The record store I worked at in college (this was the 1989-ish timeframe) had a TicketMaster machine. This was a CRT computer terminal, modem, leased-line, and a custom ticket printer. The surcharge was $2 per ticket, and presumably TicketMaster was making a profit on that, even after paying our cut.
These days, they have fees that can easily exceed $20 per ticket, and they don't have any of that custom hardware or phone line overhead anymore (I think they even charge you to print your own ticket) - how do they justify that except via monopoly power?
Ticketmaster doesn't get 100% of the fee. One of the services that Ticketmaster offers is to charge a large fee, which is then split between everybody (i.e. the artist, the promoter, the venue). They act as the bad guy so that the event can be more appropriately priced while providing the artist with plausible deniability.
A big problem with that is the history of the musical acts themselves. People have come to expect massive productions with fireworks and laser lights and literally tons of equipment and the people to set it up and everything to go off without a hitch... and not only that, it has to be priced so everyone who has ever listened to that artist's music can afford to go. Like you mentioned, the price of a ticket isn't anywhere near the cost of the production, so they tack on fees to make the ticket price look more reasonable (until you've already committed to buying it). Same thing cut-rate airlines do. It's not cheaper, it just looks like it is. They have to lie to you in order to get you to buy it.
I know music is a personal choice and I can't decide for anyone else, but over the years I've come to prefer smaller venues or more local acts because every big artist in a big venue is a big production and it stresses me out just thinking about it. The bands playing at my local brewery are just as good and I can get a front-row seat for the price of the beer I'm drinking. I actually saw a big-name star do a pop-up show at a local pub and there were only about 100 people there and it was just such a real experience. It's hard to justify the price for bigger venues.
I've sworn off big arena shows as well, basically anything with capacity for more than 500 people.
I find smaller shows to be much more enjoyable, especially from the perspective of a fan, who actually wants to hear the music and have a reasonable chance of actually seeing the artists.
I run a local blog in my small town, and we have a C-list Nashville singer that grew up here. Occasionally they come back to town to do smaller shows at the local brewery. Of course I talked about this on my blog and mentioned them on my Insta/Twitter/Facebook, and during an intermission in the show the singer came and sat down next to me and said "hey you're the guy from [blog name] right?" and we had an actual conversation about what they miss about living in this small town compared to Nashville.
You'd be hard pressed to have that experience at a Taylor Swift concert. And this was a no-cover-charge show.
The sound in big arenas is horrible also unless you're in front of the stage. I saw Red Hot Chilli Peppers on their last tour and sat in the upper level. It was just a loud fuzzy noise. You could barely recognize what songs they were playing, and the vocals were totally illegible.
Okay, so let's just slash prices in half and give all the money to the artists ;)
EDIT to add: I'm being glib, but only a little - I think the artists, compared with venues and promoters, ought to hold much more power than they currently do. Of course venues should get paid - but are fees the best way?
The artists themselves would have to be on-board with that, and they're not.
Like it or not, many artists believe they need TicketMaster to promote their shows. I think they're wrong, but there needs to be a large culture change for TM to actually get the quick death it deserves.
Part of the reason why it's so expensive is because the artists are getting a percentage of profits on top of a fixed fee per performance. They're absorbing a much lower amount of risk than the promoters are.
Add to that the cultural aspect that artists have a stake in making tickets look artificially inexpensive -- no one wants to see Bruce Springsteen "take advantage" of his fans, but if TM does it, then they take the blow even if a cut goes back to the artist/promoter.
250 dollar ticket to a UFC fight had 60 fees on Ticketmaster. got it for $3 at thr venue. Ticketmaster is ripping consumers off but the event organizers including artists are on it too, just hiding behind Ticketmaster
> These days, they have fees that can easily exceed $20 per ticket
As an anecdote, I attempted to find the most expensive ticket for an extremely popular concert near my city later this year. Ticketmaster required me to create an account (or log in) before showing me the final price (which includes service fees).
The two tickets were $2,556 each, and the service fees were an additional $383.40, each! I also looked at purchasing the cheapest ticket, for $61. The $9.15 service fee works out to exactly 15% of the price of the ticket.
Yeah it's a bitch. But if you see indie bands, which really need your support more than anyone else, you can often buy a ticket at the door and completely avoid all this bs.
Plus, if you really want to support the artist, buy a bunch of there merch at the show - they make a lot off that stuff! I usually buy a couple copies of there records even if I own them already and give them away to friends. Sometimes smart bands have tour only singles (Stereolab did this a lot).
Sure you can't always avoid Ticketmaster, that's life. We all have that band or show or sport-event, etc we must see (My Bloody Valentine, etc, for me).
Point being - don't forget you can always buy a ticket at the venue! They are not the only game in town.
The odd thing to me is that there doesn't seem to be a demand curve. Stratospheric prices for major acts have not created demand for lesser acts, and in fact, the overall market for live music is dwindling.
I just wish there was a truth in advertising law that said Ticketmaster and other could only advertise the final price after fees and taxes. None of this $40 tickets suddenly being $60 or $80 at checkout.
Yes, the whole industry is filled to the brim with pricks. But the issue I have always had with Ticket Bastard isn't so much the fees, since that is just a matter of honesty in pricing, but in being able to buy tickets at all.
When I was younger, you dialed the phone number. If you wanted tickets to a particular show, you had to know what time the tickets first went on sale. Then you started calling in, madly hanging up and redialing the instant you heard the busy signal. Fifteen minutes later, they told you the show was sold out.
Now, you madly hit F5, and when the sale goes live, you try to choose seats and buy tickets through the website. The site always stalls out somewhere in the process and boots you back to the main page, dumping all your session details. By the time you finally get to the payment page, all the tickets have gone to the bots.
