and the recession to kick in.
| comprev wrote:
| There was a UK comedian (can't remember their name) who was so
| outraged at the markup the ticket sales middleman took he
| refunded all of those who paid and refused to do any more gigs at
| venues who only sold through that platform.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >""I understand that the ticketing can be frustrating. I bought
| tickets for two of our shows myself just to see what the
| experience was like," Hoppus said. "I had tickets yoinked from my
| cart and the whole thing crash out. Dynamic pricing. I'm not in
| charge of it. It's meant to discourage scalpers. We're trying to
| bring you the best possible show for the best price. This is a
| tour celebrating new music and the band getting back together.
| Thank you for your enthusiasm and I hope to see all of you at the
| shows."
|
| This is the kind of vapid "non-statement" statement usually
| reserved for politicians. The "best price" for who? Certainly not
| the fans.
|
| Then further down in the article:
|
| >"Country superstar Garth Brooks--who has called out dynamic
| pricing as well as suggested that the secondary market should be
| "illegal," has more or less solved the problem for his fans with
| one simple trick: He adds shows until they no longer sell out"
|
| It's worth noting that the artist doing the most "punk rock"
| thing here is actually the Country singer.
| rowls66 wrote:
| Not sure if it has been mentioned, but the increase in ticket
| prices is probably directly related to the collapse of record and
| CD sales over that past 20 year. Back in the day when live
| concerts were "cheap" it was partially because live concerts were
| used as a way to promote the sale of vinyl and CD's where artists
| made most of their money.
|
| Today with streaming and considerably less revenue coming from
| record sales, artists have turned to live concerts as their
| primary revenue source, and to make a "living", they need to
| maximize revenue from that source.
|
| As a result, in exchange for a nearly unlimited supply of
| recorded music at low prices, we need to pay significantly higher
| prices for live performances. It's a tradeoff. Not sure if it was
| worth it, but there is not going back.
| nimih wrote:
| While this is an interesting theory, my personal anecdotal
| experience doesn't really seem to support it. Some particular
| bands seem to have gotten more expensive over time (e.g., if I
| want to see Modest Mouse in Oakland this December, it'll run
| about 3.5x what I paid to see them in 2007, not including
| fees), but I'm still able to go see local and smaller touring
| bands play at smaller venues for similar prices to when I was a
| teenager in the mid 00s (maybe $5 more on the face value of the
| ticket, and probably a lot more in terms of service fees).
|
| Merch, on the other hand, is definitely _much_ more expensive
| than it used to be, and I imagine that probably _is_ reflecting
| the dynamic you 're hypothesizing, at least to some extent.
| seneca wrote:
| > Back in the day when live concerts were "cheap" it was
| partially because live concerts were used as a way to promote
| the sale of vinyl and CD's where artists made most of their
| money.
|
| This is backward. Albums were where the record company made
| their money. Only mega-stars made their money on albums. Modern
| musicians have always made their money from live performances,
| and especially from merchandise. Albums were essentially
| marketing to bring fans in to concerts. This is why so many
| artists live on the road.
|
| Artists, and record labels, are certainly making less on albums
| now though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the labels are now
| nosing in more on concert profits to make up for it.
| rowls66 wrote:
| Isn't this article talking about "mega-stars"? Only mega-
| stars can charge $600 for a concert ticket.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| It's a fair argument that Ticketmaster's monopoly position could
| lead to extortionary fees with small artists. This is unlikely to
| be a factor with larger artists, and its wholly unrelated to the
| practice of dynamic pricing.
|
| A monopoly is not required to do dynamic pricing. Airlines have
| no problem using dynamic pricing on all of their tickets,
| regardless how competitive the route is. Every major ticket
| seller is going to dynamic price. If anything, Ticketmaster is
| consistently undercutting resellers like Gametime in my
| experience.
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| go see local or smaller acts at smaller venues. don't go see
| boring stadium shows. problem solved.
| nluken wrote:
| You've got the right idea. Large stadium bands are almost
| always a poor value proposition, and that was the case even
| before dynamic pricing. Some of these shows are definitely
| cool, but the price relative to smaller touring acts (who are
| often just as if not more talented) is so astronomical that it
| never made sense to me
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| TM finally cornered the aftermarket, probably been dreaming of it
| for decades.
|
| More evil in my opinion, they have enforced a KYC policy around
| tickets, where attending without a smartphone and app installed
| is increasingly impossible. Thanks to Covid making it acceptable.
| TM has dynamic barcodes now, a printout is no longer sufficient.
|
| I loved live music for a long time and we have a concert location
| locally but this looks like the end of the line for me. I want to
| attend anonymously, pay cash, and have a paper ticket as a
| souvenir.
| olivermarks wrote:
| If you want to see a band locally and are appalled by the ticket
| costs it's often better just to show up on site. The dynamics
| change a lot once a show starts if it's not sold out.
|
| Separately last century I had a plastic wallet containing a photo
| booth picture of me with the word 'press' Letrasetted over it. I
| was able to hang around by the stage taking photos with a camera
| that had no film in it sometimes, saw some pretty big name acts
| doing that but it wouldn't work these days. I also used to sneak
| in back stage a couple of songs into sets.
|
| More seriously the touts need to sell tickets once the music has
| started...and will negotiate down a lot...
| qeternity wrote:
| TFA mentions the word "monopoly" 4 times but doesn't actually
| provide any evidence or even make an argument.
|
| Blink 182 tickets are so expensive because people are willing to
| pay a lot for them. This is the only reason.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Make it like Rammstein. Scalpers and resellers are out, prices
| are low. Of course it is still hard to get Tickets.
| gaws wrote:
| > Scalpers and resellers are out
|
| How do you even track that?
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Tickets are personalized and can only be transferred via one
| platform, that does NOT allow to take higher prices. It might
| be a bit to socialist for american hearts, but not everyone
| is _living in Amerika_.
| wombat-man wrote:
| It's possible to make tickets non-transferrable. I think MCR
| did that for a show near me, for the floor section anyway.
| Never saw any for sale on resellers. People on reddit were
| saying they were digital only and non transferrable, so you'd
| have to give someone your ticketmaster login to use it. that
| plus 2fa could be effective.
|
| Can't confirm. It's possible the tickets were just plain sold
| out.
| non_sequitur wrote:
| So the real complaint is dynamic pricing, which is essentially
| raising prices to what the market will bear, instead of having
| (what was formerly artificially) low prices that get scalped. Now
| the extra money that used to go to scalpers goes to TM instead,
| and the downside is that some % of fans that could previously
| luck out and get cheap tickets no longer can.
|
| Isnt this...not a bad thing? There's fundamentally just a supply
| and demand problem, with more people wanting to see these
| concerts than there are concerts. The article mentions that Garth
| brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the
| same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. Is
| there a better solution? Even if there were 5 different companies
| selling concert tickets, wouldnt they inevitably move to dynamic
| pricing for the same reason?
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the whole monopoly aside. If $600 is the market / people
| will pay, that's the market.
|
| Lets say the same band plays the same venue, but no ticket
| monopoly.
|
| Everyone knows folks will pay $600, so they're going to charge
| it, fees or not.
| markandrewj wrote:
| Just fyi tickets still get scalped.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-...
| pbreit wrote:
| aka Supply & Demand
| jiscariot wrote:
| I was always under the impression the innovative part of TM's
| "service" is taking the bad wrap/reputation hit that comes
| along with extracting more money for venues, artists and (or
| course) themselves. So essentially being paid to be the "evil
| Ticketmaster" we all know.
|
| Artists, venues get to blame them while keeping the base cost
| of their tickets lower (for perception purposes), while still
| making money on the TM fees.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Good point! The percentage of the ticket price that the
| artists are getting is - conveniently - never revealed so
| fans are left to assume that it's evil Ticketmaster gouging
| them. I see a comment above yours
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33290468 that suggests
| the artists usually get 85% of the profits, and of course we
| have no way to know.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I was having the same question.
|
| Original situation: tickets are priced too low, and sell out
| almost immediately, with scrapers buying much of the tickets,
| then reselling them. Fans are furious! Plus: the band+seller is
| leaving money on the table, scrapers are making a killing.
|
| Current situation: tickets are priced at market value thanks to
| dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out instantly, and
| scrapers are discouraged from buying them. Fans are furious!
| Plus: the band+seller make more money than before, scrapers
| make close to none.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The crux of it is this change was implemented at a time when
| people are already being squeezed five ways from Sunday by
| everything else.
|
| It may feel more fair that the fastest clickers win and
| ticket prices don't change (and many people don't get them)
| versus the fastest clickers get the cheapest tickets and
| other people have to pay 2-5x as much.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| I think the premise is wrong because:
|
| - "tickets are prices too low": What do you mean by "too
| low"? Is the price that's set by the people involved low? Or
| is it what they think the value of the ticket is?
|
| - Can you imagine if bananas were now $50 per banana? I mean,
| if there was only ONE company selling them, it would actually
| probably have already happened. So that would ultimately be
| the "market value".
| anoonmoose wrote:
| What's the price of a GPU- the MSRP or the current bid for
| the only one available on eBay? In my opinion, it's the
| value I can actually buy the thing for.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| Key difference:
|
| > the only one available
|
| vs
|
| > all the tickets since day one
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I don't think there's a difference there. If there are no
| GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or hundreds available
| for 2-3x MSRP, the price is 2-3x MSRP. Whether it's day
| one or day N, the price is what you can buy it for that
| day.
| matwood wrote:
| Exactly. And people forget that market prices do not
| always go up. I've been to quite a few sporting events
| where I bought scalped tickets day of for less than face
| value. Tickets have expirations like options do. No
| seller wants to be still holding tickets when the event
| starts.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| That's not what we're comparing.
|
| > If there are no GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or
| hundreds available for 2-3x MSRP.
|
| If you want to extrapolate, it should be
|
| > Last year's $100 model has been selling for $500 on
| ebay. The new one would cost $110 but because of that,
| we'll now price it $550, because people pay for that.
|
| But hey, if you agree with that, you agree with that. I
| don't.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Value is set by markets. If people are willing to pay more
| than the price than there will be a shortage meaning the
| price is too low, some people who want to buy a ticket
| can't.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| Yes, that's what I said.
| exq wrote:
| Do you have a source for the last sentence?
| lesuorac wrote:
| The secondary market is sometimes the primary market.
|
| John Oliver did a bit on this awhile ago on how artists
| will get large blocks of tickets that they immediately put
| onto the resale market. Has a nice benefit of the show
| being almost immediately sold out plus doesn't it has
| slightly better optics since its not as obvious the
| venue/artist is "reselling" the ticket for a multiple of
| the "original" cost.
