Friday Roundup (of News & Thoughts & Such) - November 18, 2022

Thoughts

Holy smokes.

News

1. Ticketmaster is the goddamn devil and I have said it for years: 

Pretty much as soon as I reached an age where I was old enough to buy my own tickets to events, I questioned why Ticketmaster is allowed to exist. It’s a pretty heated discussion topic for me, and has on more than one occasion made me feel like the “let’s get you to bed, Grandma” meme, as I scream into the void about this outlandish racket. So, let’s talk some capitalism 101, with a healthy sprinkle of antitrust law.

The company, in essence, exists solely to overcharge consumers for tickets with bullshit service fees (up to 75% of face value!). Tickets are then hoovered up by bots and scalpers who proceed to further mark up the price to sell it to the end consumer. Ticketmaster then proceeds to wring its hands Susan Collins style and inform us that it is disappointed in the outcome, but that there is simply nothing that it can do. 

Past efforts at curbing scalping have been misguided at best and moronic at worst. See, for example, the practice of region-locking tickets, against which I had a brief crusade in 2018 regarding one Musgraves, Kacey. Essentially, if you want to see a show but live more than x number of miles from the venue, well that is just tough shit. The stated goal of this is to prevent scalpers with no intention of actually attending a show from buying tickets but this 1). Ignores that scalpers can live near venues too (I did the research); and 2). Such a policy effectively gives folks in rural areas no choice but to turn to the resale market.

But Ticketmaster, in spite of its “the lady doth protest too much” facade, has little to no incentive to actually ~do anything~ to curb inflated resale prices on its platform. In fact, the opposite is true. See, thanks to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing (rolled out this very year!), ticket prices automatically increase proportionately to demand. You’ve probably heard about this this week. We’ll get to that. Ticketmaster’s bullshit aforementioned “service fees” also just happen to scale with ticket prices, regardless of the fact that this makes no fucking sense. In other words, the “service charge” for a $40.00 ticket may be $30.00 or so, but for a $400.00 ticket, up to $300.00. I haven’t done the math on this and am just throwing out numbers, mind you, but the basic premise is true. Does Ticketmaster require 10x the effort to sell more expensive tickets? No. But they do it anyway, because they can 🙂

Why can they do that, Brandon? 

The short answer is because you have basically two choices when it comes to major events: you can buy tickets from Ticketmaster, or you can not go. The history behind Ticketmaster’s rise to its current position can be summed up thusly: Back in the olden days (think not black and white, but really washed out. We’re in the era of, like, Apocalypse Now), as the live event business grew larger and larger, the concept of venues managing sales and distribution of tickets became largely untenable. To solve this problem, ticket vendor services rose to prominence. The concept was relatively simple: the venue would pay a flat fee to the vendor. In return, the vendor would handle ticket sales. Relatively straightforward.

In 1982, Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen had a dream: saving venues money by passing the cost to consumers, the American way. Under Rosen’s scheme, venues would no longer have to pay the vendor any flat fee upfront. Rather, consumers would be asked to pay “service fees” in addition to the face value of the tickets, thus allowing Ticketmaster to stay profitable, while also being dirt cheap for venues. So, while this fucked (and continues to fuck) the eventgoer, there was not really any reason for venues to object. Over time, more and more venues entered into exclusive agreements to make Ticketmaster their primary ticket vendor. By 2007, Ticketmaster controlled 83% of the market for ticket sales. In 2010, Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the US, and a company that I referred to as the music equivalent of a supervillain in the July 22, 2022 edition of this column. Live Nation, at this time, was the second largest seller of tickets. Believe it or not, this made things worse. Bruce Springsteen said of the merger at the time that it was, “the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now…”

A funny thing happens when consumers don’t have anywhere else to go: they have to pay whatever you tell them to pay. Ticket sales effectively become the equivalent of the Terms of Service on your iPhone update.

Now, an experiment. Your very favorite band, the Pecan Sandies, known throughout the land for their dazzling displays of razzmatazz and life-changing live shows, are going on tour for the first time in a decade! Further, they’ve announced that this will be their final tour for the foreseeable future. This thing is going to sell out fast and you know it. You train your reflexes. You silence your phone. You camp on the Verified Fan (lol) presale page for 4 hours and the moment draws nigh. With lightning speed, you click on two pretty decent tickets. To your delight, the price is within your budget. $100 each. Steep, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The tickets are added to your cart. You go to check out and, to your horror, you see that after fees and taxes, your $200.00 purchase has shot up to $350.00.

What are you going to do? Say no? Cool, don’t go. If you’re not buying those tickets, someone else will. At present, we are seeing it proven in real time that there is no price point that is too extreme to prevent that ~someone else~ from buying a ticket.

What about the artists? Can’t they do something about this? 

Unfortunately, it seems like the answer to that is “not really.” Over the years, we’ve seen artists take stands against Ticketmaster and invariably it ends poorly. Pearl Jam famously protested the company by pledging to play a tour of only venues that sold tickets through means other than Ticketmaster. It soon became apparent that, given the market share, it is simply impossible to make any amount of money on such a tour. And much as we may want it to be true, our favorite artists are not doing this just to entertain us. Eddie Vedder has to eat, guys. Sticking it to the man is a lot easier when you’re in front of a packed arena. The math gets a little different when your only venue choices are dive bars and high school gyms. A lot less razzmatazz, ya dig?

Weren’t we talking about scalpers? What happened to that?

Yes. Right. With all of this background information in front of us, consider the following: we know Ticketmaster charges a service fee on all tickets sold on its platform. We know this fee is proportionate to the amount of the face value of the ticket. We know bots and scalpers are buying up presale tickets in tremendous volume and reselling at ridiculous upcharges. We know that the price of the tickets increases in response to higher demand. 