Eventually, you learn to just not bother with stadium shows. Traveling to the venue on the mere possibility that one might be able to pay at the gate and get in, rather than having a guaranteed seat ahead of time, is for young people and fools. Big names simply don't play venues in my town, since none of them are big enough for their giant tour with two or three opening acts and enough traveling stage gear to ground a C-130. I'd be driving at least 90 minutes, and probably 2 hours or more. And that possibly means hotel rooms and days off from work--the show is the centerpiece of a bona fide trip. If you can't get tickets, what's the point? You might as well stay home, with your nice, cushy chair and over-the-ear headphones.
Or you could support local bands and local venues, as they have much greater need for your money. They don't have that studio polish on their sound, but you can actually get in to hear them play.
What some people pay to go to concerts is just insane to me. RHCP? Huge fan, but €100+ for a concert? No way!
I‘ve been to a lot of concerts, but I think I never paid more than 50€ for a show (and even that was an exception, think „Rancid is in Europe for the first time in 10 years!“). I guess I‘m not the typical concert-goer, because even IF RHCP (not hating or anything that‘s just the most recent example) offered cheaper tickets, I‘d still be in a giant stadium, 100‘s of meters from the stage. At that point, I might as well just watch the DVD.
EDIT: Forgot to get my point across: Concerts shouldn‘t be a big business, it‘s supposed to be about a connection between an artist and her fans.
Why should one of the biggest alt rock bands of all time charge less for shows, so you can go? I can’t imagine anyone but Foo Fighters fit into the same category and are more popular.
Literally millions of fans want to go to their shows, charging less would only mean they sell out in seconds rather than minutes.
My partner works in live theater. I go to a lot of theater.
After you pay basic building operating expenses, pay the actors, the stagehands, the directors, the marketers, the understudies, the overtime for when shit goes wrong, the orchestra, the software engineers building your motor software, the mechanics fixing the shop truck... You end up with razor-thin, to negative margins.
Performance art is not an industry where anyone but the outliers get fabulously rich.
Well sure, that's part of TM's value add. Musicians can get the money they want without damaging their brand.
I would like to question the "most" there though. Maybe egalitarianism is a strong theme in your preferred genre. Mine is more "get money, get paid" and "bitches aint shit".
Most artists, including some big-name artists, can't afford to charge less than they do. They make almost nothing from old-fashioned record deals and even less from streaming.
The concept of a "big-name artist" needs to die. Those expectations are crazy -- that you need to sell out every major venue in every major city to make money. It's an industry of rent-seekers and Ticketmaster is a symptom of the disease.
This is why you hear Taylor Swift complaining about Spotify royalties but not your favorite indie bands. We're seeing a shift towards the long-tail that's only going to accelerate as future generations are brought up on streaming instead of mass-marketed music.
The T Swift issue you describe has everything to do with negotiating a direct deal with Apple, there was never any truth to it.
The way Spotify works she probably would have received the lion’s share of the artist portion of all Spotify ad/subscription revenue the month her album came out based on listen time. Apple just gave her marketing/guarantee money on top.
I know a couple of people from local bands, and they all get basically nothing from streaming. What little they make is made from shows and merch sales.
So the question is how many people are at the show because they found the band on Spotify/Pandora/Youtube/etc? My guess is it's a pretty significant chunk. It's the best marketing tool independent artists have ever had, especially compared to the days when you had to buy/borrow a physical CD just to check out their music.
For most local bands, nobody discovers you on Spotify. People find out about your band because you shared a show with another band they like.
After you are discovered by the new fan, they may later search for you on Spotify. But Bandcamp is more likely.
That assumes they even remember who you are. You have to play multiple shows in some areas, make a big impact on the audience, maybe have your stuff played on the local college station and then, just maybe, people will give a shit about you.
Lots of good music on bandcamp with less than 30 plays, and that's why.
In my experience, people go to shows with local bands because they're either an opening act for a bigger more well-known band (as ssaew333 mentioned), or because they've already seen them before at a festival, or because of recommendations from their friends. Word of mouth is huge when it comes to smaller bands.
What streaming does is that it makes it so much easier to check out a band when a friend says "hey, give this band a listen, they're pretty good!". The initial recommendation comes from a friend, usually not the streaming service.
As someone who don't like big venues, find that tickets nowadays are too expensive ... and made an exception to see RHCP on their last tour (though it's less expensive in Europe and it's not seated), I agree with you. Well at least they had a innovative light show and it's been said their crew is very well taken care of.
Also, to be on topic, their tour is managed by Live Nation IIRC.
Not optimistic about the eventual outcome, but maybe an investigation will at least spook them into preemptively lowering some of their astronomical service charges.
The real crime was already approved by Congress when they let Live Nation merge with Ticket Master.
Now Ticket Master also owns all the the artists contracts that they are booking in these venues. You can choose to leave Ticket Master, and you can easily replace their ticketing services.
But if you leave, you lose access to all the artists who you would have liked to have in your venue. So you can have a beautiful arena with a fair priced in house ticketing system, but it means 'fuck-all' if you can't book Lady Gaga or any of the other profitable acts to come play in your venue.
Mergers of companies of that size need to be approached with the presumption that they will substantially lessen competition, because they almost always do. The companies should have to go to extreme lengths to prove that the merger will not substantially lessen competition and hence are not prohibited by the Clayton Act. These companies get off far too easily when it comes to scrutiny of mergers, when a straightforward reading of the Clayton Act would prohibit nearly any merger of large companies that operate in similar industries.
These days, they have fees that can easily exceed $20 per ticket, and they don't have any of that custom hardware or phone line overhead anymore (I think they even charge you to print your own ticket) - how do they justify that except via monopoly power?