|
| https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY?t=1023
| kolbe wrote:
| I think he's using logic.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Some bands don't want to maximize their profits. Shocker:
| Some artists want people of all incomes to enjoy their work.
|
| But allowing scalpers/TM to do pure market pricing can fuck
| over the ability for a lower-middle income person to see
| these kinds of shows that to them might be the equivalent
| cost of a weeklong vacation.
|
| Therefore, the idea (which should be at the discretion of the
| artist and only the artist, to hell with TM) is "charge an
| affordable price and ban scalping". Scalping _can_ be
| controlled by technology; making sure any resales /transfers
| of ticket ownership go through the ticketing agency and only
| for the original price.
| trynewideas wrote:
| > Fans are furious!
|
| Fans who remember when Ticketmaster didn't have a vertical
| monopoly on arena tours are furious at how everything they
| warned other fans or the industry about 20 years ago came
| boringly true.
|
| Fans who had a slim chance of affording a $60 ticket that
| they had a slim chance of actually buying under the old model
| are furious because now they have a zero chance of affording
| any ticket to any in-demand show.
|
| Fans who could always afford and always bought $250 tickets,
| whether through resellers under the old model or first
| parties under the new model, are less angry but still have
| complaints about how Ticketmaster is still as bad 20 years
| into selling tickets online at the actual ticket sales motion
| - carts getting dumped out before the end of the transaction,
| timeouts due to overloaded infrastructure, bad venue
| experiences. (Resellers could actually exchange money for
| goods and services about as well as or better than TM, and
| when the tickets were legit they actually got you into the
| venue 100% of the time.)
|
| All three face the same core problem - Ticketmaster's
| monopoly makes their lives worse.
|
| Artists _who are big enough for TM to pay attention to_ are
| about the only typically shorted party who like how this
| played out. The rest of the industry is basically locked out
| with few or no alternatives depending on the market.
| polio wrote:
| I think it's worth mentioning that price is only one way to
| allocate the scarce resource. What strikes me as better
| socially and for the liveliness of the audience is to offer
| discounts to the top 25% of fans, as determined by Spotify or
| Apple Music, and then let the free market fill in the rest.
| Some balance of this would let regular fans get a shot while
| also maximizing revenue for the other block of tickets.
| nicoburns wrote:
| You can ban resale (except at face value), and enforce this
| technologically. Some people are doing this already.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Yep. I'm using a no-good horrible app called "DICE" to
| access smaller venues here in LA. One of the simple tricks
| is that they don't show you the ticket until just before
| the show. Can't be seen, can't be sold.
| varenc wrote:
| I hate Dice. Mainly because of their instance of getting
| your phone number and requiring their phone app to use
| your ticket. But almost every time a venue is selling
| tickets on Dice I've discovered that they're also for
| sale on Resident Advisor (https://ra.co/) for ~5%
| cheaper. And RA let's you get PDF tickets.
| lancesells wrote:
| I've used DICE in NYC and Berlin. I like the app.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Interesting - I actually like the experience of using
| DICE here in London, UK. The UX I thought is pretty neat,
| presenting me with the artists I've told them I like to
| listen to. I thought the ticket experience is pretty cool
| too.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| I don't think any app holding my tickets should also
| request my entire address book and other data to give me
| those tickets. Otherwise it's kinda sorta fine.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| On iOS that's entirely optional. But that's a very valid
| position. I also detest when apps do this.
| thunky wrote:
| > You can ban resale (except at face value)
|
| In this scenario, the band+seller are leaving money on the
| table again.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Some bands prioritize access to their shows for all
| incomes over maximizing profit.
| thunky wrote:
| How do they do this, free shows?
| relaxing wrote:
| Yes.
| thunky wrote:
| That's nice, but not really relevant to the thread.
| nicoburns wrote:
| And this is a problem why?
| thunky wrote:
| This of it like this: scalpers are currently taking money
| away from artists. Banning ticket resale would prevent
| scalpers from profiting, but does nothing to help the
| artists capture the money they've been missing all along.
|
| You may or may not consider that to be a problem.
| notch656a wrote:
| How will you prove whether it was resold at face value or
| not? I could see a 'refund' and then it replenishes on the
| website, and then ID verification to use it. Like
| refundable airline tickets with a fixed price.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Yah you just force ID and you can trade back your ticket.
| Only get refund if they resell it.
| [deleted]
| batty_alex wrote:
| Names get associated with a ticket and they refuse entry
| if you bought a scalped ticket. You're told to ask for a
| refund from the scalper
| MrPatan wrote:
| Everybody understands economics. Everybody pretends not to
| when it's in their benefit.
| akudha wrote:
| Life is too short and there are big problems to deal with -
| my grocery bill went up by 25% in the last couple of months,
| and my salary is still the same. My rent went up by more than
| 9% this year.
|
| I don't feel bad for people dropping hundreds, thousands of
| dollars to watch a band or a comic. I don't feel bad for TM
| either - they are a monopoly.
|
| The Whole situation is just terrible. Same for sports events
|
| Me - I'm happy watching my favorite artists on YouTube or
| buying their singles or MP3s wherever available.
| lancesells wrote:
| I agree with you and food and shelter are way more
| important but culture is important. I live in NYC and it's
| very easy for me to see artists I listen to for ~$35 every
| other night of the week. I can easily skip big, expensive
| acts and not really be missing out on anything.
|
| But there are many people living in an area that don't have
| an opportunity to see smaller acts and only get access to
| stadium type shows in the closest major city. It's a shame
| people are missing out on culture due to monopolistic
| greed.
|
| You'll never remember the time watching an artist on
| YouTube but you would certainly remember going to their
| concert. The same as sports.
| akudha wrote:
| I remember going to an event that had Ed Sheeran, Beyonce
| etc. It wasn't anything special - we had to wait for
| hours to get in, we weren't allowed to take even water
| bottles, long lines for the bathroom, even longer lines
| to buy overpriced water, irritated cops everywhere...
|
| Maybe I am just wired stupid or something - I didn't
| enjoy the event. I am happy with YouTube and Spotify
| thunky wrote:
| There aren't enough seats at these events to make it
| possible for everyone that wants the cultural experience
| to have it.
|
| If you accept this as true, how do you propose tickets
| are distributed, if not to the highest bidder?
| akudha wrote:
| I don't have an answer to your question. That said, if
| every experience is sold to the highest bidders, only
| rich people can experience these events, isn't it?
|
| Maybe I am just old - what is so special about these
| events anyway? Everything is expensive, it is super
| crowded, everyone around you is sweaty, many
| drunk/high...
| thunky wrote:
| > only rich people can experience these events, isn't it?
|
| This is how it already is. There is a ton of stuff that
| only rich people can afford to experience. Luxuries cost
| money. Seeing the Rolling Stones live in concert is a
| luxury.
|
| > what is so special about these events anyway?
|
| I'm with you here. I'd take watching a big concert or
| sporting event from home over live in person any day. I
| honestly think the majority of people that attend these
| big events mainly do it so they can tell people they did.
| Same reason people go to Times Square on NYE.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Current situation: tickets are priced at market value
| thanks to dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out
| instantly
|
| And that means that ordinary working class people can't
| afford a _lot_ of concerts any more. Entertainment only for
| the rich elites, bravo.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| They couldn't go anyway considering the only way to get a
| ticket was to pay a scalper the 2k now going to the artist.
| Economics would suggest making it affordable to average
| joes means staying in town for a while and doing 15 shows
| instead of 2.
| recursive wrote:
| It's not so clear to me that's any worse than the current
| situation with scalpers. Replace "elites" with "those that
| managed to get the ticket purchase page to load before all
| were sold out".
| trident5000 wrote:
| Its not like theres more rich people today than in the
| past. If anything theres less. I think this just
| demonstrates a gutting of the middle class more than
| anything. People are like "why are these so expensive!" not
| realizing they are in that bucket. People will get to do
| less nice things in the future.
|
| Another explanation is that the internet has simply
| increased information flow and therefore competition for
| luxury goods which has then increased prices.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Well we can go to concerts. Just not the expensive ones.
| eropple wrote:
| You're right, and this is the thing that's frustrating
| about the conversations here--I guess I'm not surprised
| that this is an audience that doesn't get it. A lot of
| music acts, even popular ones, were _broke as hell_ for a
| long time. It is reasonable and, I think, actively laudable
| to want folks who are not of the Patagonia-jacket class to
| be able to see them live for a reasonable price.
|
| There is a point where decent people can go "y'know, I make
| _enough money_ " and not seek to squeeze out every ounce of
| blood from that stone; those same decent people can find it
| objectionable that other people attempt to do so on top of
| it. Not everything must be profit-maximized. Sometimes
| things like "bringing joy" might actually be more valuable.
|
| And even if you are a meat-variant paperclip maximizer,
| there's obvious value into getting people who do not make
| onewheel-through-San-Francisco money into your music or
| your art. The people who currently make that money are
| usually older and will eventually age out. I still go see
| certain 90's bands every time they roll through in no small
| part because I saw them as a kid and I think they're fun.
| benji-york wrote:
| I think I am in total agreement with your comment and I
| have another angle to add for your consideration:
|
| Assume someone wanted to sell highly sought-after tickets
| for less than the market clearing (profit maximizing)
| price--as you suggest. Lowering the price will increase
| demand (because more people can afford them). We now have
| more demand for the tickets; how will that demand be
| expressed?
|
| Will some people stand in line for days to get the
| tickets? Is that a form of payment that some people can
| "pay" more easily that others because they are "richer"
| in disposable time?
|
| Will some people write software to shave milliseconds off
| of their ticket-buying reaction time? Is that a form of
| payment that some people can "pay" more easily than
| others because they have the requisite skills?
|
| Will some people pay others to do the above (or something
| similar)?
|
| It seems to me that these are all forms of payment and
| that the total payment (in currency or otherwise) will
| approximate the market-clearing price in pure currency
| from the other scenario.
|
| What do you think?
| eropple wrote:
| I think the obvious answer is a fair lottery for
| reasonably-priced, non-transferable tickets.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I'm not surprised that this is an audience that doesn't
| get it. A lot of music acts, even popular ones, were
| broke as hell for a long time. It is reasonable and, I
| think, actively laudable to want folks who are not of the
| Patagonia-jacket class to be able to see them live for a
| reasonable price.
