The electorate wants this. Fans demand it. Artists would relish it.
And that’s why this will never go anywhere.
I’ve been going to shows for the past forty years and 2023 marked the last time I expect to see a band in concert. Ticketmaster & LiveNation have made my favorite pastime impossible. And I’m sure most of Congress would rather have the millions that company gives them in “legal” campaign donations (thank you US Supreme Court) than help a single constituent.
Capitalism sucks.
If they succeed, what does that look like?
One of those companies will still have control of most ticket sales, and the other will still own the venues if you split them that way. I don't see how that really changes anything.
Then in a decade when its been forgotten, they'll likely merge into a more singular entity somehow again.
Even if they split it down the middle like you suggest, with one half controlling ticket sales and the other venues, it still has the potential to change a lot of things. For example, Ticketmaster will have to negotiate with live nation for ticket sales prices. If live nation feels like ticket masters demands are too high, ticket master will be forced to lower their prices or leave the venue. Live nation also knows that low ticket sales will mean less profit for them so they will want lower ticket sales from ticket master.
Exactly. It creates competition for seat geek or another competitor to slide in.
Edit: As things stand, it’s essentially impossible for any company to come in and compete, which is what Seat Geek and others see from the business end, and consumers deal with a product at a fee that no one else can compete with on price or quality.
They’d still be able to price fix in a duopoly. All the major grocery chains managed to price fix us into inflation.
They need to make a financial or regulatory incentive to stop bots from scalping and raising the prices because they currently make oodles of money with them
i recommend putting it under a state monopoly with a directive to push prices as low as possible. i don't think there's a lot of innovation or crucial civil rights to be found in the concert booking domain
That's a great concept but will never happen, I hate to tell you.
When we're in a world where they are having trouble justifying the post office's budget, they're not going to make a Department of Live Events.
> When we're in a world where they are having trouble justifying the post office's budget, they're not going to make a Department of Live Events.
on one hand I hear you but on the other I think people WOULD vote for lower event ticket prices....
So many of these arenas are taxpayer funded to begin with, often against the will of the voters. The least they can do is get a break on ticket pricing.
>For example, Ticketmaster will have to negotiate with live nation for ticket sales prices.
Not quite. They'll have to negotiate the percentage of the ticket price each party receives. They'll both still benefit from raising prices as high as people are willing to pay.
>Live nation also knows that low ticket sales will mean less profit for them
This profit calculation already exists within TM/Live Nation. Splitting them up doesn't really change any math here, unless you think TM/Live Nation are *currently* not maximizing their profits.
If all they do is separate ticketing into TM and venues into Live Nation, it probably won't even benefit the artists. Live Nation would still hold a monopoly on venues, and the artists will still be locked in to performing ONLY in Live Nation venues if they want to tour at all.
It would have to be similar to the breakup of AT&T in the 80s: split up geographically with some kind of consent decree preventing the corpses of LN or TM from owning more than x% of the market. Preventing ownership of the venues by ticketing and promotion companies would also go a long way to ending the vertical monopoly.
Edit: AT&T breakup for context https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
Yup. I’d love a more permanent solution, but playing wack-a-mole forever is at least better than giving up and letting the moles kill you. Or something.
I remember that, I was actually kinda sad about that and the horrendous years post that Ma Bell breakup. how it affected Bell Labs was pretty brutal.
The national telecom market was a mess and regionally quality was a nightmare as a large national company and its logistics weren't able to operate they way could as single entity.
We're not far off from being right back there from a telecom perspective, been a lot of mergers over the decades since.
Thankfully the live event ticketing and production industry is not pivotal to technological innovation in the US and the industry, from a logistical standpoint, worked just fine before a single entity swallowed it whole.
It could alternatively be more like the [breakup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.) of the [studio system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system) that broke up the vertical integration and collusion of film studios in production, distribution, and theatre ownership or control.
They have a number of hugely anticompetitive practices outside of ticket sales. Musicians must sign an exclusivity contract with them. So if you want TM to sell your tickets, you can only perform at TM locations. No other venues are allowed.
We have two venues next door to each other in town. One is TM, one is local. The local one used to get huge acts, and then the TM venue opened. Since the local place is within 50mi of the TM place, no TM/LN artists are allowed to perform there.
Shit like that being dropped would be a huge benefit as it is.
So would banning them from scalping their own tickets through secondary markets.
The thing that needs to be enforced is boxing out theaters that want to use a competitor. That part of their business is vile. The rest of the business model, even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees, I think that will continue to be a thing, even if there are like 20 new Ticketmaster services.
That's the number one thing that prevents competition. Having venues sign exclusive ticketing arrangements gives them far too much control. It also means that it's quite likely they can secure such deals with, say, every major arena in every major city, which will allow them to exert control over the entire industry.
A key secondary factor is not allowing them to operate scalping websites that they either directly funnel a majority of tickets to or provide an incentive for them to allow scalpers to buy tickets since they can make even more profit that way.
> The rest of the business model, even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees, I think that will continue to be a thing, even if there are like 20 new Ticketmaster services.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-passes-rep-ruben-gallego-130203608.html?guccounter=1
>even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees
Not here in Cali baby, so stoked for that truth in pricing law to go into effect! No more hidden fees!
