lol, people and bands have been complaining about it for 30 years and it’s only gotten worse. Yes, you could skip concerts for the rest of your life, I suppose, to make a point. But it’s not going to fix anything.
Complaining yes, but how many people are actually putting their foot down? As for bands, they may actually be profiting from this scheme where ticketmaster ensures higher prices while taking the blame. If they really cared enough they could chose not to deal with Ticketmaster. Sure, that would limit their choices in venues which could mean lower potential for profit. Probably not going to be a real issue for the the more popular groups.
And yes, if there are no concerts with acceptable terms (and that's really a hypothetical if) then don't go to any for the rest of your life. You make it sound like this is some kind of required part of the human experience when it is just one of many possible ways to spend your time. Even if you are really into music, concerts are just one way to experience it - and when it comes to audio quality, a fairly crappy one.
It's possible you can put your foot down, lots of venues will sell you paper tickets at the box office. It's inconvenient but they also don't charge TM fees sooo. It's what I do since they open the box office during any of their events. Just get tickets for the next few shows right there.
> Even if you are really into music, concerts are just one way to experience it - and when it comes to audio quality, a fairly crappy one.
This fundamentally misunderstands why people go to see live music and honestly maybe what people enjoy about music entirely.
The bands at the top are absolutely not profiting, they’re losing money over it. Instead of a healthy ecosystem of promoters willing to pay them market rates, they’re dealing with a monopsony that depresses earnings. They HAVE to go through TicketMaster venues, because TM has locked up 85% of large ones, which means they have to accept whatever fee the promoter (LiveNation, same company) is willing to pay them. That’s part of why AEG sued them, they are a giant international promoter who is effectively boxed out of the American market by TMs stranglehold on venues and vertical integration.
Venue owners are profiting. LN/TM can pay them a lot for exclusive rights thanks to their monopoly-inflated profits.
No they don’t, that’s not how the money works in concerts. The bands get paid a flat fee by the promoter. You can Google this if you don’t believe me but I know from working with concert promoters.
Why would Ticketmaster/live nation pay them at all? They don’t have to, the bands don’t have any other places to play and they make most of their income from live shows.
It doesn’t say it goes to the artists. It says artists can choose not to participate. It says most of the fees go to the venue, which is true, that’s how they get exclusivity.
Perhaps they give artists a little to encourage participation in some ancillary revenue, I don’t know. I’ve mostly worked non-TM venues. But I’m sure the promoter gets most of that too and it’s not a lot of the overall ticket sales.
I can tell you for sure, everyone but the venues feels they would get more without the monopsony. There is not a functioning market for concert promotion once you get to the 10,000+ seat level, and TM is actually even buying up the ones below that too.
Your only end run around it is the festival circuit since a lot of them are out in a field rather than a venue, but guess who is buying those up now also…
Also note how they say ticket master passes on fees to the promoter. That’s a clever way of phrasing because it makes it look like they’re not greedy, but the promoter is almost always LiveNation, which is the same company.
I am fairly sure that’s not true, and also that platinum tickets are a small percent of tickets.
Do you have a source for that statement? The article about it linked below does not back up either assertion. I’m pretty sure they’re dynamically priced by a TM algo, and I’d bet little of it goes to the artists.
At the very least you have the choice not to go to any concerts until there are better options. You can also make that clear to your favorite bands.