|
| I think we get the motivation, but what they are trying
| to do is not possible in a market without implementing
| strict rules. It is noble that a provider of a luxury,
| supply-limited service wants to provide it for a cost
| below market. It really is! But in practice it will never
| work because scalpers will arbitrage that price up to the
| real market price. If you disallow scalpers somehow, you
| will sell out instantly and then only lucky fans get the
| service, rather than rich fans. Is that any better?
|
| If I'm a manufacturer of a very nice car and can only
| make 1000 of them a year, but still want to sell them for
| $5,000 so low income people can afford it, that plan is
| just not going to work. This is actually currently
| happening with Raspberry Pi computers. The only ones you
| can currently get are for higher prices on the secondary
| market.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If you disallow scalpers somehow, you will sell out
| instantly and then only lucky fans get the service,
| rather than rich fans. Is that any better?
|
| The optimal solution is to give a quota for fan clubs and
| the rest away personalized in a fair lottery, while
| requiring proof that you can't attend for a valid reason
| (e.g. a doctor's note) to be eligible for a refund/swap.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _what they are trying to do is not possible in a market
| without implementing strict rules_
|
| Then implement the strict rules!
|
| > _If you disallow scalpers somehow_
|
| Easy: tickets are non-transferrable. Names are printed on
| the tickets, and you present ID when attending the show.
| A looser alternative (since there are legitimate reasons
| why someone might want to give a ticket to someone else)
| is that tickets can only be re-sold at face value.
| Downside here is the only way to enforce that is digital-
| only tickets, but these days that's maybe not much of a
| problem.
|
| > _If you disallow scalpers somehow, you will sell out
| instantly and then only lucky fans get the service,
| rather than rich fans. Is that any better?_
|
| Yes, it's much better. Not perfect, but strictly better.
|
| Your car analogy is not relevant, as it involves
| manufacturing. Concert ticket sales do not benefit from
| economies of scale in the same way.
| thunky wrote:
| > Then implement the strict rules!
|
| Who are you suggesting should implement and enforce these
| rules?
|
| And who determines what a fair ticket price is that will
| allow fans of all income levels to be able to afford it?
| If you really want to give poor people access to these
| cultural opportunities then I would imagine the price is
| going to have to be pretty low. I remember a $25 ticket
| being too expensive for me when I was broke. But with
| your system I would have been able to buy courtside
| tickets to the NBA finals for about $15? Nice!
| eropple wrote:
| This is a silly and frankly ungracious misreading. Nobody
| is saying that an artist shouldn't be able to price
| something however they'd like, to target whatever cohort
| they'd like to target. But _if_ an artist wants to charge
| $X, a scalper who charges $X+$Y is an asshole, and
| cutting out those scalpers is a good thing.
|
| Fair ticket lotteries for those willing to pay the
| artist's desired price are almost certainly the most
| fair, least evil way to do it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In Denmark it's illegal to resell tickets above face
| value. It seems to work OK.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Tickets are the exact same price as they were before
| though, you're just buying them first party instead of
| third. I would much rather the artists get half the extra
| money than scalpers getting all of it. There are also
| plenty of mid sized venues that have less popular acts and
| cheaper tickets.
| bryans wrote:
| Performers don't actually want to be bleeding dry their fans'
| bank accounts. They are forced to participate in that system if
| they want to play at any venue over a particular capacity, all
| of whom have strict partnerships with TM. In that system, the
| performers have virtually zero input or control over the ticket
| price, and often have tight restrictions on where and how often
| they can perform at these venues.
|
| So, it's not a matter of scarcity, but a matter of one company
| hyper-maximizing profits based on an illusion of scarcity that
| _they_ create. And the only intention is to con middle and low-
| income families into spending exorbitant sums to see their
| favorite performers, while the labels and marketing agencies
| spend millions to convince them the shows shouldn 't be missed.
| It's all by design.
|
| Seeing a concert should not be a once in a decade event, and
| for many families, it currently is. And the only people
| preventing them from seeing those shows are a handful of
| executives at a couple of companies, for the sake of absolutely
| absurd profit margins.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The other part is that the scale of large musicians has grown
| so big (the biggest 100+ artists in the US have selling-out-
| stadiums-anywhere-on-earth scale) that there is effectively
| unlimited demand for their shows at any price.
|
| If you want to see Blink-182, Pearl Jam or Taylor Swift, yes
| it's difficult and expensive. On the other hand, tier 2
| artists have nowhere near that difficulty. You could see the
| Violent Femmes tomorrow night in Red Bank, NJ for $50/ticket
| [0]. You could see Illuminati Hotties for $30 in Brooklyn
| [1]. You can find local bands and see them probably for the
| cost of a few drinks at a bar.
|
| [0] https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1D005CCDD5B03A72
|
| [1] https://www.axs.com/events/432872/illuminati-hotties-
| tickets
| jypepin wrote:
| Yeah, high prices suck but I do agree and fail to see what,
| exactly, is wrong here?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I don't like TM, I don't like monopolies
| and I don't like high prices, but... price = equilibrium
| between offer and demand, it's the basics of our capitalist
| society, and all this look like to me is that TM is doing a
| good job at figuring out the equilibrium price for their
| tickets?
| pfortuny wrote:
| With the consequence that "only rich people get to see
| Beyonce live".
|
| Which may be good or not, I have not an opinion.
| Filligree wrote:
| As opposed to when most tickets were bought by scalpers, in
| which case... mostly rich people got to see Beyonce live.
|
| Certainly a few people occasionally got lucky, but I guess
| what I'm wondering is, is "band members and managers earn
| more of the money they bring in" actually a bad thing?
| Won't this lead to more performers joining the field, long
| term, and more options for listening to music?
|
| Seems like a good thing to me.
| bombcar wrote:
| Artists can use some of the increased profit from higher
| ticket prices to buy and reserve tickets to be given to
| fans for free via a fan-lottery system.
| borski wrote:
| That's exactly the problem; the only group that ends up
| earning more in this case is Ticketmaster, not bands or
| managers.
| conradfr wrote:
| You have priced out part of your fanbase which can create
| resentment, and concerts where only the rich people attend
| are not the best, ambiance wise, especially if you want to
| play other songs than the radio hits.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Do you think rich people listen to more hits radio than
| others? Doesn't seem likely to me.
| conradfr wrote:
| There is a lot of people who go see established artists
| without really listening to the albums so they mostly
| know the hits and that's what they want to be played at
| the concert.
| listenallyall wrote:
| People have been claiming "you'll price out your fan base"
| as long as I can remember, meanwhile Blink 182 is a 25-year
| old band with demand for tickets seemingly higher than
| ever.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Those of us "of a certain age," will remember when live
| performances were loss leaders, to drive record sales.
|
| I am not old enough to have attended, but I am told that
| Woodstock (1) tickets were about $15.
| duderific wrote:
| That $15 would be about $121 in today's dollars, so I
| wouldn't be surprised if it were even less than that.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| and now record sales are loss leaders for live performances
| for many artists
| exhilaration wrote:
| That's actually pretty expensive! This site
| https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ says $15 in 1969 is
| equivalent to $121 today.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing
| more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that 's
| obviously not viable for everyone._
|
| I don't understand why it wouldn't be. If a city has sufficient
| demand to sell out two or more concerts, aren't the later
| concerts still profitable? And it's less travel expense per
| concert. If there isn't enough demand to sell tickets for at
| least two concerts, then doesn't that mean most of the fans in
| that city have been satisfied by a single concert?
|
| It makes sense to me that you'd schedule as many consecutive
| concerts in one city as you can as long as demand is high
| enough to make each additional concert profitable. That might
| be 9 concerts, or 2, or even a thousand concerts if you're
| talking about a city like Los Vegas.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| This was my thought as well. We keep hearing about how
| artists are struggling to make money on album sales thanks to
| the rise of spotify and the demise of CD sales. Wouldn't
| playing the same venue for a week+ means less inter-city
| travel, less work tearing up/down the stages, and a lot of
| income from steady ticket sales?
| mrWiz wrote:
| How do you decide that demand is high enough? Do you book the
| next stop in the tour a few days later assuming that demand
| is high enough for more shows, and then end up paying the
| roadies to sit around when the demand isn't high enough?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _How do you decide that demand is high enough?_
|
| Same way they decide if visiting a city is worth it in the
| first place? I'm not an event coordinator or tour scheduler
| so I don't know, but it seems like it should be possible.
| [deleted]
| pbreit wrote:
| And primary sale concerts tickets for even semi-popular artists
| are still way under-priced.
| bena wrote:
| Yeah. The problem is really scarcity. A venue can only hold so
| many people. And one of the easier ways to filter out people is
| to price the item so that only so many would buy a ticket.
|
| That's essentially what scalpers are taking advantage of.
| They're betting that the ticket will sell for more than the
| cost to someone, they just have to find that person.
|
| If tickets were $5 or whatever is deemed reasonable, that
| doesn't mean more people can go, it means a slightly different
| group of people will go.
| raldi wrote:
| If an artist wanted to allocate tickets by lottery at lower
| than market price, they would need a solution that would
| prevent ticket brokers from vacuuming them up and reselling
| them at market rate.
|
| For instance, at time of sale (or signing up for a lottery
| ticket) they could ask for your name and then check everyone's
| ID at the door to make sure it's a match -- just like airlines
| do. But this would introduce long delays.
|
| Another option would be an app that used FaceID at time of
| lottery signup and then again to pull up a barcode to display
| at the gate, to make sure it's the same face.
| redthrow wrote:
| > allocate tickets by lottery at lower than market price
|
| I think that's what Kid Rock does for the best seats in the
| first row, while selling the rest at market rate
|
| Kid Rock Vs. The Scalpers
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/20/475023002/epis.
| ..
| xeromal wrote:
| This is just my shower thoughts, but I think it's because
| getting tickets for the past century has been getting in line
| early / getting lucky, but now it's just whoever is the richest
| wins.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| In practice, can't rich people just pay people to stand in
| queues on their behalf and acquire tickets the same way?
