[AequitasOmnibus]

> The cable industry did the exact same thing.

Kinda but not really. The cable providers were and continue to be hamstrung by the networks who force the cable providers to buy channel packages. Cable never had the leverage to, say, tell Disney that they only want to offer ESPN but not the 10 other Disney branded networks being offered. It was often all or nothing.

[filmgirlcw]

And carriage fees are not at all related to the cable companies refusal to adopt or accept OTT solutions. They could have still offered the same shit they offered coax but you know, over a web browser, without requiring you be on a home network from an ISP also your cable producer (Comcast), or on whatever device you want (Comcast, Charter) all to save the stupid extra box fees that they lost anyway.

People didn’t quit cable because of price. They did it because of price to perceived value. As has been shown with the current state of streaming services, it isn’t actually cheaper to cut the cord. But what you do get is a lot more flexibility.

Imagine if Comcast had offered its own YouTube TV style service in 2012 (something Intel tried to do in late 2013 before it was summarily canceled — I almost took a job on that team and dodged a bullet), rather than hoping against hope that cord cutting wouldn’t take off? You’d probably have a bunch of Comcast subscribers to this day who were satisfied that they could watch all their TV live and on demand whenever they wanted.

[ShadowBanThis01]

"It isn’t actually cheaper to cut the cord"

No idea what kind of poor purchasing decisions would lead to that. You can't get any form of cable package for less than $150 a month last time I checked. I don't pay anywhere near that for Internet + a couple of streaming services.

Oh, and the $30 a year or whatever for a VPN.

[filmgirlcw]

That was true until the cable companies themselves bought networks. Comcast owning NBC Universal, the various cable associations with the artists formerly known as Time Warner, the various local station and sports station roll ups for the various providers, all make them entwined.

And the networks were already offering online access to their content via TV Everywhere. They didn’t want to do the geolocation thing, that was all requirements of the cable companies (the issues with the network broadcasters like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are much more complex).

In fact, you could (and I would) argue that it was the cable companies insistence on maintaining their defacto monopolies on who could get what service where (because there was never consumer choice in who your cable provider is, unless you count satellite, which I do not) that pushed the networks hands into creating their own competing OTT services based on the content they owned. Because as people cut the cord, the networks weren’t going to watch their businesses completely go up in flames. Now, should they have done that sooner and more aggressively (HBO did it best and earliest with HBO Now as a companion to HBO Go — a move that earned them the ire of the cable industry, the same industry who often refused to let HBO Go subscribers who paid the cable companies directly for HBO, do things like access the service on an Xbox b.c they didn’t like the idea of people not paying a $5 a month fee for an extra box), yes. 1000%

But let’s not pretend like the cable companies were without leverage. If they’d acted decisively and disrupted themselves early enough, they were the ones with the direct relationship with the customer, not the networks. They were the ones who could have created their own bundles of OTT content. But no, they refused until it was too late and got to see the whole industry bleed itself and for live content to essentially die.

[geodel]

Exactly right. A lot of people have tendency to simplistically choose heroes and villains. SO Disney is hero, cable TV bringing disney to home via their Coax cable is villain. Top artists are heroes, but ticket booking service which ultimately are reason for enormous payout to these artists are villains gouging fans.

[filmgirlcw]

The networks and the cable companies are both complicit with their demise. No one is arguing otherwise. I mentioned cable companies specially because they have the same legal monopoly that telephone companies had even post AT&T breakup in terms of location-based authority (it took widespread nationwide wireless for that to change in the U.S., which was like the early 2000s in terms of not having to get a regional wireless plan that could roam on a friendly network spectrum) and because like wireless carriers, cable companies have refused to acknowledge they are just a dumb pipe offering data and that they can’t continue to print money off of things that cost them nothing anymore. Oh, and because in the US, ISPs and cable companies are overwhelmingly the same companies.

The networks ruined their own businesses too — even if some were smarter than others (HBO being the smartest and also why it was the most valuable asset of the AT&T acquisition and the Discovery acquisition) — but I chose to focus on the cable companies b/c they are dumb pipes the same way wireless carriers are and they refused to disrupt themselves.

[Apocryphon]

I get your point but how is Ticketmaster not a parasitic price-gouger?

[jasode]

>I get your point but how is Ticketmaster not a parasitic price-gouger?

Ticketmaster isn't the true price-gouger. It's actually the artist + promotor + venue that collectively set the high prices. Ticketmaster is just the administrative computer system to implement the high prices that the artist/promoter/venue want to charge.

For example, top artists can negotiate to get 105% of ticket's face value from the concert promoter. Indeed, people have speculated that Taylor Swift had so much leverage in negotiating the terms of the Eras tour that she got 110% of the ticket's face price.[1]

If Taylor gets 110% of the ticket money, how does that leave anything left for the promoter and the venue?!? With those artists' financial demands, you now have a math problem: where to get the extra +5% or +10% and also pay the promoter+venue without taking a loss? By charging extra fees.

It's a very clever bit of financial sleight-of-hand. The artist/promoter/venue can all charge more money but hide the blame by embedding it in Ticketmaster's "convenience fees", "service fees", "order processing fees", etc, etc. In this way, Ticketmaster is perceived as the parasite.

Your question where Ticketmaster is already assumed to be the "bad guy" means Ticketmaster's deliberate manipulation of public perception is working exactly as designed.

[1] https://archive.is/J5Eg3

[sbuk]

Ticketmaster merged with LiveMaster, a promoter and venue owner/operator. They are the promoter + venue in your equation and have a global monopoly.

[jasode]

>Ticketmaster merged with LiveMaster, a promoter and venue owner/operator.

Yes, but when other promoters (not Live Nation) book artists at non-LN venues and use Tickemaster as the ticketing agent, all the extra convenience fees are still there.

E.g. Taylor Swift's promoter for Eras Tour was AEG, not Live Nation. And in Dallas, she performed at AT&T Stadium which is a venue owned by City of Arlington, not Live Nation. Ticketmaster was only the agent selling tickets for that Dallas show and it still had all the extra TM service fees padding out the price. In that case, Taylor Swift + AEG + AT&T Stadium got their slices of the pie by using Ticketmaster fees as the "bad guy".

Live Nation acquiring Ticketmaster in 2010 doesn't fundamentally change what Ticketmaster is designed to do: take the public relations blame for artists, etc charging the higher prices.

[carlosjobim]

They don't have any global monopoly.

[jjoonathan]

The artist is their customer, not you. If Ticketmaster didn't gouge you, give most of the gouging proceeds to the artist, and take the flak like a lightning-rod, they would quickly be replaced by a service that did.

[Apocryphon]

What if there was more competition in the space, and there were operators of that didn’t gouge quite so much.

[lotsofpulp]

There is. But the nature of popular media is that it is desired by the populous. Lots of cheap places and venues have no name bars with no name musicians and singers playing all the time.

But if you want to see someone that appeals to the whole populace, then you will have to compete with the whole populace.

[ShadowBanThis01]

Nope. Pearl Jam basically proved that TicketMaster is a monopoly.

TicketMaster is a textbook example of a consumer-harming monopoly, and yet they have gone unprosecuted for decades. No excuse.

[piperswe]

A significant amount of Ticketmaster's fees go to the artist. It lets the artist make more money while fans get mad at Ticketmaster instead of the artist.

[Apocryphon]

Ticketmaster could take a smaller cut… or maybe just make their overall UX better for the end user.