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?
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.
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.
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
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AEG/AXS owns a number of large venues like the Oakland Coliseum + Arena, LA Crypto.com arena, and London O2. Presumably those are ticketed through AXS rather than Live Nation/Ticketmaster.
An interesting thing about AXS tickets is that they are presented using a smartphone app and are only valid for something like 60s before they need to be refreshed. This presumably makes tickets harder to resell outside of AXS's system.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> The Blink-182 tour, it should be noted, is “produced” by Live Nation, according to the Live Nation press release announcing the tour. In the U.S., they are playing almost exclusively Live Nation venues (in Blink-182’s hometown, San Diego, they are playing at the Pechanga Arena, a venue that is operated by AXS, which is a different company.) The tickets for all shows besides the San Diego one are being handled by Ticketmaster. The press release announcing the tour does not list any prices.
> 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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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."
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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?
I don’t see where is the problem with that. Artist jobs are to make great music and be great on the scene of concerts. And that’s where their value and money comes from. But their jobs is not to optimize prices and ticket sells or market them. That’s where Ticketmaster is good at and it’s normal for them to reap their own profit from their work.
Now what I don’t like is the monopoly however. That’s bad…
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I was being serious, I don't disagree with that if that's what the artist wants. I think it's more likely most will opt to take higher prices though if they can get them, though.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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!
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.
I had the impression from you previous comments that you wanted the strict rules to prevent artists from maximizing ticket prices since the context is 'ordinary working class people can't afford a lot of concerts any more".
But if you are ok with artists setting high ticket prices as long as scalpers don't get any then I don't disagree.
The context that I am operating under "artists wanting to make things affordable for ordinary people, at their own expense no less, should not have to battle scalpers to make it happen".
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
that's a stretch. sure you might need to save to see Megadeth or Beyoncé or some huge act but there is tons of music from smaller artists that still charge very reasonably.
at some point, you'll have an impossibly large fan base to entertain, and with that comes huge ticket prices
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
> 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.
I remember going to an event that had Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé 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
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.
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.
- "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".
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Why would I not agree with people or organizations choosing the price they sell their products and services for? Outside of discriminatory practices (and I don't consider price differentiation to be discriminatory) or emergency scenarios (gouging for gas in a hurricane for example) I don't find lowering or raising prices on what is unquestionably entertainment to be immoral in any way. Why do you?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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)
> 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.
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?
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?
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.
> 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.
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+? :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I don't know if it's "better", but one solution is to prevent resales. Here in Japan larger acts will sometimes try to prevent resales by tying tickets to a name and doing ID checks at the door (although they often don't bother checking in practice...) or by making the ticket tied to a smartphone app.
Whether this is better or not is up for debate. Personally I think it's good to give everyone equal opportunity to participate in culture, regardless of their financial status.
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.
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.
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"..
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?)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
As opposed to when most tickets were bought by scalpers, in which case... mostly rich people got to see Beyoncé 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?
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.
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?