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, we're on hackernews so I assume most people on here
| are making a healthy dev salary so hopefully my comment
| isn't in bad taste, but I've done that with TaskRabbit.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Feeling bad about paying for this kind of thing is one of
| the differences between the upper-middle class and
| higher, and the middle and lower.
|
| Me, my upbringing was at least as much Fussell's "Prole"
| as his "Middle", so I don't even feel right having
| contractors do stuff on my house. Feels weird to pay
| people to do shit I could do, while I'm working or just
| fucking around or playing with my kids or whatever. I
| always feel like I ought to be helping. Took me a _long_
| time to stop feeling really uncomfortable having a
| cleaner come in every couple weeks. Still not totally OK
| with it, even years in.
|
| I think some of this plays into success in business.
| Probably easier to climb the ladder (or just start higher
| on it) or start a business when you find it totally
| natural and ordinary to pay people to do stuff for you.
|
| TaskRabbit and such are just... I guess, "democratizing"
| (seems especially wrong in this case) the same shit rich
| people have always done. Making it accessible a rung or
| two lower than it used to be. It makes me feel gross, but
| so does the other stuff that's not some new tech-enabled
| thing.
| svachalek wrote:
| More or less what scalpers are.
| m000 wrote:
| No, it's not. If there's a cap for how many tickets you
| can buy, you need 100 persons to buy (100 * cap) tickets.
| This doesn't scale the way electronic scalping does.
| bombcar wrote:
| In the era before electronic scalping, they'd do exactly
| that (get a bunch of people together, you could often buy
| two or five tickets) and/or cycle through multiple times.
| redox99 wrote:
| This is a typical comparison between capitalism and
| communism. In capitalist countries, given a scarce resource,
| what determines who gets it is generally money. In the USSR
| this was often determined by queues. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.qminder.com/blog/queue-management/queues-in-
| ussr...
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Well queues for proletariat and magic vouchers for the
| actual commies that would allow them skip that nonsense.
| antihero wrote:
| It's a bad thing because it makes music entirely unaffordable
| to poor people as opposed to having the initial offering as
| somewhat affordable and fair.
|
| Electronic events, especially the more independent ones,
| release tickets in ever more expensive batches, eventually
| hitting them market rate.
|
| Also systems that lock you to buying a fixed amount of tickets
| and then being only able to sell them for what you paid such as
| with RA Guide and STEP (for a burner event, Nowhere).
|
| Allowing those with financial privilege access at the expense
| of those without us fundamentally antithetical to music and
| art.
| seneca wrote:
| > Allowing those with financial privilege access at the
| expense of those without us fundamentally antithetical to
| music and art.
|
| No, it's really not. There have never been many peasants
| going to the opera houses of the world. And it's not at the
| expense of the poor, it's quite literally at their own
| expense.
|
| All that is happening here is that technology has allowed the
| market to directly determine prices, rather than artists and
| venues guessing at what the market will bare. It only means
| poor people will be priced out so long as artists as a group
| don't react to the increased demand. Likely "elite"
| performers will be able to always demand these premium prices
| but a lesser tier, and those past their prime, will perform
| at prices poorer consumers will be able to afford.
|
| What we see now is the result of extremely high demand (there
| are a lot more people in the US than there used to be)
| meeting limited supply, and new technology allowing for more
| market efficiency. The poor people who used to be able to get
| lucky and buy tickets well under market value are certainly
| going to be less happy, but that has nothing to do with some
| moral requirement for music.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Is there a better solution?
|
| The other option is to prevent ticket resales (except through
| the original ticketing website at face value). This arguably
| leads to a more equitable distribution of tickets as your
| ability to buy tickets isn't dependent on how wealthy you are.
|
| > Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert
| tickets, wouldn't they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for
| the same reason?
|
| Not necessarily. It would presumably depend on the preference
| of the artists (who would choose which ticketing company they
| use). I see two models being popular: one with dynamic pricing
| where the extra money in paid to the artists. One with fixes
| pricing. I can't see any artists freely choosing a model with
| dynamic pricing where the ticketing company pockets the
| difference.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This isn't better for the artists or venues because they're
| leaving money on the table. Dynamic pricing means artist and
| production share the money scalpers used to make.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'd argue it's better for artists, because more people get
| a chance to see their shows.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Tickets are usually sold by the venue through a vendor (ie
| Ticketmaster, seat geek,etc) not by the artist. This way the
| venue's box office/event staff only have to learn one
| ticketing system.(and they easily can sell venue specific
| add-ons like parking)
| tylermenezes wrote:
| Ticketmaster has exclusive agreements with most large music
| venues, artists have no real choice. (I have booked large
| venues before.)
| throwaway49274 wrote:
| And the REAL real problem is that the market will bare a lot. I
| once sold tickets for a Die Antwoord concert I couldn't attend
| due to illness. I advertised the tickets on Craigslist for $100
| for both, the retail cost being $50 each.
|
| But when I arrived at the venue to sell the tickets, the buyer
| put $200 in front of my face assuming I had meant $100 EACH. My
| greed got to me and I took the money.
|
| My conclusion was, ticket buying is not rational, and the
| ticket market is extremely liquid, so without tying tickets to
| an identity like airline tickets there isn't a good solution.
| technoooooost wrote:
| Solution: become a death metalhead. Top bands are 20$
| nordsieck wrote:
| > The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing
| more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's
| obviously not viable for everyone.
|
| I think a big part of the problem is: it's challenging to
| estimate the demand for events. It's just less risky to
| consistently underestimate than over estimate. A sold out venue
| is annoying to fans who can't attend or who have to play a lot.
| But an under-attended event can be financially bad for the
| performer (depending on how deals are structured).
|
| Combine that with the limited number of venues that can
| accommodate large audiences, and I think it's generally not
| surprising that this is a persistent problem.
|
| I think there is a good solution; it just takes more work on
| the part of the performer: ticket pre-pre-sales. If the
| performer can "sell" all/most of their tickets before they even
| start talking to Ticketmaster, that should give better control
| over pricing since they can "rightsize" the number of
| performances they do in each place.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| You're right. The strategy Brooks is taking (based on what
| the linked article in the linked article says) is that he
| announces a set of shows. If they sell out and the secondary
| market prices are very high, he adds another set of shows.
| And then keeps doing that over and over again.
|
| The problem for his fanbase is that there is no reliable way
| of knowing whether another set of shows is going to be added.
| So you have to gamble on whether to wait for another show to
| be announced or to buy the tickets on the resale site.
|
| Some factors affecting the situation include the fact that
| the band is scheduled to be in another city on some near-
| future date, as well as the fact that the venue is scheduled
| to host a different band/event on a near-future date.
|
| The Garth Brooks solution isn't really a solution but it does
| make things a little better.
|
| Pre-pre sales are also something that will help, as you
| mention.
|
| But ultimately, without some sort of legislation, there is
| almost certainly no solution to the "problem" of a band
| choosing not to maximize revenue.
| bombcar wrote:
| The absolute amount of logistics required for a show is
| tremendous, and if you look at a tour schedule you'll often
| see that it's absolutely packed - no time to add in extra
| shows if others sell out.
|
| This is why the artists will have fan clubs and such, it can
| greatly help them determine what they could sell and how many
| shows. Sometimes you can switch to another venue in the same
| city, but that only works when they're both owned by the same
| company, usually. And it other cases you can open up more
| "seating" but that really only works when playing to
| stadiums.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I noticed when Rammstein announced their European tour
| recently, there was one show listed in Denmark. On the day
| tickets went on sale, there was a second date at the same
| stadium.
|
| I assume that's a response to uncertain demand.
| mariebks wrote:
| This is why I think concerts might be a killer app in the
| Metaverse. Imagine you could attend a super immersive and
| compelling concert experience with your headset and a special
| audio setup for $5, and for that price, millions upon millions
| of people could attend. The artists could still make tons of
| money since so many people can go at a low price. The only
| problem I think would be that concerts could be VR "videos"
| that could easily be pirated and shared, since a digital
| livestream may not matter as much as going in person.
| macNchz wrote:
| Since the topic here is Blink-182... I grew up listening to
| them and managed to go to a special show of theirs in a very
| small (for them) venue in NYC about 10 years ago. I'm
| optimistic about the future of VR, but the only aspect of
| that show that I think would benefit from it was the
| experience of getting to see the band members up close with
| just a general admission ticket, since they usually play
| giant arenas.
|
| Everything else about it was a multi-sensory experience that
| I think would be totally flat in even the most advanced VR
| systems: the electric buzz running through the crowd at the
| opening notes to their biggest hit songs, the mass of people
| pressing together to get close to the stage, jumping up and
| down together to the beat, hundreds of others around you
| screaming along to the lyrics of their favorite songs, people
| crowd surfing, friends bringing over one too many rounds of
| beers, the band interacting with the crowd as a whole,
| feeding off the energy of the room...
|
| Overall I'm not even a huge fan of live music, but it's hard
| for me to imagine a VR experience that captures all of the
| energy and human revelry of a great concert.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing
| more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's
| obviously not viable for everyone. Is there a better solution?
| Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert
| tickets, wouldnt they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for
| the same reason?
|
| It's a little more complicated when you realize that
| Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, a conglomerate which has
| bought out most of the major performance venues over the years.
| Many bands (including Blink 182, I believe) get contracted to
| Live Nation for the entirety of a tour, which means that they
| will only be performing in venues that Live Nation owns and
| operates, using Live Nation's ticketing system (Ticketmaster)
| and accepting all of the terms and issues that come along with
| that.
|
| As a condition of the 2010 merger, Live Nation promised the US
| Justice Department not to retaliate against venues that
| partnered with other ticketing providers until 2020. Because
| they violated that agreement, it was extended until 2025. You
| can look at that as "Live Nation is legally prohibited from
| retaliating against other venues", or you can look at it as
| "Live Nation has already demonstrated that they will leverage
| monopoly power in flagrant violation of the law, and in 2 years
| they will be permitted to with no recourse". Both are true.
|
| You can refuse to use Ticketmaster, but that means likely
| getting locked out of most of the venues you'd want to perform
| at - both the ones owned by Ticketmaster/Live Nation and the
| ones that have an exclusive contract with them (ie, _de facto_
| owned by Ticketmaster /Live Nation).
|
| Look at how things went for Pearl Jam, and realize that
| Ticketmaster/Live Nation has even _more_ of a vertically
| integrated monopoly now than they did 30 years ago.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think some artists would prefer to have an audience of
| teenagers and megafans (usually people without a lot of money)
| to a bunch of MBAs and professionals who can actually afford
| the tickets at market rates. Pure supply and demand is great if
| you don't care about who is your clientele but audiences are
| not undifferentiated.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah, it seems to be a good strategy to build a following by
| offering tickets to kids for cheaper.
|
| It also makes sense that as a band gets older, they might not
| be as incentivized to do so. How many new Blink-182 fans are
| there in 2022? I assume these guys are primarily worried
| about making sure they have enough cash in their kids'
| college funds and and making sure their retirement accounts
| are in really good shape (no shade intended, these are
| important concerns).
| jonas21 wrote:
| And as the band gets older, their fanbase gets older too. I
| wouldn't be surprised if many more Blink-182 fans are
| MBAs/professionals than teenagers these days.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Not understanding how everything has to follow ultra-
| capitalism-free-market capitalism rules.. especially if the
| original artist/seller doesn't want it.
|
| Fixed fair prices for such a thing and just first-come first-
| serve is imo the right thing. E.g. my soccer club has much more
| demand than places, you can sell your ticket, but selling for
| higher prices is forbidden. That's good, because it is for the
| people and not the riches.
|
| Please just not shrug every problem off with "what's bad here,
| only riches now can have that"..
| bombcar wrote:
| But how do they prevent selling for higher prices?
|
| Thing like "I'll give you $50 tomorrow if you sell me your
| ticket today for the sticker price"?