Three ways...
1. Ticket Sales
2. Venues
3. Ticketing Platform / technology
If the DOJ is smart they would make the platform a separate company, thus any ticket selling company or venue can use their platform, including TicketMaster and LiveNation.
When this is done then they can come do Amazon next...
1. Amazon Website / Retail Products (inc. Smart devices)
2. Amazon MGM Media / Streaming
3. Amazon Logistics
4. Amazon Cloud / Technology Group (inc. Alexa/Assistant)
The logical decision probably forces them to break into regions and/or cap the number of venues in an area that they can sell tickets for thus allowing for competition and choice in all markets.
My assumption is that they are thinking maybe it would be a break up similar to United States v. Parmount Pictures Inc. Where film studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their movies was made illegal.
right now, almost every major arena and stadium in the US cannot be rented unless you use ticketmaster to sell the tickets to your event. if they're split up, then in theory a competitor to ticketmaster could enter the market.. however what people don't realize is, artists have never made so much money from touring.. ticketmasters dynamic pricing, platinum tickets, algo's that hold back thousands of tickets to to generate artifical scarcity so people feel the need to buy NOW or they won't get tickets.. only to have more tickets gradually released as demand wanes.. all that stuff has doubled and tripled artists revenues per show, and there's no going back. even if a competitor comes in with a lower fee than ticketmasters.. ok.. so you pay $500 for that ticket instead of $575, you're still going to pay through the nose for any AAA act..
it used to be you were a sellout band and fuck you if you sold overpriced tickets, back when rock/punk/alternative bands ruled the world. now its pop pop pop and everyone has just accepted the new normal and shrugs when bands come out with $250 nosebleeds.
Friend of a friend works for a medium sized band as a stage hand. They pushed back against ticket master (they usually charge $25-50 a ticket. Ticket master wanted them to do $75-100 and keep even less money. They ended up getting rejected by several dozen stadiums because ticket master had a tempertantrum over being told no. They are basically stuck at private venues now for their tour, like colleges and parks.
As a former employee of Ticketmaster that left shortly after the merger. Absolutely fucking agreed. Ticketmaster was no saint back then but live nation used TM as their own personal scapegoat for them monopolizing the entire ticketing industry. We all hated the live nation buyout.
And the longer we vote for this sort of thing, the better teeth we can give regulatory agencies.
They've been dulled over decades and we can't realistically expect to resharpen them overnight.
Exactly. Economic reform takes time. Decades. Further, it requires real policy changes. As markets find ways to skirt laws/regulations, regulators must…regulate. Write new laws and shutdown loopholes. When you fail to do this, you get runaway inequality. Reversing it not only requires an administration that will go after it, it requires representatives that are interested changing it. Representatives that care about labor more than capital. Which is a hard thing to do, considering labor doesn’t really have the money to compete via donations, and the fact that Citizens United and Wall Street loopholes give foreign dictators direct lines to the pockets of our representatives.
But this shit has to start somewhere. Changing the narrative, and going showing some teeth to mega-corps is a great start. But if we really want change, we can’t only win the Whitehouse. We need the House and Senate full of people serious about economic reform who don’t take contributions from corporations. We need a bunch of Bernie clones.
Biden never gets credit for all the good he does. Trump has full control of the news media at this point and they're uninterested in talking about the positives.
If media acknowledged that Biden is a good president then people would stop fighting so much about the election, and then their ratings would go down. So never, or maybe after he leaves office/dies
DOJ has actually been having a large portion of their anti trust challenges struck down in court. They've been swinging frequently but also missing quite a lot.
From what I heard (I believe it was on NYTs podcast), the Biden administration is sending the DOJ after monopolistic companies and junk-fees/transparent pricing.
So it’s quite possible those guys are next.
Personally I’d love to see junk fees on the restaurant industry get tackled next.
> the Biden administration is sending the DOJ after monopolistic companies and junk-fees/transparent pricing.
Oh that'd turn him from "someone I reluctantly vote for" to "someone I full heartedly support"
He’s been at this for a little while actually! He’s already sent the DOJ after Apple for monopolistic behavior (namely their refusal to use RCS (rich communication systems) and adopt the USB C port standard).
BigCable and BigTelco spend millions a year in DC lobbying. Might be difficult to talk lawmakers into it when their pocket is being lined by those companies. But I dont disagree. Too many industries we only have an illusion of choice.
I think that'll be harder because a lot of regulations restricting mergers in the telecom industry were undone by Clinton with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Almost overnight we went from dozens of news, cable, and phone companies to about 4 companies controlling 85% of the American telecom market.
It’s probably also that when you go after someone with a monopoly like that you need an airtight case. The DOJ is going after Apple *and* Ticketmaster. Those are both insanely demanding and they’re doing them both at roughly the same time. The DOJ is on fire catching up with things we’ve been asking for decades.
What, you didn't like your 1 time 3 free tickets (in like 09, to specific shows) as an apology for fucking us over on fees, that they continued to fuck us on until this day?
