Limit number of tickets per person. Limit ticketmaster fees. Crack down on professional scalpers.
Ban Ticketmaster and others from owning and profiting off resale sites. A $50 ticket gets reposted for $400 on a site owned by Ticketmaster and they profit off that same sale again. Make that illegal.
I tried to get tickets to a show at a smaller venue last year, but that sellout and overpriced resell happened and I didn’t get tickets. I found out from someone who did go that the place was far from full …all the tickets were sold, but not to actual people. It’s infuriating and must have sucked for the band.
The UK is moving in that direction but it depends on getting room in the parliamentary agenda
Thank you. I’ve eaten around 5 since I was a kid. My dad got home from work at 4:45 every day and we’d be sitting at the table by 5. I still eat around that time. I’m in bed by 9:30 and up at 5:00.
Also, thank you for calling it supper! We only use “dinner” for special meals, like Thanksgiving dinner.
That was when my mother usually served supper when I was a kid. Then I spent 23 years in the Navy, where supper was always served from five to six.
Ditto. Are you from Michigan? 
It was always supper at home. But if we ate out for the evening meal (a rare occurrence), we kids called it dinner. Guess we thought we were upper crust, or something.
I don’t know if this is the same on all Android phones, but on my OnePlus phone, if I swipe down from the top of the screen, a “Quick Settings” panel appears. It has some settings like screen brightness, wifi, etc. If I do this when holding the phone in portrait orientation, it has the date at the top. But if I do it when holding the phone in landscape orientation, there is no date. Numerous times I’ve wanted to check the date, done the swipe, and looked in vain for the date before I remembered that I need to rotate the phone to see it. Oh, the humanity!
Yes! I concur.
Definitely! (Not that I’ve ever used Ticketmaster or Ticketron.)
Minnesota!
Bic razors, on the other hand, are the example of how bad a cheap, mass-produced can be.
Sucked for the band in more ways than one.
What I’ve heard is that Ticketmaster was set up as a way to screw over performers. Most performers have contracts which give them a percentage of the ticket sales. But that’s only a percentage of the initial sales not to the resales.
In order to make more money, music corporations set up Ticketmaster. Then when they arrange concerts, they set the price low. To use your example, let’s say fifty dollars a ticket. They sell all of the tickets to Ticketmaster (which is essentially selling the tickets to themselves) and pay the band their percentage, let’s say five dollars a ticket.
Then the corporations resell the tickets at four hundred dollars apiece via Ticketmaster and the band doesn’t get a percentage of this money.
I don’t know where you heard that, but my understanding is just the opposite. I heard a report (sorry I don’t have a cite, it was a long time ago) that explained that Ticketmaster is basically in the business of being a scapegoat. A portion of the “fees” that they charge actually go back to the performers and the venue. The public perception is that the performers are charging a low price and the evil Ticketmaster is raking in the fees. It’s a way for performers to look like the good guys who just want to please their fans, while still getting a boatload of money. The performers and the venue are happy because everyone blames Ticketmaster for their huge “fees”, and Ticketmaster is fine with it because that’s their business model; taking the blame for the prices charged by the band/venue is part of their service.
The owner of Ticketmaster is a corporation, Live Nation Entertainment. Live Nation Entertainment, in turn, is owned by a media corporation, Liberty Media Corporation, and some investment companies, such as BlackRock, State Street Corporation, The Vanguard Group, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. I can’t find any evidence that performers have any significant ownership.
Perhaps people are thinking about Roc Nation, which is a corporation founded by Jay-Z. I’ve seen references saying Roc Nation is partnered with Live Nation Entertainment. But the relationship seems to be in the other direction. Live Nation Entertainment owns half of Roc Nation but Roc Nation does not appear to have a share of ownership in Live Nation Entertainment.
Have you ever tried having The Waltons on DVD? That should help.
I’m not saying that performers have any ownership of Ticketmaster, only that the service that Ticketmaster offers to the performers includes charging ticket buyers fees that Ticketmaster then pays back to the venue and/or performers.
Here is what Ticketmaster themselves say.
The venue decides on the service fees. During the ticketing contract bidding process, the venue tells the bidding ticketing companies that it intends to charge certain fees, and the ticketing companies structure their offers accordingly.
However the contract turns out, the venue gets most of the service fee, not Ticketmaster or any other primary ticketing company. In fact, the venue normally gets around two-thirds of the service charge and in many cases a facility fee as well.
There’s a lot more detail there, but maybe it’s all lies since it’s coming from Ticketmaster themselves. This article by the LA Times says:
The firm [Ticketmaster] does not set the price of concert tickets — artists and promoters do. And while individual contracts vary, Ticketmaster splits its service fees with the artists, venues and promoters…
The “service fee” is intentionally kept separate from the list price for two reasons: to make the base price of a ticket appear more affordable, and to create the impression that only Ticketmaster pockets that fee.
“The ticketing company does nothing whatsoever that the act doesn’t tell them to do,” said Bob Lefsetz, a longtime music industry analyst. “Fees were created to create another pile of money. Ticketmaster has been paid to take the heat over that for forever, so the public will never hate the act.”
Eric Budish, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who studies the American ticketing market, agreed that service fees are opaque and frustrating. But they’re largely designed to insulate artists, venues and promoters from criticism.
“Ticketmaster is effectively paid to be a punching bag,” Budish said. “Their fees find ways back to the artist or venue. And the artist chooses their ticket prices.”
People who blame Ticketmaster for high ticket costs are falling for the con that the bands and venues want them to believe.
I have no argument with the idea that venues are part of the scam. I mentioned Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Live Nation Entertainment has another major subsidiary, Live Nation, which owns and operates venues. So when Ticketmaster says that the profits from high ticket prices are passed on to the venues, they don’t say out loud that they are the venues.
On November 1st we saw a concert featuring the soundtrack from our favorite online game. When I bought the tickets last January they were one of the last with adjacent seats at the venue. About a week later a second, matinee performance on the same date was announced. Come the show there were quite a few vacant seats in the place, perhaps 15%, including ten on a row in the row in front of us.
Yes, this was Tickermaster.
— this really should have gone in Mini-Rants —
Let me preface my gripe by saying I’m completely on board with the law that pedestrians have the right of way. When I lived in Floriduh, where it was either steaming hot or raining, or both at the same time, I always thought “I’m sat here comfortably on my ass in my air conditioned car; I can wait”. That being said, why do so many people shamble across the street like zombies? Almost every weekday morning, traffic is backed up on my street, waiting for the same little punk to mosey across the main boulevard that everyone is trying to turn onto. Also, the street is six lanes wide. I think it’s safe to move forward once turtle boy is past the midway point. This is one of the only two ways to get out of this bougie bedroom town and everyone is trying to get to work or drop off their kids all at the same time.
(puts down knitting and recollects) When I was a teen, walking to school, I had to cross Pacific Coast fucking Highway during rush hour every morning. Skedaddle or die!