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Over half of them is season tickets where reselling when
| you cannot go is well supported via their platform.
|
| Either way you buy ticket as a registered buyer and it is
| so frowned upon that anyone going into anywhere public for
| profit resale would risk to loose their season or right to
| buy.
|
| Sure, nothing is 100% and also no solution for one time
| concerts - but just wanted to say regulation and fair
| prices sometimes make sense.. tickets for $1000 is nuts I'm
| glad this hasn't materializd here (yet?)
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Now the extra money that used to go to scalpers goes to TM
| instead, [...] Isnt this...not a bad thing? _
|
| The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it
| stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase,
| leading to your fanbase ageing. This is what happens to opera
| houses and similar institutions - they 'market price' the
| tickets to $150 then find all their customers are in their 60s.
|
| Of course, for a band it might be less of a problem than for an
| institution - the band ages at the same rate the fans do, after
| all. And merely offering $50 tickets that get brought by
| scalpers and resold for $150 doesn't solve the problem.
| petercooper wrote:
| _The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it
| stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase,
| leading to your fanbase ageing_
|
| Totally a tangent, but I've noticed this with sports cars in
| recent years. The companies like to portray an image of
| glamorous professionals driving their cars and most times I
| see a Ferrari or a Porsche nowadays a more typical, older
| person is behind the wheel. I'm not judging if that's a good
| or bad thing, but I find it amusing versus the branding
| image. Could, too, all the fans at a highly priced Taylor
| Swift concert end up being 50+? :-)
| bombcar wrote:
| Not all of them, but certainly a good amount.
|
| Fans often age with the artist, and the same with cars
| somewhat.
|
| Younger people (teenagers) will get to the concerts on
| their parent's dime, and many will go toward newer artists.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I've seen Muse at least 25 times and have paid face value for
| tickets when buying them direct through TM for almost all of
| those times. I saw them first in 2006 for about $25-$35 at
| Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC for the Black Holes tour. Since
| then, they've become more and more popular, causing ticket
| prices to go up. Totally fair. With their 2023 Will of the
| People tour, dynamic pricing essentially sets the floor of
| ticket prices much, much higher. I'm seeing 200-level seats
| starting at $150 per ticket at some venues. Apparently that was
| the point where I'm fine with just completely missing the tour.
| I suppose the system works in that regard.
|
| The specific implementation of it is also not great. TM has you
| wait in a queue to select seats; the position in which is
| randomly assigned. This is to protect the servers from the
| thundering herd. (Lousy but fair.) When you finally make it in,
| you need to choose your seats and book as fast as possible,
| because dynamic pricing can cause the seats you selected to
| move up in price while you are selecting them, and the
| implementation doesn't let you OK it and move on, you have to
| essentially hope you choose and confirm before the price you
| locked in goes up. If you don't, it says, "sorry, the prices
| have gone up since you started, please choose new seats." This
| is both a super crappy UX and it ensures that they milk every
| last cent from people, as you can't lock in a price by moving
| quickly.
|
| The thing is, I'm not sure if the dynamic pricing floor ever
| gets dropped. Are they fine with not selling out venues because
| the people get priced out? Or do we wait on the secondary
| market to try to push prices back as demand recedes?
|
| The previous system sucked quite a bit with scalpers. However,
| the new system seems like it brings a whole new set of problems
| with it and it has made me question whether I even like going
| to concerts at all. Maybe I just don't care much anymore and
| this is a bridge too far. I don't know.
| bombcar wrote:
| The "fair" method would be to reliably slice tickets into
| ticket classes (location, etc) and then let people select the
| tickets from the slice they want, and then basically do a
| reverse auction and set all the prices for that slice to
| whatever would sell them out exactly.
|
| However, this leaves money on the table (if there are five
| seats, and ten people, and the fifth highest amount paid
| would be $10, then they get $50, even if one person would pay
| $500 for a ticket).
| datadata wrote:
| Dynamic pricing isn't the issue here, the issue is that the
| extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to
| ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| If artists took home the extra profits, there would be more
| incentive for the market to provide more quality artists, more
| concerts, and cheaper prices, supply would meet demand.
|
| But since the profits go to ticketmaster, ticketmaster might
| not even have higher total earnings if it increased supply, as
| prices might decrease faster. Higher supply of concerts would
| also give opportunities for competitors to ticketmaster to
| emerge, as it would have to control a bigger market.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _issue is that the extra profits generated by dynamic
| pricing are going to ticketmaster rather than to artists_
|
| Ticketmaster claims "promoters and artist representatives set
| pricing strategy and price range parameters on all tickets,
| including dynamic and fixed price points" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.ticketnews.com/2022/07/springsteen-manager-
| fires...
| jandrese wrote:
| "Artist representatives" is a suspiciously vague term.
| wdr1 wrote:
| Some artists are large enough & successful enough that
| they don't need promoters.
| trynewideas wrote:
| Especially when the article itself notes that LiveNation
| often also represents the artists.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I don't know how it all works behind the scenes but my
| guess is that artists just dont want to be blamed for
| charging their fans a ton?
|
| Ultimately if one ticketing company offers a band 200k to
| perform a night and another company offers 150k then
| every band is going to go with the 200k - even if there
| is a dynamic pricing model for the fans.
| jandrese wrote:
| What is the "other company" in this example?
| fasthands9 wrote:
| The last time I bought concert tickets it was through
| Vivid Seats. The last NFL game I went to was through
| StubHub.
|
| Its my understanding that some NFL actually has an
| official deal to sell through Ticketmaster first - though
| presumably any of these other companies could have that
| deal if they paid the NFL more.
|
| FWIW I do think ticket convenience fees should be
| eliminated (or made so they have to be listed upfront)
| and this would be good for transparency - but I am also
| pretty sure that doing so would ultimately just raise
| listed prices.
| [deleted]
| dleather wrote:
| From an economic perspective, dynamic pricing maximizing
| total welfare. Those with the highest person values get to
| see the concert, without the middle-man making money.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| ethagknight wrote:
| Can you provide a source that Ticketmaster keeps extra money?
| I would find that unlikely.
| chucksta wrote:
| Ticket Master charged you to print out your own tickets and
| you think it's unlikely they are keeping more profits? I'm
| sure the artist is getting more this way through their
| standard percentage so they see it as win too either way
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| The parent comment is obviously asking for evidence that
| Ticketmaster keeps _all_ the extra profit
| Animats wrote:
| So what are performers saying? Assuming they're allowed
| to say anything. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (ticker
| symbol LYV) often acts as the artist's agent, as well as
| the venue's agent and the ticketing service. Performers
| are now contract employees of Live Nation. So they may
| not be allowed to criticize Live Nation.
|
| The funny thing is, LYV, having achieved a near monopoly
| over ticketing, venues, and performers, loses money.
| [deleted]
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| 1. the tickets are sold by TicketMaster using dynamic
| pricing to extract the maximum price per ticket
|
| 2. the concerts are held in almost exclusively TM venues,
| leading to #1
|
| 3. the concerts are produced by LiveNation, which is TM,
| leading to #2
|
| 4. the bands are more and more often signed to LN for their
| tours, leading to #3
|
| if you need more info you can do your own research.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 0. The tickets not sold by TicketMaster dynamics pricing
| are resold on StubHub. (Aka TicketMaster)
|
| TicketMaster can extort the performer for a bigger cut
| because if the performer takes no action, TicketMaster
| gets the resale, and the performer gets nothing.
| TicketMaster owns the data, so they can negotiate the
| dynamic royalty more efficiently and get a yield better
| than resale.
| boringg wrote:
| Is this a serious comment? I can't believe that this is a
| serious comment.
| function_seven wrote:
| No artist is going to price their tickets at $50 face
| value, then shrug when TM sells them for $500 and keeps
| the additional $450 for themselves.
|
| Of course Ticketmaster isn't just keeping all the extra
| money. They're probably splitting that with the performer
| as well.
| boringg wrote:
| You do understand that Ticketmaster has an effective
| monopoly and has a past history of sketchy business
| practices. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they
| pocketed it themselves or a large majority of it. It
| would be completely congruent with their business
| practices.
| function_seven wrote:
| Yeah I know TM is sketchy and monopolistic. That doesn't
| mean they have the leverage to take _90%_ of the money
| for themselves. The artists would raise the face value of
| their tickets to recapture it if it were as simple as
| that.
|
| We don't know what the details are on how the money is
| divvied up, but I do know that artists must be getting
| upside on this dynamic pricing.
| boringg wrote:
| Actually thats exactly whats this means.
| Monopolistic/monopoly allows them to capture what they
| want without risk.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| > That doesn't mean they have the leverage to take 90% of
| the money for themselves
|
| Listen, that's _exactly_ what they have. The music
| business mostly exists to screw artists out of money made
| from their work, probably more now than ever.
|
| The artist signs a contract to pay for X dollars, that's
| what they get and they have no leverage whatsoever to go
| after that upside. Ticketmaster would have to share the
| data about the dynamic pricing in the first place and
| they are NOT doing that.
| citilife wrote:
| Depends how it works, just as an example (not what they
| are doing) if ticket master guarantees X seats for Y
| price. Then the band might be fine with ticket master
| doing what every they wish -- there's no risk to the
| band.
|
| Granted the band probably negotiated minimums and a cut.
| Remember, you also have the venue, security, traffic,
| marketing, etc. There's a lot involved with these kind of
| events.
| executive wrote:
| there is risk to the band. die hard poor fans cannot
| attend.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| If an artist wants to play a big venue and make money by
| volume, then they need to grin and bear it.
|
| Because TicketMaster/LiveNation own most of the large
| music venues in the country. And if you don't use them in
| a "vertical stack" you don't get to play those venues.
|
| And even at $50/ticket, you make money a lot faster in a
| 25,000 seat arena than you do trying to play 15 nights at
| an "intimate" theater (hey, guess what, TM/LN own a huge
| swathe of those too).
|
| We complain on HN about tech "monopolies" (or debate
| their existence, at least). TM/LN is a much larger
| effective monopoly that, to my knowledge, has not had any
| real investigation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If an artist wants to play a big venue and make money
| by volume, then they need to grin and bear it_
|
| Blink-182 is not in this category.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Why? Because they're "too big"?
|
| Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen will tell you a similar
| story.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen will tell you a
| similar story_
|
| Springsteen's team is defending dynamic pricing [1], with
| Ticketmaster claiming "promoters and artist
| representatives set pricing strategy and price range
| parameters on all tickets, including dynamic and fixed
| price points."
|
| [1] https://www.ticketnews.com/2022/07/springsteen-
| manager-fires...