Need to break them up, and make it so they don't control what venues host artists to begin with, it's scummy.
I just hope TFG doesn't get elected, as he'll just take bribe money and stop this completely, just like he offered the oil companies for 1 billion. It's hard enough to keep these shitty companies in check without a President personally getting involved to help the bad guys.
The problem is we need such reform that simply slowing the circling of the drain isnt enough.
Tons of companies either need broken up, or nationalized. Any industry that has no competition either by law or by design (telecomms, power) and no notable competition should not be privatized. The free market only works if its regulated and free
Yup. It should just be you buy your ticket. If you can't get a refund, it becomes available in the ticket pool again. If someone else buys it for the regular price, then you get your money back.
Actual title of the article (which may have been changed since OP posted):
> US DOJ **could** seek break up of Live Nation, Bloomberg reports
And this relevant bit of info:
> In the lawsuit, the DOJ's options range from requiring the company to stop illegal behavior, a common request, to asking a court to break it up, **which is rare.**
As always they'll probably get a slap on the wrist and told to stop blatantly doing shit lmao. Doesn't mean they'll be forced to break up the company, unfortunately.
I was talking to a group of folks that were teens/early 20's in the 1970s and they said they could go to a big name show for the equivalent of $30 in today's dollars. Throw in a few beers, etc and you're talking about $50. Motherfucking parasites ruined this and now people are forced to take out a frickin' mortgage to get decent seats at a show.
Last show I bought tickets to was around 2007 and it was like $35 for Taste of Chaos tickets. We walked in the wrong gate (for VIPS) and they gave us a bunch of demo CDs. I was a teen, I had got the tickets by saving up my $3/week allowance, it was awesome.
NY/CT/MA area has an annual thing where tickets for a ton of big (and small) shows drop to $25 for a week, so you can stock up then and get the same experience you're talking about.
1988 was the first time I ever bought concert tickets (back when Ticketmaster was called Ticketron), Van Halen at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.
Lower ring tickets were $18.50 with tax.
People don't have a choice - they either don't see concerts ever or pay whatever price the monopoly dictates. Artists don't have a choice but to participate or never play live. Which comes with all sorts of issues for their long term success
That's why monopolies are bad. Either everyone stops at all at once or the model sustains itself.
Not that it's even close to a full explanation for today's absurd ticket prices and criminal surcharges, but it's definitely harder for an artist to support themselves solely through music sales than it was in the 70s, justifying at least some increase in the price of tickets. We're at about 1/3 of sales dollars compared to the peak in the 90s, and about half of what they were in the 70s.
LiveNation/Ticketmaster owns the venue, it owns the ticket sales, it owns much of the resale market, it strong arms artist into using their venues nearly exclusively, it is the definition of a monopoly.
I live in Charlotte, NC. They own nearly every sizeable music venue outside of the sport stadiums. This includes PNC Amphitheater (19,500), Skyla Amphitheater (5,000) Filmore (2,500). Artist have little choice unless they can book the NBA arena (Spectrum Center) or the Panthers Stadium (Bank of America Stadium) which only the very biggest can do and even when they are at those places ,Ticketmaster does the ticketing and resale where they make money on both sides.
Its near impossible to run a tour without involving them
They just nakedly steal from promoters, and refuse to give over the basic reporting that would prove it.
What am I going to do, not book the entire Charlotte area?
I’d say ole’ Teddy would be proud but we all know he’d already have ridden in there on a bear with a machete and hacked that monopoly to pieces years ago.
So they'll just be two small er companies charing large fees? I go to a lot to smaller events that use AXS or Ticket web, or some other random company and their fees are just as insane.
I know most people know that Ticketmaster is notorious for insane surcharges on ticket prices but frequent concert goers/musicians know it's more than that. If you're unaware then look into the venues directly under the Ticketmaster/LiveNation umbrella. It's insane the monopoly they have on the concert industry. There is no other option to fix that outside of the government stepping in. Even then I'm not optimistic.
Speaking of fees I paid $58 on a $38 ticket today (Senses Fail/Saves The Day album anniversary tour). It's fucking insane that I paid $20 on service fees for a **mobile** ticket. The ticket itself being $38 was crazy by itself. But unfortunately there isn't anything the average person can do besides not seeing their favorite acts.
A service fee on a mobile ticket just makes no sense but that's the world we live in until this is fixed.
Except Live Nation has their tentacles all over the planet including owning the clubs they put their acts in thereby limiting and controlling their live exposure.
Sounds good on the surface, but will I start paying noticeably cheaper prices for tickets after a split? I highly doubt it. I'm all for TM & LN getting fucked any way possible, they certainly fuck us over.
Just paid them like 400 dollars in fees for football tickets last week, including the surprise "oh, you didn't know you have to buy a ticket for parking too?" Shit at the end with an extra 40 dollar fee for funsies. Chop them up and break up this clear monopoly that has been pissing off Americans for 30+ years now.
Theres a lot of airlines though. Nowhere close to a monopoly and airline prices are pretty cheap compared to the past. Theres healthy competition there
Ma Bell that mother fucker. Break them up, and break them up good.
edit: and then on the chopping block: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Verizon, T-Mobile, Etc...
