[jupp0r]

Can somebody explain the power balance in that industry to me? What prevents Taylor Swift (or any other artist) from selling their own ticket via a shopify shop or similar? If they don't like TicketMaster, why are they using it?

[Terretta]

We did this for Prince and the NPGMC after Ticketmaster was unable to stay online to sell small numbers of tickets to large numbers of fans. Maybe six weeks of code* and three dozen servers outperformed the behemoth.

Seems to us that it takes a Prince, a Pearl Jam ... or a Taylor Swift ... with the seat filling power, the independent vision, and the interest + will to take on such problems themselves instead of have it all "handled" for them by the revolving door group of industry insider managers and label execs.

To the sibling note, yes, it may also take alternative venues, or other cleverness. NPGMC for example created a "club" of "members" at scale, that allowed a variety of workarounds not available if albums or events are "public".

* Note: We already specialized in handling landing pages and sales for live streaming events because we'd found while we could deliver the online video events, even mega brand sites couldn't handle the flash traffic for scheduled sales. So, we had know-how to rapidly apply similar concepts to this.

[ttyprintk]

Speaking of Prince… I wonder if a municipality could enact a one-day renaming of a venue. Arena with exclusivity contracts becomes Prince Arena ahead of time.

[lovehashbrowns]

Ticketmaster has exclusivity contracts with the major venues. I believe Pearl Jam ran into this issue where their concerts had to be held in out-of-the way venues.

Quote from Rolling Stone article:

The web of exclusive deals is what hurt Pearl Jam the most during its aborted ’95 tour. Locked out of mainstream venues, the group sold tickets through newcomer ETM Entertainment for shows at fairgrounds, soccer fields and state parks in such distant locales as Casper, Wyo., and Las Cruces, N.M.

[HDThoreaun]

The mega venues all have exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster, usually because they're owned by them. None of the mid sized venues in my city use Ticketmaster, they're all on AXS(not much better imo) or self host. But if you're putting on an arena show tour you're stuck with Ticketmaster.

[pxx]

Ticketmaster is in the industry of taking the blame for high prices. Concert ticket demand vastly outstrips concert ticket supply at the prices that artists are happy with.

The only real solution is to raise prices. But artists can't do that without fans being angry. So instead Ticketmaster does it for them and pays the venue a k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ "rebate". If the artist is popular enough, the venue pays money to the artist. Everybody is happy and Ticketmaster reaps the rewards of being the entity everybody is mad at.

[rufus_foreman]

"The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that it is investigating whether Live Nation has been violating a consent decree that it has been required to follow since merging with Ticketmaster nearly a decade ago. The consent degree forbids Live Nation from keeping concerts and tours from venues that do not use Ticketmaster for ticket services. It also prevents the company from retaliating against venues that engage one of Ticketmaster’s competitors."

...

"Live Nation indicated that those who were demanding an investigation misunderstood the consent degree as well as 'general ticketing industry dynamics.' On September 18th, Michael Rapino, who runs Live Nation, further addressed the issue at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, which took place in New York.

Rapino insisted that, while the consent decree prevents Live Nation from threatening to block shows at venues that use a different ticketing platform than Ticketmaster, it does not prevent the company from making decisions that make economic sense.

He further said that, if a venue wants to use a ticketing platform other than Ticketmaster, the venue may not make economic sense to his company."

-- https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/09/19/live-nation-inve...

[robot_no_421]

Because most venues have a contractual agreement to only use ticketmaster to sell the tickets.

So not only would they have to sell their own tickets, they'd also have to provide their own venues. Taylor Swift is powerful, but not "build my own stadium to perform" powerful.

[ianbutler]

So I'm not an expert, but I did look into this area previously for an idea and I found that ticketmaster has a lot of exclusive contracts or outright ownership of venues. So if you don't play with them you don't have a place to play.

[maronato]

I’m no expert, but last I heard Live Nation (TicketMaster’s parent company) owns the venues and the promoters. Essentially they make it near impossible to have a tour and play on large venues if you are not using their whole “stack” of services. Many artists tried and failed to operate without them. Pearl Jam being one of the most notorious examples.

[dboreham]

Apparently the venues control ticket distribution and ticketmaster has bought them off.