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| From what I can tell, using Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing
| is a choice the artist can make (or the artist's company,
| or some business entity), and assuming the artist's
| contract is such that they get a percentage of ticket
| sales, the ticket price is the dynamically calculated
| price, so the artist does get more money for a dynamically
| priced seat.
| pbreit wrote:
| That seems pretty obvious. I don't know why anyone would
| think differently.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| If the artist chooses not to partner with ticketmaster,
| they will just buy the tickets at retail and scalp them.
| This is why you hear about so many shows selling out in
| the first five minutes. It's not real people buying them,
| it's ticketmaster bots.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Knowing Ticketmaster's past actions, I find it highly
| likely. But I would appreciate a source too.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Why do artists sign with TM / Live Nation? Because they
| know Live Nation will make them the most money for the
| least hassle and risk. Artists may also lack a little
| creativity on what a fan experience looks like. more on
| that below.
|
| I dislike Ticketmaster as much as the next person, but no
| one is holding a gun to Blink-182 to come out and perform
| in a nationwide tour with TM taking all the upside. I just
| can't fathom that negotiation taking place, unless TM was
| also guaranteeing revenue to the band, i.e. taking downside
| risk. Theres no point to that. Also, yes, LiveNation
| controls an impressive number of venues, but they dont
| control all the venues, not be a long shot. If the TM deal
| was such a raw deal for artists, nothing prevents artists
| from just hosting their own concerts in publicly owned
| venues, setting up longer term performance residences in
| interesting locations, or expanding the fan experience from
| the tired formula of "opener act, 2x 1-hour sets, and an
| encore" to something better like a collaborative fan
| experience over a whole weekend. Plenty of opportunity for
| creativity on the artist's part that would make the artist
| less money in a night but yield a potentially waaaay better
| lifestyle and creative process.
|
| At the end of it, Live Nation is a publicly traded company,
| but not a very attractive one. Lots of debt, rapidly
| increasing labor costs on the event hosting side, household
| budgets getting a major squeeze which will impact
| entertainment spend.
| relaxing wrote:
| Ticketmaster has exclusive deals with the venues.
| bin_bash wrote:
| The article doesn't say this at all. In fact it says the
| artists are making a lot of money here (though I can't find
| any details on rev-share or anything).
|
| > Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for
| itself and for artists, but also worse for the average fan:
| It has simply jacked up ticket prices for certain high-
| profile events to a level where all tickets are more-or-less
| priced at the maximum level that the secondary market would
| normally bear
| jandrese wrote:
| On the face of it Ticketmaster has very little incentive to
| pay artists more. They have an effective monopoly on large
| venues and ticket sales at this point, not to mention radio
| advertising and promotion, so it's not like the artists
| have a competitor to switch to. It's not like Blink-182 is
| going to just stop touring.
|
| Once you get big enough you are pretty much forced to get
| into bed with Ticketmaster and take whatever deal they
| offer.
| wdr1 wrote:
| Ticketmaster doesn't pay the artist.
|
| The tickets are owned by the promoter. The promoter is
| one who pays the artist.
|
| People often underestimate how risky live events are, as
| whey they think about a concert they think about U2, Jay
| Z or other major artists.
|
| In reality, less than 50% of live events sell out.
|
| And there's a fair bit of risk in putting them on. You
| need to layout the initial capital for things like venues
| (far from cheaps) and artists often want to get paid a
| minimum amount, regardless of ticket sales. The promoter
| needs to figure out how to market & get butts in seats --
| including how to effectively price tickets, etc.
|
| Artists typically don't want to deal with all that. They
| just want to produce their art.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If I wanted tickets to blink182 I'd DDG blink182, which
| obviously has blink182.com as the top result.
|
| I'd then click "book tickets". That might be a link to
| ticketmaster, but it could be a link to seetickets or any
| other ticket system.
|
| If blink182 used seetickets, and I wanted to go to their
| concert, even if I went to ticketmaster, once I found
| that I couldn't buy a ticket, I'd go elsewhere.
| jandrese wrote:
| If Blink182 used Seetickets they wouldn't be playing in
| any of those large venues and wouldn't be getting radio
| airtime plugging their tour.
| iso1631 wrote:
| So the ticketmaster product is better for the customer
| (blink182), doesn't mean there's no competition.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Citation needed, seriously.
|
| There are so many comments in here saying dynamic pricing
| is screwing over artists but it seems like a huge win for
| them since it doesn't result in tickets being sold in
| secondary markets where they can't capture the margins.
|
| Mark Hoppus has a complaint about the _experience_ of
| dynamic pricing but note that he isn't complaining about
| the actual prices.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's impossible to know. Ticketmaster is opaque and the
| artists are under NDAs. However, if you think about it
| logically what incentive does Ticketmaster have to pass
| on the profits to the artists? The deck is hugely stacked
| in their favor and the artists don't have a lot to
| negotiate with. It's not like they're going to switch to
| a competitor. The most they can do is threaten to not
| tour or tour only in small to medium venues--and even
| those medium venues are getting gobbled up by TM.
|
| To be fair, I'm sure artists like Blink-182 are still
| getting a decent chunk of change from the tour,
| especially from merch sales. But I also think
| Ticketmaster/Livenation is feeing them like mad and
| walking away with the lion's share of the revenue.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Is that because ticket master owns most of the venues or
| is it some legality thing? I don't understand why artists
| have to use ticket master
| mywittyname wrote:
| They own some venues, but certainly not "most" of them.
| Think about who owns all of the sports stadiums in your
| city (the ones where mega artists would play), it's not
| TM.
|
| It is very convenient for venue owners to let TM handle
| ticketing for the events. TM handles more than just
| sports and concert tickets. Since so many forms of live
| entertainment use TM, the company can bring in a lot of
| events to fill in off-season time. So an arena can host
| basketball & concerts on the weekend, then fill the
| weekdays with minor things like dirt bike races.
| jandrese wrote:
| The sports stadiums are owned by LiveNation not
| Ticketmaster, so you are correct. But also wrong at the
| same time.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Stadiums are generally owned by the team(s) that play in
| them and/or the city. Live Nation doesn't own any
| stadiums that I'm aware of, but they _do_ own
| Ticketmaster.
| mywittyname wrote:
| No, Live Nation owns/leases small/midsize places like
| House of Blues. But they don't own the Honda Center.
| That's owned by the City of Anaheim. When Jay Z comes to
| down, he's not playing the House of Blues.
|
| This situation repeats in practically every major metro.
| The massive arenas are probably owned by the city, or
| _maybe_ the owner of the team that plays in them.
|
| Which goes back into my argument, they own _some_ venues.
| But not all of them, and certainly not the major arenas
| that mega artists play in.
| googlryas wrote:
| I don't really understand how it is worse for the average
| fan. It's worse for the average fan who might have won the
| lottery in getting a face-value ticket, but on average, the
| average fan doesn't actually get a face-value ticket even
| if scalping didn't happen, since demand >> supply, so
| nothing is different for them.
|
| Generally, tickets sell out immediately, and then scalpers
| set the price. The average fan has very little chance to
| get a face-value ticket since they are gone as soon as
| they're released. You also have the situation where the
| average fan who gets lucky with a ticket then has to do the
| calculus of "I got lucky buying 4x$55 tickets, should I
| sell them $7k instead of going to the show?"
| pcarolan wrote:
| Ticketmaster's primary value prop is a heat shield for
| artists. The artists get to blame Ticketmaster while charging
| the highest market clearing price, and Ticketmaster gets to
| make a nice profit being the 'bad guys'.
|
| If the status quo was really a problem for the big artists
| (not all) then alternatives would emerge.
|
| If you want to learn all about it, this book does a good job:
| https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-
| Scalp...
| relaxing wrote:
| There are plenty of alternatives, that are cut out of the
| big venues due to Ticketmaster's monopolist behavior.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to
| ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| The artists get paid. Even back in the days "scalpers" were
| largely selling tickets that artists ear-marked to be sold at
| market prices. It gave them cover for high ticket prices by
| selling a few at "official" prices, while letting them earn
| market value on most tickets sold.
|
| And anything the scalpers couldn't sell would be put back on
| ticketmaster at the official list price. And people would get
| an email about how they "found" more tickets to a show.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to
| ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| Yeah I don't think that's true?
|
| My understanding is that even a portion of the "service fee"
| TM charges also goes to the artists.
|
| One of the most important services that TM provides is they
| are a scape goat. Artists can charge crazy high prices and TM
| takes the blame. They're willing to be the bad guy.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not entirely true and mostly untrue. A few artists can
| demand a piece but only a handful.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I do not believe you are correct.
|
| The money is split between Ticketmaster, venue, promoter,
| and artist.
|
| Can you provide any numbers of any kind? I certainly
| can't find specifics. So it's no evidence versus no
| evidence.
|
| I know TM has a near monopoly. But I personally think
| they have that monopoly because they're willing to be the
| bad guy everyone blames for high ticket prices.
|
| I think logic dictates that artists would not opt-in to
| dynamic pricing, and yes it is optional, unless they see
| upside.
|
| LiveNations quarterly earnings states: "With market-based
| pricing being widely adopted by most tours, we expect to
| shift over $500M from the secondary market to artists
| this year". It's hard to tell what percentage that is.
| olalonde wrote:
| > Dynamic pricing isn't the issue here, the issue is that the
| extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to
| ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| If that's a problem for artists then why do artists chose to
| do business with ticketmaster? Selling tickets isn't exactly
| high tech...
