Don't mess with the Swifties, Ticketbastard!!

[Kathi]

Ticketmaster & Live Nation on the hot seat in Senate hearings right now on Cspan. Who would've thought it'd take a young pop star and her young fans to bring their greedy monopoly into the sunlight!
Woo-hoo GO Taylor!!

[pianozach]

We've all known that Ticketmaster was a necessary evil, and that they engineered themselves to be practically indespensible.

Example: I regularly work with a Non-profit Theater Youth Group that presents plays and musicals year-round, but also a 5-star excellent Teen Summer Musical. We'd managed to afford to rent our local performing arts center civic arts plaza facility, but the costs kept rising every year. For many years we'd finally throw in the towel on using that lovely facility due to the increasing costs, and for many years many different governmental agencies would intervene by throwing their weight around, getting the facility to discount its rental cost somewhat.

But finally, it was Ticketmaster that indirectly forced us out. They would only provided ticketing services for the Civic Arts Plaza for events if they had exclusive rights to ALL events held there, including ours. We'd always run our own box office, and would even set up a temporary box office in the lobby while we had performances there. But they threw THEIR weight around, and we were forced to use Ticketmaster for our ticketing, and the "service fees" to purchase their tickets was just to much to ask.

[kkleinschmidt]

It's going to be very interesting to see if our Congress actually does something helpful to deal with the disaster that LN/TM has become. I yelled out loud at the guy at the Senate hearing who blamed bots for the troubles. To me that's like blaming the squirrels when you put out bird food and they eat it all - fix your damn systems so bots don't work! But of course these weasels make insane amounts of money through these systems and schemes so their motivation to actually "fix" any of it is slim to none. And it's not just music. Ticket prices for the AFC Championship game are irrationally super high too. Where is my pitchfork and torch...

[downbyariver]

I've noticed a trend in the articles I've read about this that is worth pointing out. The quotes from the Democrats on the committee seem to lean towards things that would eventually end in solutions like declaring Ticketmaster a monopoly, unwinding the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger, using regulatory powers to enforce the law, referring the matter to the Justice Department, initiating a lawsuit, passing new laws, and so on and so forth. The quotes from Republicans on the committee tend to be more along the lines of "Fire the guy who upset the Taylor Swift fans!" or "Make it so you can buy Ticketmaster tickets directly from the SeatGeek app instead of being forwarded from one app to the next." without addressing pricing or fees or the underlying abusive monopoly.

I think to a casual observer, some of this may look like both parties are pissed and pursuing solutions. However, a closer reading of this stuff shows that only Democrats are really pissed and and pursuing solutions. Republicans suggest things that act like this was a one-off problem or are superficial salves at best- they're trying to look like they're doing something without actually doing something, because they're the party of big business and if they actually did something about Ticketmaster, their other big money donors might worry that they'll do something about their businesses next.

And if anyone is inclined to agree with the implication of some of the Republicans on the committee that this was just a one-time or short-term problem- I would point you to Pearl Jam's war against Ticketmaster thirty years ago, which Pearl Jam lost despite being quite possibly the biggest (or one of the biggest) musical acts in the world at that time, after the band spent several years taking a huge beating financially waging said war. Some of the issues were different because the technology was different, and if anything Ticketmaster has become even more of a monopoly and gotten worse since then, but other issues are exactly the same. Exactly the same.

This is a company that went off the rails 30 years ago. You're not going to solve the problem just by firing one person or creating a mild change in how it's app works.

Also notable is that the Democratic-controlled Senate is holding this hearing. Where's the Republican-controlled House on this?

[luna65]

The merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, creating what essentially amounts to a monopoly of live entertainment venues and associated businesses, should absolutely be prosecuted.

[hammerhead]

The merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, creating what essentially amounts to a monopoly of live entertainment venues and associated businesses, should absolutely be prosecuted.

^^^ Truth. One company controlling arena management, promotion, and ticket sales is no different than Standard Oil controlling the production of crude oil, distribution, refining and marketing which lead to its breakup over a century ago.