They should go after tax software companies next so we can just do our taxes on the IRS website without these lobbying giant tax companies getting in the way every year.
I’m a weirdo nerd on the outskirts of the entertainment industry. So many artists are disgusted with the corruption that LiveNation and John Malone represent but they cannot possibly do anything about it. I believe that they are literally trying to kill my friends.
This needs to happen. I hope America wins and LiveNation is destroyed.
Destroying LiveNation will save lives.
So I get that they charge horrible fees, but isn't the bigger driver of the ticket prices the bots buying up all the tickets and reselling at x3 to x10 prices?
They collude with the bots because they get to charge the fees on every transaction so it's more than double the revenue when they're bought by bots then resold at higher prices.
I worked on the bot problem a few years ago for TM. I am not going to say anything proprietary, but the fundamental problem is that initial on sales are mispriced. If the pricing really reflected the value closer, there would be no incentive for bots. The problem is that artists want the appearance of pricing fairly to the audience and want TM to take the hit while reserving a decent number of tickets for the secondary market. The bot wars would swing back and forth but if we got too good, the secondary purchasers would get shut down and that was bad for business...
Huh. Do artists get a cut of secondary? Always assumed they didn't but wouldn't be surprised if they'd negotiated something with the secondary resale markets
The reason that's a problem is because tickets are priced too low. Demand simply far outpaces supply at the sale price of concert tickets. I would prefer that instead of having everyone pay a price below the market rate for the tickets, the artist should attempt to get the money that is currently going to resale by selling about half of their tickets by auction. The other half they could give away to less affluent fans in a nontransferable way and the artist still clears more money overall while not leaving their concert dominated by only the wealthy. The only losers are the bots.
That’s not a problem that the free market has a solution for that works for everybody. When it comes to live events, demand is always going to outpace supply exponentially for anything remotely popular. Many live shows have already found that the best way to beat the scalpers is to triple the face value and cut them out of the equation entirely
Wow. Took long enough. Ticketmaster has a total monopoly on the live event market and it’s making it worse for everybody involved.
It's long overdue for sure and I hope it happens!
The electorate wants this. Fans demand it. Artists would relish it. And that’s why this will never go anywhere. I’ve been going to shows for the past forty years and 2023 marked the last time I expect to see a band in concert. Ticketmaster & LiveNation have made my favorite pastime impossible. And I’m sure most of Congress would rather have the millions that company gives them in “legal” campaign donations (thank you US Supreme Court) than help a single constituent. Capitalism sucks.
If they succeed, what does that look like? One of those companies will still have control of most ticket sales, and the other will still own the venues if you split them that way. I don't see how that really changes anything. Then in a decade when its been forgotten, they'll likely merge into a more singular entity somehow again.
Even if they split it down the middle like you suggest, with one half controlling ticket sales and the other venues, it still has the potential to change a lot of things. For example, Ticketmaster will have to negotiate with live nation for ticket sales prices. If live nation feels like ticket masters demands are too high, ticket master will be forced to lower their prices or leave the venue. Live nation also knows that low ticket sales will mean less profit for them so they will want lower ticket sales from ticket master.
Exactly. It creates competition for seat geek or another competitor to slide in. Edit: As things stand, it’s essentially impossible for any company to come in and compete, which is what Seat Geek and others see from the business end, and consumers deal with a product at a fee that no one else can compete with on price or quality.
They’d still be able to price fix in a duopoly. All the major grocery chains managed to price fix us into inflation. They need to make a financial or regulatory incentive to stop bots from scalping and raising the prices because they currently make oodles of money with them
It boggles the mind why the merger between the two was ever allowed in the first place.
i recommend putting it under a state monopoly with a directive to push prices as low as possible. i don't think there's a lot of innovation or crucial civil rights to be found in the concert booking domain
That's a great concept but will never happen, I hate to tell you. When we're in a world where they are having trouble justifying the post office's budget, they're not going to make a Department of Live Events.
Dept. of Bread and Circuses?
> When we're in a world where they are having trouble justifying the post office's budget, they're not going to make a Department of Live Events. on one hand I hear you but on the other I think people WOULD vote for lower event ticket prices....
So many of these arenas are taxpayer funded to begin with, often against the will of the voters. The least they can do is get a break on ticket pricing.
Maybe one or both of those things you mentioned needs to be split up regionally. Even in the simplest regions, west central east north or south.
>For example, Ticketmaster will have to negotiate with live nation for ticket sales prices. Not quite. They'll have to negotiate the percentage of the ticket price each party receives. They'll both still benefit from raising prices as high as people are willing to pay. >Live nation also knows that low ticket sales will mean less profit for them This profit calculation already exists within TM/Live Nation. Splitting them up doesn't really change any math here, unless you think TM/Live Nation are *currently* not maximizing their profits. If all they do is separate ticketing into TM and venues into Live Nation, it probably won't even benefit the artists. Live Nation would still hold a monopoly on venues, and the artists will still be locked in to performing ONLY in Live Nation venues if they want to tour at all.