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Artists don't choose to work with Ticket master. Pearl Jam
| and the Justice Department tried to beat them some time
| ago. It's a great story to check out if you're curious
| about how this industry works.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't think most people know how the touring business
| works, or in general the music industry. TM has built an
| integrated monopoly that means if you want to play the
| one big venue your city likely has, you need to work with
| TM, which now means you likely have LN producing your
| entire tour.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Pearl Jam fought Ticketmaster in the 90s and it forced them
| into a weird career route. This has been going on that
| long.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| After merging with Live Nation it is so much worse. The
| TM monopoly now extends all the way down to producing the
| tours
| jxf wrote:
| Sometimes the artist doesn't get a choice (e.g. a
| particular venue wants to use Ticketmaster because
| Ticketmaster will let them bolt on venue fees).
| rglover wrote:
| If I had to bet, Ticketmaster has lock-in agreements with
| venues (especially arenas) that only allow tickets to be
| sold through them exclusively.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Absolutely. That's of course when they don't just own the
| venue outright, themselves, which they often do.
| lelandfe wrote:
| This is correct. Most large venues have these lock-in
| contracts. They're defined under terms like "primary
| ticket provider" or "ticketing partner"
|
| Eg. https://www.barclayscenter.com/news/detail/seatgeek-
| to-becom...
| olalonde wrote:
| We could say they choose Ticketmaster indirectly by
| choosing the venues that have exclusive Ticketmaster
| deals. Couldn't they pick non Ticketmaster venues if they
| thought those venues offered them a bad deal?
| bombcar wrote:
| The number of venues that are non-Ticketmaster is
| relatively small, especially for larger acts.
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-
| news/liv...
|
| The reality of the matter is that a artist has much more
| to worry about than what Ticketmaster handles, and they
| provide a service that is useful, especially when it can
| all be rolled up into the "venue costs".
| stryan wrote:
| Between TicketMaster and LiveNation (same company) the
| number of non-affiliated venues is slim these days.
| Kikagaku Moyo just did their farewell tour and refused to
| use any TM venues forcing them to pretty much only play
| at smaller indie venues.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| A typical city only has a single venue large enough for a
| group by Blink-182, Springsteen or Garth Brooks. They are
| almost universally TM affliated venues, and now with the
| LiveNation combo promote their own artists on LN-produced
| tours.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > the issue is that the extra profits generated by dynamic
| pricing are going to ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| the article doesn't say anything about this
|
| > If artists took home the extra profits
|
| Do you have any evidence to show that they do not? they
| definitely weren't under the previous model, because it was
| the secondary market where prices were getting set
| "dynamically". But now that it's happening in the primary
| market, aren't the artists paid out on a % basis?
| wdr1 wrote:
| > Dynamic pricing isn't the issue here, the issue is that the
| extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to
| ticketmaster rather than to artists.
|
| No.
|
| This is just wrong. Pricing & fees are determined by the
| promoter and/or the artist. Ticketmaster takes a cut, but the
| tickets are owned by the promoter. The promoter has the final
| say in how revenue is shared with everyone -- including the
| artist & Ticketmaster.
| brentm wrote:
| A typical artist deal with a promoter would include an 85%
| (artist) / 15% split of profit after a pre-negotiated split
| point which covers the costs of producing & marketing a show
| for the promoter. I've never seen a full LiveNation tour
| agreement and perhaps they could have bought out Blink for
| each show with a different style deal but I'd be surprised if
| that still didn't include some upside for dynamic pricing
| otherwise why would the artist ever agree to do it? Everyone
| knows $600 tickets aren't exactly popular but this is a
| business and if that's what they're going for a secondaries
| anyway it's better for the artist to collect the cash in my
| opinion.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The key point is the ondemand pricing is not included in
| artist's take home generally.
|
| Why use Live Nation? As Pearl Jam has taught us: Artists
| are limited by venues and venues are either owned or have a
| deal with live nation. Not going through ticketmaster/live
| nation means not playing the Gardens in New York or most
| other large venues where you will have to settle for a
| warehouse in Jersey instead. A huge monopoly exists that
| requires an uber like attack on the industry or government
| intervention.
| mox1 wrote:
| Are you certain about this? Why on earth would Blink-182
| (or their people / record label / etc) agree to this
| deal?
|
| Are you saying these big A++ acts are signing deals with
| TicketMaster saying "yea sell em for whatever you want,
| we just need $X / ticket?"
| relaxing wrote:
| Because the alternative is being relegated to venues too
| small to hold their fan base.
| fragmede wrote:
| that's the whole point of the complaint about Ticket
| Master. The artist's don't really have a choice in the
| matter. What are they going to do? go somewhere else?
| parineum wrote:
| > What are they going to do? go somewhere else?
|
| Yes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AXS_(company)
| mike503 wrote:
| Why do you consider AXS any better than TM?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| TM is smarter than that. They've always given kickbacks to
| the artists to keep (most of) them quiet.
| jmacd wrote:
| This is not dynamic pricing. This is a price ratchet based on
| diminishing inventory. There may be an algorithm at work here,
| but it would be superfluous. All they need to do is set
| thresholds that increase the price over a known quantity of
| tickets.
|
| Dynamic pricing works as a mechanism to bring more supply to
| bear. You can't do that with concert tickets. The only way it
| would work with concert tickets would be that as an individual
| concert's seats started to sell at a certain velocity, then
| another concert would be added for the following night. That
| would bring new capacity online, which would bring the market
| back in to "balance". This would go until there was no more
| demand. Their result would be the maximum number of total tickets
| would be sold at the maximum price possible. That is different
| from "15,000 tickets sold at the highest price possible".
|
| This is nothing more than a way to disguise a significant price
| increase.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I'd like a mix, please...
|
| 20% of the tickets are sold in an auction or some ridiculous
| market like that.
|
| And 80% of the tickets are sold on a non-transferable basis, in a
| lottery. (Where maybe you can buy a +1 ticket, but the first one
| is non-transferable.)
|
| If a band wants a different mix of money vs luck, or the number
| of +1s you can bring, they can set it differently.
| theragra wrote:
| Finally, i scrolled to exact my thoughts. Don't understand why
| people above discuss obvious things, and not this approach.
| lukew3 wrote:
| How do you make a non-transferable ticket?
| lukew3 wrote:
| Answering my own question here, but maybe release tickets the
| day of the concert. That way, scalpers will be taking a
| bigger risk since people want to be sure they can get tickets
| before the day of.
| mawise wrote:
| Cory Doctorow wrote about this a little while ago[1], he's been
| using the term "Chokepoint Capitalism"
|
| [1]: https://doctorow.medium.com/what-is-chokepoint-
| capitalism-b8...
| nipponese wrote:
| Did the tickets ever get cheaper as excess inventory showed up?
| THAT would be dynamic pricing.
| scrame wrote:
| Im surprised no one has mentioned Pearl Jam going to court with
| Ticketmaster almost 30 years ago.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...
|
| It's been a lousy monopoly for decades and has only gotten worse.
| bombcar wrote:
| Live Nation's market cap is only 19 billion, so it's not even
| half a twitter.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I sometimes wonder why venues choose Ticketmaster; large as
| Ticketmaster is it's not the only option, and how did they come
| to be the main player? My only conclusion is that the venues (and
| bands) are benefiting.
|
| Here's my theory:
|
| Venues and bands know that for PR reasons they can't jack up the
| price of tickets, but they don't want to miss out on the revenue
| from people willing to pay scalper prices. So they set tickets at
| a nominal price but reserve huge blocks of tickets for the band
| and venues. Nominally these are "family and friends" tickets, but
| in practice the band and venue put them immediately for resale.
| This way the bands and venues can get that gigantic revenue.
| Meanwhile a small number of tickets are sold at face value and
| immediately sell out. Ticketmaster profits from fees on the
| ticket sales and resales.
|
| A "known evil" company like ticketmaster is now a benefit, as
| "obviously" the jacked up costs are ticketmaster's fault.
| Meanwhile ticketmaster is really just a service to take the heat
| off of bands and venues for what would otherwise be seen as price
| gauging.
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| The bands don't see a cut of the fees that ticket providers
| charge consumers.
|
| Source: I'm a former talent agent.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Do bands/venues get blocks of tickets? Do they resell those?
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| Bands typically get a fixed number of comp tickets that are
| intended to be used by friends/family/media/guests, not
| resold.
| advisedwang wrote:
| In practice do those tickets get resold, though?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The cut mostly goes to venues who then pay the bands a larger
| percentage of the ticket sales.
| wdr1 wrote:
| > how did they come to be the main player?
|
| In the 60s, venues had to pay someone to run ticketing for
| them. Ticketmaster came along and said "Hey, we'll do it all
| for you, and you don't need to pay us a cent. All we ask is you
| let us add a $0.25 fee to the ticket."
|
| From the venue perspective, it was a no brainer.
|
| Later, in the 90s/00s, Ticketmaster was lightyears ahead in
| building a scalable infrastructure that could handle peak
| onsale demand for major artists. Want to sell out the Staples
| center for 5 nights in 4 minutes? Most LAMP stacks of the era
| would just melt. Most ecommerce platforms weren't built with
| non-fungible inventory in mind. Meanwhile Ticketmaster, through
| VAX assembly & sharding, was able to handle the load.
| duxup wrote:
| Many years ago I was told a story by someone who ran a company
| that ran midsize stadium shows that traveled the company:
|
| Basically in the 70s and 80s there were so few venues that the
| folks who ran the venues called the shots in terms of costs,
| dates, etc. They paid venues to run a show there. What choice
| did they have, there was maybe one venue for hundreds of miles
| in some cases.
|
| Sometime later new mid sized venues started popping up all over
| the place. Venues run by cities and etc (who had built these
| places) were operating at just about break even, there were
| lots to choose from. Venues sometimes paid up front for a show
| and then would take a small cut of some other activity on the
| day of the show. The tables had turned, for a while.
|
| Now venues are run by the folks running the whole thing, the
| venues, the tickets, all sold by the same people.
|
| What never seems to get mentioned (often enough) is people will
| pay these crazy prices ...
| bombcar wrote:
| Just like when baseball players started getting paid, there
| was a large amount of money being left on the table and it's
| now being taken.
|
| It's decent in a way; I'd rather have the band, venue, and
| Ticketmaster make money directly than scalpers indirectly,
| but I can't really complain that people pay the prices asked;
| if they didn't eventually the prices would start dropping.
| mkipper wrote:
| Yeah, TFA talks about TM having a monopoly and their
| dynamic pricing, but it never really explains why those two
| things are related or why either leads to higher ticket
| prices.
|
| In an ideal world, TM wouldn't have a monopoly on ticketing
| for large venues, and artists wouldn't be forced to work
| with them. Artists and venues could still charge whatever
| "dynamic" price the market will bear, but competition in
| the ticket space would hopefully push down the cut that the
| ticket distributor takes. I'd imagine this is why artists
| are generally unhappy with TM's monopoly, since they don't
| have much leverage here once they're booking venues of a
| certain size.