Now, let’s add in another key fact. As of 2016, Ticketmaster began more aggressively focusing on its on-site resale market, which it noted to be its fastest growing source of revenue. 

So, when we consider these factors all at once, it becomes pretty painfully fucking apparent why Ticketmaster doesn’t make any real effort to clamp down on bots, scalpers, and upcharges. Those service fees are just as high on the resale market. Most likely even higher given the upcharge. So, Ticketmaster gets to double dip. The scalper pays an initial service fee (likely inflated due to high demand) and then proceeds to offload the ticket on the resale market at a higher price. Since another transaction has taken place, Ticketmaster gets to charge a second, higher, service fee. It’s stomach churning stuff. 

Why are we talking about this now? Isn’t there any Morrissey news this week? 

Yeah, actually there is a Morrissey story this week, as he abruptly walked off stage approximately 30 minutes into a set, prompting a bandmate to announce that the remainder of the show was canceled “due to unforeseen circumstances.” Speculation at present is that Morrissey’s walk-off was prompted by cold temperatures. It was like 50 degrees. What a prick lmao.

That’s much more in line with what I expect from this column. But, I do want to know, why were you talking about Ticketmaster in the News section when the Thoughts section was so sparse this week? 

You may have noticed that we’re about 1500 words into the column right now and I still haven’t gotten to the main point. Yet, I assume everyone except for the imaginary person asking me questions (fucking idiot) knows exactly what I’m talking about.

The current Taylor Swift situation is a level of fuckery beyond anything I ever would have anticipated, in spite of it being the only logical endgame of everything I just talked about. This thing was a perfect storm. 

You’ve got:

        An artist who hasn’t toured in 5 years

        A rabid fanbase, desperate to get their hands on tickets (dynamic pricing!)

        Scalpers, ready, willing, and able to take advantage of this desperation

The end result is just an absolute fucking mess. If you want Taylor Swift tickets, you probably aren’t getting them. According to one odds-making site, only about 2% of those who attempted to obtain tickets were able to obtain them. Even those who bothered with becoming “verified” only had about a 5% success rate. 

As Swifties (and scalpers and bots oh my) flooded the site, tickets sold rapidly, automatically driving up the price of the remaining tickets. Almost as fast as the first round of tickets were sold, resale tickets began to appear with the usual markups well in excess of the face value. According to Ticketmaster, the “cheapest” tickets for the tour were initially listed at $49.00 for nosebleed seats. Comparable tickets are now listed at well into the hundreds of dollars. Floor spots are in 5 digit territory. 

To somehow make matters worse, Ticketmaster announced Thursday afternoon that it was CANCELING the general public’s ticket sales, which were supposed to commence today. So that’s it. Ticketmaster literally threw its hands up and said “sorry, nothing we can do about this! No tickets for you!” So, if you don’t have Taylor Swift tickets yet, I hate to be the one to tell you, it’s not gonna happen.

The whole debacle has put the company in the hot seat (not to be confused with the literal throne of Hell on which it sits) with calls by some government officials for the Department of Justice to reconsider its approval of the Live Nation merger under antitrust law. 

Ticketmaster, for its part, has naturally denied any culpability, with its official statement essentially being to blame Taylor Swift for being too gosh darn popular.

2. Hey, guys, don’t make me take Ticketmaster’s side:

On the other side of this coin, I’m seeing some really obnoxious levels of entitlement from a lot of folks going so far as to say Taylor Swift is “ruining Christmas” for their kids due to how difficult it is to obtain tickets. We’re basically in PS5 territory all over again, it would seem. 

What these people fail to realize, of course, is that even if Ticketmaster did everything right (by ceasing to exist), not everybody who wants to see Taylor Swift is going to see Taylor Swift. No one person has any more right to those tickets than anybody else. That’s just the way of the world. Supply and demand. Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kids, Nintendo Wii, and all the other latest razzmatazz.

When Ticketmaster talks about unprecedented demand, I do believe them. Have you never been on the internet? This is one of the most dedicated and vocal fanbases in existence. According to Ticketmaster’s statement on the matter, in order to accommodate everyone looking to buy tickets, there would have to be over 900 stadium shows. This, by my math, is more than the number of shows on the tour. 

3. Hey, there’s 2 new Brockhampton albums:

I’m just gonna hope these circumstances are covered in Fresh Friday, it’s after 1am and I need to go to bed but I started talking about Ticketmaster and typed for 3 hours straight. 

Such

What’s channel.WAV listening to this week?

Slone: “Temptation” by New Order. One time, I said that I thought if Joy Division had a different vocalist they’d be my favorite band. Then I remembered New Order exists and is effectively just Joy Division with a different vocalist. New Order is not my favorite band, so I guess I was wrong. But I do like them a lot! They’ve got a certain razzmatazz to them. 

Botts: I’m sure if Brandon likes this song because of its acoustic razzmatazz then you will too

Theatrical Banger: all of Waitress sung by Sara Barielles

I have a crush on Sarah in addition to HAIM. But then again, who doesn’t?

Ritter: I had an itch to return to Childish Gambino's criminally overlooked 2020 project, 3.12.20, this week, which has some really fun songs on it -- like this one!

Editor's note: the Macarena video is coming, friends. Stay tuned!

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Well, we were promised a Macarena video. I assume it will be embedded here. If it’s not, Christmas will be ruined. You know, last year we were gonna do rankings of Christmas songs and then we just didn’t because Aaron and I never got around to writing them. To Dane and the readers, I apologize for ruining Christmas. ANYWAY, write comments below demanding that Dane put a stop to the predatory price gouging behavior of Ticketmaster because if he doesn’t do something soon, I’m not sure the situation is ever going to get better. 

It’s gonna be a shame when I put all this effort into this and then nobody reads it because Twitter goes down overnight

- Slone