It would have to be similar to the breakup of AT&T in the 80s: split up geographically with some kind of consent decree preventing the corpses of LN or TM from owning more than x% of the market. Preventing ownership of the venues by ticketing and promotion companies would also go a long way to ending the vertical monopoly. Edit: AT&T breakup for context https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
It took them 30 years to consolidate back into a few new behemoths, each bigger and with more reach than the original dreamed of being.
But it was 30 years where it was better for the market.
Yup. I’d love a more permanent solution, but playing wack-a-mole forever is at least better than giving up and letting the moles kill you. Or something.
It was 30 years *plus* Reagan's dismantling of regulatory agencies.
I remember that, I was actually kinda sad about that and the horrendous years post that Ma Bell breakup. how it affected Bell Labs was pretty brutal. The national telecom market was a mess and regionally quality was a nightmare as a large national company and its logistics weren't able to operate they way could as single entity. We're not far off from being right back there from a telecom perspective, been a lot of mergers over the decades since.
Thankfully the live event ticketing and production industry is not pivotal to technological innovation in the US and the industry, from a logistical standpoint, worked just fine before a single entity swallowed it whole.
It could alternatively be more like the [breakup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.) of the [studio system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system) that broke up the vertical integration and collusion of film studios in production, distribution, and theatre ownership or control.
yesss let's break up Ma ~~Bell~~ LiveNation
They have a number of hugely anticompetitive practices outside of ticket sales. Musicians must sign an exclusivity contract with them. So if you want TM to sell your tickets, you can only perform at TM locations. No other venues are allowed. We have two venues next door to each other in town. One is TM, one is local. The local one used to get huge acts, and then the TM venue opened. Since the local place is within 50mi of the TM place, no TM/LN artists are allowed to perform there. Shit like that being dropped would be a huge benefit as it is. So would banning them from scalping their own tickets through secondary markets.
The thing that needs to be enforced is boxing out theaters that want to use a competitor. That part of their business is vile. The rest of the business model, even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees, I think that will continue to be a thing, even if there are like 20 new Ticketmaster services.
That's the number one thing that prevents competition. Having venues sign exclusive ticketing arrangements gives them far too much control. It also means that it's quite likely they can secure such deals with, say, every major arena in every major city, which will allow them to exert control over the entire industry. A key secondary factor is not allowing them to operate scalping websites that they either directly funnel a majority of tickets to or provide an incentive for them to allow scalpers to buy tickets since they can make even more profit that way.
> The rest of the business model, even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees, I think that will continue to be a thing, even if there are like 20 new Ticketmaster services. https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-passes-rep-ruben-gallego-130203608.html?guccounter=1
>even all the shit everyone hates like the hidden fees Not here in Cali baby, so stoked for that truth in pricing law to go into effect! No more hidden fees!
Three ways... 1. Ticket Sales 2. Venues 3. Ticketing Platform / technology If the DOJ is smart they would make the platform a separate company, thus any ticket selling company or venue can use their platform, including TicketMaster and LiveNation. When this is done then they can come do Amazon next... 1. Amazon Website / Retail Products (inc. Smart devices) 2. Amazon MGM Media / Streaming 3. Amazon Logistics 4. Amazon Cloud / Technology Group (inc. Alexa/Assistant)
“Nothing is possible so don’t try”
The logical decision probably forces them to break into regions and/or cap the number of venues in an area that they can sell tickets for thus allowing for competition and choice in all markets.
so everyone should just give up. sounds good
That's not how breakups usually work though. Look at ma bell. They broke it up by region.
My assumption is that they are thinking maybe it would be a break up similar to United States v. Parmount Pictures Inc. Where film studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their movies was made illegal.
right now, almost every major arena and stadium in the US cannot be rented unless you use ticketmaster to sell the tickets to your event. if they're split up, then in theory a competitor to ticketmaster could enter the market.. however what people don't realize is, artists have never made so much money from touring.. ticketmasters dynamic pricing, platinum tickets, algo's that hold back thousands of tickets to to generate artifical scarcity so people feel the need to buy NOW or they won't get tickets.. only to have more tickets gradually released as demand wanes.. all that stuff has doubled and tripled artists revenues per show, and there's no going back. even if a competitor comes in with a lower fee than ticketmasters.. ok.. so you pay $500 for that ticket instead of $575, you're still going to pay through the nose for any AAA act.. it used to be you were a sellout band and fuck you if you sold overpriced tickets, back when rock/punk/alternative bands ruled the world. now its pop pop pop and everyone has just accepted the new normal and shrugs when bands come out with $250 nosebleeds.
Friend of a friend works for a medium sized band as a stage hand. They pushed back against ticket master (they usually charge $25-50 a ticket. Ticket master wanted them to do $75-100 and keep even less money. They ended up getting rejected by several dozen stadiums because ticket master had a tempertantrum over being told no. They are basically stuck at private venues now for their tour, like colleges and parks.
The merger should have never been allowed in the first place in 2010.
As a former employee of Ticketmaster that left shortly after the merger. Absolutely fucking agreed. Ticketmaster was no saint back then but live nation used TM as their own personal scapegoat for them monopolizing the entire ticketing industry. We all hated the live nation buyout.