|
| But TM's monopoly is here regardless of how they price
| their tickets. And in a world with that monopoly, TM's
| dynamic pricing model benefits artists more than the
| previous model, even if it isn't the best possible
| arrangement for them.
|
| I guess the main argument is that anything a monopoly does
| to increase its profits is bad. That's fair -- TM makes
| more money from this, and they'll probably turn around and
| use that money to strengthen their position (e.g. sign
| contracts with more venues), making it harder for any
| competition to challenge their monopoly. But that's a
| really broad issue. Dynamic pricing itself seems...fine
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| People who want to see a specific artist have no choice but
| to pay those crazy prices.
| duxup wrote:
| It's an optional activity. If it was healthcare I would be
| with you. But if they pay $600 ... that's the market.
|
| If suddenly the market was more competitive, I bet the cat
| is out of the bag price wise. Maybe fees would be lower but
| "People will pay $600... so we charge that." is going to be
| the case for these concerts.
| cbsmith wrote:
| They do have a choice. They could not pay, and pretty soon
| said specific artist will have to lower their prices. This
| happens with dynamic pricing. If the market won't bear it,
| you won't sell tickets.
| aaronax wrote:
| One could choose to believe that concerts are substitutable
| goods, and then instantly there are lots of other choices
| at non-crazy prices.
| robust-cactus wrote:
| So funny story
|
| Ticketmaster is chosen for 2 reasons
|
| 1. It actually does have the most robust tech - although much
| of it is dated
|
| 2. Most shockingly because it takes the brunt of the brand
| punishment
|
| The ticketing, events, music, etc industry is built on many
| many middlemen. Lawyers arrange contracts between bands and
| venues. Promoters sit in between and set everything up but take
| their cut from TM.
|
| TM is chosen because it can make a promoter fee look like a
| ticketmaster fee. Which makes all the accounting work when the
| band/venue agreement say profits are split 50/50.
|
| While TM and live nation are joined at the hip, the above was
| all true before they merged. Which is also ridiculous. Don't
| get me started on clear channel who owned livenation and all
| the radio stations... Or the fact the it spun out of CBS.
| neoyagami wrote:
| here in chile the venues must "wink wink" receive extra money
| from tickets sold. this is added to the total cost, also a lot
| of venues are being bought by you know who.
| maxfurman wrote:
| You're absolutely correct. A big chunk of the extra fees on
| ticket prices goes back to the venue. Ticketmaster is just a
| cover, because everyone already hates Ticketmaster.
| nharada wrote:
| > reserve huge blocks of tickets for the band
|
| Wait are you saying this is what happens or this is the theory?
| Any shows I've been given a friends/family ticket they just put
| your name on the guest list and you show your ID at the door.
| Unless this happens at massive venues (like stadiums) I don't
| think this is normally true.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I don't know if this is what's actually happening; it is my
| supposition. I probably got this from reading something along
| these lines somewhere but I don't recall if that was other
| supposition or fact, or whether I'm extrapolating.
| robust-cactus wrote:
| Yea they most definitely hold back seats for a variety of
| different reasons and release the holds as the concert date
| gets closer. You can probably find tickets day of as a
| result. (Mainly for seated events, less so for others)
| cbsmith wrote:
| In other industries, this is called "yield management".
| NickC25 wrote:
| Ticketmaster is "chosen" because most venues are owned and
| operated by Live Nation, who in turn owns Ticketmaster.
|
| Is this a monopoly, and a massive conflict of interest? Yes,
| and yes.
|
| Most acts don't really have the ability to set their own
| pricing. Those that do either are huge acts, who kind of have
| to go to Live Nation venues (because an act like Taylor Swift
| can't really go to tiny venues when she could sell out a
| stadium) or are tiny, local bands or artists in niche genres
| that don't really play venues larger than clubs or bars.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't understand - why can't a venue run its own tickets?
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| It's the same people. The venue is not independent. It's
| not that they can't, they don't want to.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I mean what's wrong with the same company owning the
| venues and the ticketing site for the venues?
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Oh, nothing really I guess? Before TM, they were the same
| since it was the venues selling their own tickets? The
| problem is really having a monopoly on venues and also
| owning the acts playing in them.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Nothing, in theory.
|
| However, in practice, lots of things. The problem is that
| since Live Nation is a huge company, they have
| investments in a lot of record labels and can use that as
| leverage to force artists to tour exclusively in their
| venues. Think of it almost as a modern-day payola system:
|
| Artist needs to tour. Label needs to pay for that tour,
| in some cases a lot of capital is required up front, and
| a certain amount of profit needs to be made from that
| tour as well. Live Nation steps in and says "hey, since
| we own a portion of your label, we can front you a lot of
| that money (or waive our venue fees entirely) if you only
| play shows in our venues". Label says "well, shit, my
| hands are tied" and that's how it works.
| brianwawok wrote:
| An artist on a national tour won't go there. They will only
| go to Ticketmaster events.
| olalonde wrote:
| I just checked Live Nation's interactive map and I don't see
| them having any sort of monopoly. Two venues in Manhattan,
| two in Miami, etc. Surely those locations have way more
| venues than that...
| [deleted]
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I just checked Live Nation's interactive map and I don't
| see them having any sort of monopoly. Two venues in
| Manhattan, two in Miami, etc. Surely those locations have
| way more venues than that...
|
| I've commented elsewhere in this thread, but no, that's not
| a complete list. Live Nation owns many more venues than
| that, and there are even more that it has exclusive
| contracts with. It has also illegally[0] used its market
| power to retaliate against independent venues that work
| with other ticketing systems, forcing them to use
| Ticketmaster.
|
| It is virtually impossible to be a performing artist with a
| decent following and go on tour without being subject to
| Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and everything that follows
| from that.
|
| [0] as determined by the DoJ
| NickC25 wrote:
| Note the size of those venues. The bigger the artist, the
| higher probability it is that they can only play at venues
| larger than a certain size, most of which are owned by Live
| Nation.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The bigger the artist, the higher probability it is
| that they can only play at venues larger than a certain
| size, most of which are owned by Live Nation.
|
| Owned by, or in exclusive contracts with. The latter is a
| _much_ larger set, and it includes the very Blink-182
| tour that spawned this article.
| NickC25 wrote:
| > _Owned by, or in exclusive contracts with._
|
| Exactly! The exclusive contracts thing terrifies me.
| There are a lot of venues that Ticketmaster/LiveNation
| don't own outright, but have exclusivity / quasi-
| exclusivity deals with, and those venues include a vast
| majority of the largest multi-use venues in the country,
| such as stadiums or arenas. Live Nation can front some of
| the building costs or maintenance costs for a bunch of
| large venues and it costs them nothing in comparison with
| the profits they get in return. Practically every
| sporting event I've been to in the US has had me use
| Ticketmaster in some way. This includes NFL, NBA, NHL,
| MLB, ATP (tennis), MLS, and even college sports. They are
| everywhere!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _bigger the artist, the higher probability it is that
| they can only play at venues larger than a certain size,
| most of which are owned by Live Nation_
|
| They don't _have_ to play at large venues.
| NickC25 wrote:
| They kinda do....unless they want to pay the entire costs
| of the tour out-of-pocket and up front. Otherwise,
| they'll go where their label tells them to.
|
| That's the whole point. They _could_ play at tiny clubs
| that only hold 100-300 people, but even if they did so,
| they probably wouldn 't make enough money to break even,
| let alone profit what the label requires they profit.
| duped wrote:
| LiveNation only owns a few dozen venues, and it owns fewer
| than AEG.
|
| They also don't own venues big enough for acts like Taylor
| Swift, most of them are small to mid sized concert halls. The
| major acts are selling out stadiums and arenas, none of which
| are owned by AEG or LiveNation.
| [deleted]
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| Recently, I accidentally spent $100 on tickets that should've
| cost $40 because I didn't realize ticketmaster was only
| _reselling_ tickets, they weren 't selling originals. No
| indication cheaper original tickets were available directly from
| the venue. Ticketmaster made it look sold out.
|
| Really makes me not trust ticketmaster.
| ianferrel wrote:
| Blink-182 tickets are expensive because a lot of people want to
| see Blink-182 and there are only so many concert seats.
| racl101 wrote:
| The millennials who loved them presumably now have money.
| Presumably.
| tj-teej wrote:
| Supply and demand doesn't have to be how all pricing is set.
|
| Why should those with the highest ability to pay be the ones
| who get to see the band? Doesn't seem very Punk Rock...
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is slightly surprising. They're one of the biggest bands
| of that era and genre, but I still don't see them as being in
| _that_ much demand. They 're not a Rolling Stones. That said,
| pop punk is having a moment again, Tom is back, Mark is cancer-
| free, and Mr. Kourtney Kardashian has been drumming it up all
| over the place.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| I think its a function of time and demographic change as
| well. It's not just that they're popular, but the people
| they're popular with are now older, have better jobs and more
| disposable income. Look at the ticket prices for any popular
| bands that are still doing shows from the boomer's generation
| like grateful dead. Ultimately what I'm saying is their
| target market can bear higher cost tickets, so now they cost
| more. I don't get why millennials are still shocked by this.
| jandrese wrote:
| The fundamental issue is that entertainment venues are
| largely undersized for the local population these days. New
| ones don't open up very often. They have not kept up with
| population growth.
|
| In the US it is hard to build a properly big venue anymore
| because the parking situation becomes untenable and public
| transit expansion has slowed to a crawl in the past 60 years.
| You can't build a massive venue because it would have to be
| surrounded by acres and acres of parking. So if you want to
| put it in the city there is no parcel of land big enough, and
| if you want to put it out in the country the roads can't
| handle it.
| anticensor wrote:
| Underground parking and rapid transit access could reduce
| the extent of problem.
| screye wrote:
| Sounds harsh..... but stop seeing the same big artists ?
|
| Most small artists have concerts that cost under 100$ while you
| can stand within touching distance from them and even meet them
| later for autographs.
|
| I wonder how much all of these tickets would sell on a truly free
| market, with real bidding ? I am guessing that Blink-182, with
| 100x as many fans as my local $100/ticket artist, would at least
| warrant that sort of linear increase in price.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| How does "selling at the market price" constitute abuse of
| monopoly power?
| sunjester wrote:
| You know it's funny, pricing, if everyone refuses to buy
| something at a certain price the owner simply abandons the items
| or makes them cheaper in cost, true? Stop paying these people
| outrageous prices and the prices will fall.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-21 23:02 UTC)