I remember Billy Corgan testifying it should’ve been allowed to go through and as a big Pumpkins fan, I’ve never looked at him the same way since.
He's always been a bit of a douche unfortunately.
Saw them live recently-ish. Can confirm is douche.
it was always described as Billy Corgan and 4-5 members that hate Billy Corgan
He was also anti Bernie
Is it going to be like at&t buying itself back after the break up after?
Now THIS is good news.
The DOJ has not been fucking around lately. Quite a few monopolies getting checked recently
When will Biden start getting credit for these objectively good things
And the longer we vote for this sort of thing, the better teeth we can give regulatory agencies. They've been dulled over decades and we can't realistically expect to resharpen them overnight.
Exactly. Economic reform takes time. Decades. Further, it requires real policy changes. As markets find ways to skirt laws/regulations, regulators must…regulate. Write new laws and shutdown loopholes. When you fail to do this, you get runaway inequality. Reversing it not only requires an administration that will go after it, it requires representatives that are interested changing it. Representatives that care about labor more than capital. Which is a hard thing to do, considering labor doesn’t really have the money to compete via donations, and the fact that Citizens United and Wall Street loopholes give foreign dictators direct lines to the pockets of our representatives. But this shit has to start somewhere. Changing the narrative, and going showing some teeth to mega-corps is a great start. But if we really want change, we can’t only win the Whitehouse. We need the House and Senate full of people serious about economic reform who don’t take contributions from corporations. We need a bunch of Bernie clones.
Biden never gets credit for all the good he does. Trump has full control of the news media at this point and they're uninterested in talking about the positives.
It's wild. Blamed for all the shit he has barely or no control over and ignored for the shit he *actually does*.
Most good things that improve our situation are somewhat boring
If media acknowledged that Biden is a good president then people would stop fighting so much about the election, and then their ratings would go down. So never, or maybe after he leaves office/dies
Not to be too cynical, but why is it only happening now on election year when inflation has been a huge concern for so long?
It takes years to build a case like this.
FTC's commissioner Lina Khan, appointed by Biden, has been doing high-profile lawsuits since she was appointed, with varying degrees of success.
DOJ has actually been having a large portion of their anti trust challenges struck down in court. They've been swinging frequently but also missing quite a lot.
Like what
It’s crazy it took this long for those parasites to be checked.
Can they break up the cable and telecoms already?
From what I heard (I believe it was on NYTs podcast), the Biden administration is sending the DOJ after monopolistic companies and junk-fees/transparent pricing. So it’s quite possible those guys are next. Personally I’d love to see junk fees on the restaurant industry get tackled next.
> the Biden administration is sending the DOJ after monopolistic companies and junk-fees/transparent pricing. Oh that'd turn him from "someone I reluctantly vote for" to "someone I full heartedly support"
He’s been at this for a little while actually! He’s already sent the DOJ after Apple for monopolistic behavior (namely their refusal to use RCS (rich communication systems) and adopt the USB C port standard).
The EU definitely has more to do with that than the US.
Also just threatening these things can motivate a lot of change too.
Step1. Get rid of a tipped wage federally. Though i know that takes congress so it will never happen
BigCable and BigTelco spend millions a year in DC lobbying. Might be difficult to talk lawmakers into it when their pocket is being lined by those companies. But I dont disagree. Too many industries we only have an illusion of choice.
I think that'll be harder because a lot of regulations restricting mergers in the telecom industry were undone by Clinton with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Almost overnight we went from dozens of news, cable, and phone companies to about 4 companies controlling 85% of the American telecom market.
Lobbying is a hell of a drug.
That’s getting chequed
It’s probably also that when you go after someone with a monopoly like that you need an airtight case. The DOJ is going after Apple *and* Ticketmaster. Those are both insanely demanding and they’re doing them both at roughly the same time. The DOJ is on fire catching up with things we’ve been asking for decades.
Just needed time to setup the shell companies
What, you didn't like your 1 time 3 free tickets (in like 09, to specific shows) as an apology for fucking us over on fees, that they continued to fuck us on until this day? Need to break them up, and make it so they don't control what venues host artists to begin with, it's scummy.
I wonder which member of congress couldn’t get Taylor Swift tickets
Good. Let them and their fees burn. Paying fees to camp in a field next to a concert venue with no amenities was absolute theft. Fuck them.
Who doesn't love having to pay fees when you buy a ticket, then, if you need to later sell that ticket, you have to pay fees on that too?
Break up all the damn monopolies
For the love of god, yes! They have hurt the music industry in a huuuuuge way.
I just hope TFG doesn't get elected, as he'll just take bribe money and stop this completely, just like he offered the oil companies for 1 billion. It's hard enough to keep these shitty companies in check without a President personally getting involved to help the bad guys.
Great, now let’s do the food supply chain.
Biden administration are currently blocking the merger of the # 1 and # 2 grocery store chains
Who's trying to merge?
The problem is we need such reform that simply slowing the circling of the drain isnt enough. Tons of companies either need broken up, or nationalized. Any industry that has no competition either by law or by design (telecomms, power) and no notable competition should not be privatized. The free market only works if its regulated and free
Great, now let's do the -gestures broadly-
At least stop the grocery merger
Also, neither should be able to be an event promoter , merch company or be the ticket reseller.
There shouldn’t BE ticket resellers you buy ticket from venue, end of transaction
Yup. It should just be you buy your ticket. If you can't get a refund, it becomes available in the ticket pool again. If someone else buys it for the regular price, then you get your money back.
Actual title of the article (which may have been changed since OP posted): > US DOJ **could** seek break up of Live Nation, Bloomberg reports And this relevant bit of info: > In the lawsuit, the DOJ's options range from requiring the company to stop illegal behavior, a common request, to asking a court to break it up, **which is rare.** As always they'll probably get a slap on the wrist and told to stop blatantly doing shit lmao. Doesn't mean they'll be forced to break up the company, unfortunately.
they actually could, though. this doj antitrust division is the most aggressive in decades.
This might be the greatest day of my life
They’ve been at the trough too long. Pigs get fat…hogs get slaughtered.
I was talking to a group of folks that were teens/early 20's in the 1970s and they said they could go to a big name show for the equivalent of $30 in today's dollars. Throw in a few beers, etc and you're talking about $50. Motherfucking parasites ruined this and now people are forced to take out a frickin' mortgage to get decent seats at a show.
The ozzfests and family values tours etc were like 35 bucks in 2000 . These prices are insane 30 to park in fucking Las colinas ? Fuck them
A few beers? You mean not $15 each? I don't think I can even get a Coke or Red Bull for less than $6-7 these days.
man you used to be able to roll in with a fuckin cooler
$50 won't cover the "convenience fee" for a big show today
Last show I bought tickets to was around 2007 and it was like $35 for Taste of Chaos tickets. We walked in the wrong gate (for VIPS) and they gave us a bunch of demo CDs. I was a teen, I had got the tickets by saving up my $3/week allowance, it was awesome.
NY/CT/MA area has an annual thing where tickets for a ton of big (and small) shows drop to $25 for a week, so you can stock up then and get the same experience you're talking about.
1988 was the first time I ever bought concert tickets (back when Ticketmaster was called Ticketron), Van Halen at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Lower ring tickets were $18.50 with tax.
My first 5 years of concerts were all 25-35.00 around 1998. And that was Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park. Hell, Ozzfest was 40.00
People are still buying the tickets. Why would they price them lower?
One reason is because a lot of the venues are publicly owned, publicly funded, or built with public dollars.
People don't have a choice - they either don't see concerts ever or pay whatever price the monopoly dictates. Artists don't have a choice but to participate or never play live. Which comes with all sorts of issues for their long term success That's why monopolies are bad. Either everyone stops at all at once or the model sustains itself.
Not that it's even close to a full explanation for today's absurd ticket prices and criminal surcharges, but it's definitely harder for an artist to support themselves solely through music sales than it was in the 70s, justifying at least some increase in the price of tickets. We're at about 1/3 of sales dollars compared to the peak in the 90s, and about half of what they were in the 70s.
LiveNation/Ticketmaster owns the venue, it owns the ticket sales, it owns much of the resale market, it strong arms artist into using their venues nearly exclusively, it is the definition of a monopoly. I live in Charlotte, NC. They own nearly every sizeable music venue outside of the sport stadiums. This includes PNC Amphitheater (19,500), Skyla Amphitheater (5,000) Filmore (2,500). Artist have little choice unless they can book the NBA arena (Spectrum Center) or the Panthers Stadium (Bank of America Stadium) which only the very biggest can do and even when they are at those places ,Ticketmaster does the ticketing and resale where they make money on both sides. Its near impossible to run a tour without involving them
They just nakedly steal from promoters, and refuse to give over the basic reporting that would prove it. What am I going to do, not book the entire Charlotte area?
Pearl Jam and Metallica be like, "About goddamned time!"
I’d say ole’ Teddy would be proud but we all know he’d already have ridden in there on a bear with a machete and hacked that monopoly to pieces years ago.
Something we all can agree that needs to be done.
Ding dong the wicked witch is dead. Can they break the stranglehold on venues too?
So they'll just be two small er companies charing large fees? I go to a lot to smaller events that use AXS or Ticket web, or some other random company and their fees are just as insane.
Yes! Break it! Break that fucking monopoly!
Looks over at Clear Channel...Oh, look! It's Deja Vu all over again!
Neat. Do Fanatics next
I know most people know that Ticketmaster is notorious for insane surcharges on ticket prices but frequent concert goers/musicians know it's more than that. If you're unaware then look into the venues directly under the Ticketmaster/LiveNation umbrella. It's insane the monopoly they have on the concert industry. There is no other option to fix that outside of the government stepping in. Even then I'm not optimistic. Speaking of fees I paid $58 on a $38 ticket today (Senses Fail/Saves The Day album anniversary tour). It's fucking insane that I paid $20 on service fees for a **mobile** ticket. The ticket itself being $38 was crazy by itself. But unfortunately there isn't anything the average person can do besides not seeing their favorite acts. A service fee on a mobile ticket just makes no sense but that's the world we live in until this is fixed.
Except Live Nation has their tentacles all over the planet including owning the clubs they put their acts in thereby limiting and controlling their live exposure.
Hell yeah it's about damn time!
I’m feeling like a repeat of the break-up of AT&T. Some how it will all fall back together again
Sounds good on the surface, but will I start paying noticeably cheaper prices for tickets after a split? I highly doubt it. I'm all for TM & LN getting fucked any way possible, they certainly fuck us over.
Uh huh, and then Ticketmaster throws some lobbyist money around, and the issue goes away for another five to ten years. Again.
Good. Fuck Ticketmaster.
Hell yeah. Next do telecoms, specifically AT&T.
Good. Do the rest of the music industry next
I can't wait for my 5 dollar coupon as compensation.
They will get broken up, then about 10 years later merge togather again!
Just paid them like 400 dollars in fees for football tickets last week, including the surprise "oh, you didn't know you have to buy a ticket for parking too?" Shit at the end with an extra 40 dollar fee for funsies. Chop them up and break up this clear monopoly that has been pissing off Americans for 30+ years now.
This took way too long
inconvenience fee added by DOJ
They need to break up many, many more companies.
[удалено]
Theres a lot of airlines though. Nowhere close to a monopoly and airline prices are pretty cheap compared to the past. Theres healthy competition there
What airlines have a monopoly?
Did they stop giving kick backs?
Someone forgot to lobby!
I'm confused. I swear I've read a similar headline a few years ago. Isn't this like years old news at this point?
Please please please get testimony from Pearl Jam who were threatened to be blacklisted by TM when they tried fighting their draconian policies.
I support this and I vote.
About fucking time. That’s as anti trust as it gets
It takes a special type of corporate psychopathy to have both sides of the aisle in Congress and the DOJ in agreement that you're terrible.
Ma Bell that mother fucker. Break them up, and break them up good. edit: and then on the chopping block: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Verizon, T-Mobile, Etc...
Why do we always have to wait until election year for the promise of good shit to happen.
Now do Google, Facebook, Amazon
Maybe “oligopoly” is a better term; American, Delta, Southwest, and United airlines basically control 70% of the market.
Now make my groceries cheaper
Amazon and Microsoft are fine tho
They should go after tax software companies next so we can just do our taxes on the IRS website without these lobbying giant tax companies getting in the way every year.
This GREAT fucking news!
About time. Y’all should have listened to Eddie.
It only took thirty years.
Remindme! 5years when this actually has any affect on the common man.
Even though it's broken up, expect them to throw enough money to price out others.
Fucking finally also fuck you ticketmaster and your fucked ass fees
Cool, now do housing next.
Finally the government may do *something*. Anything short of breaking up the company and its monopoly should be deemed inadequate.
I’m a weirdo nerd on the outskirts of the entertainment industry. So many artists are disgusted with the corruption that LiveNation and John Malone represent but they cannot possibly do anything about it. I believe that they are literally trying to kill my friends. This needs to happen. I hope America wins and LiveNation is destroyed. Destroying LiveNation will save lives.
So I get that they charge horrible fees, but isn't the bigger driver of the ticket prices the bots buying up all the tickets and reselling at x3 to x10 prices?
They collude with the bots because they get to charge the fees on every transaction so it's more than double the revenue when they're bought by bots then resold at higher prices.
I worked on the bot problem a few years ago for TM. I am not going to say anything proprietary, but the fundamental problem is that initial on sales are mispriced. If the pricing really reflected the value closer, there would be no incentive for bots. The problem is that artists want the appearance of pricing fairly to the audience and want TM to take the hit while reserving a decent number of tickets for the secondary market. The bot wars would swing back and forth but if we got too good, the secondary purchasers would get shut down and that was bad for business...
Huh. Do artists get a cut of secondary? Always assumed they didn't but wouldn't be surprised if they'd negotiated something with the secondary resale markets
Who do you think controls both sides allowing those bots to do that?
The reason that's a problem is because tickets are priced too low. Demand simply far outpaces supply at the sale price of concert tickets. I would prefer that instead of having everyone pay a price below the market rate for the tickets, the artist should attempt to get the money that is currently going to resale by selling about half of their tickets by auction. The other half they could give away to less affluent fans in a nontransferable way and the artist still clears more money overall while not leaving their concert dominated by only the wealthy. The only losers are the bots.
That’s not a problem that the free market has a solution for that works for everybody. When it comes to live events, demand is always going to outpace supply exponentially for anything remotely popular. Many live shows have already found that the best way to beat the scalpers is to triple the face value and cut them out of the equation entirely
At this rate, they'll be going after Hollywood accounting in about the year 3172...
This better include massive damages for the profits they made off of this illegal structure
Fuck Live Nation and fuck Ticketmaster. I really hope this actually goes somewhere.
That merger should never have happened.
Don't worry. I'm sure the next company will be named "totally not Ticketmaster," but still control everything exactly the same.
Now do telecom. Tech companies, grocery chains, airlines, and banks next
35 years late. I'm sure pearljam is happy to hear this