Generally a good piece, but I have one nit to pick:
Here’s the truth nobody wants to admit: the music industry isn’t run by musicians anymore. It’s run by promoters, ticket scalpers, streaming executives, and a shadowy network of middlemen who’ve figured out how to extract every last penny from your nostalgia and FOMO.
When was the industry ever run by musicians?
50 years ago, didn’t Roger tell you the name of the game, boy? He called it “Riding the Gravy Train”…
Oh yeah, because Ticketmaster and Live Nation being one company holding a monopoly on tickets for every single large/popular venue in the country could never cause an increase in prices I mean who could’ve possibly thought that would happen
The ticket monopoly baffles me. Surely it can’t be that hard for someone to set up an independent site?
I doubt it is that hard, but they’re also fighting against the convenience of ease of access for having everything in one place, as long as you’re looking at shows for more established artists. For example, if you’re into death metal and hardcore punk in NYC, and like to go to the odd electronic show, tickets are spread across a mix of Dice, AXS (which I forgot whether or not it’s just live nation in disguise), Shotgun, the Resident Advisor app, and then a handful of venues where you just have to go buy tickets straight on their website. Then you travel a few hours south to Baltimore, and it’s like half those apps no longer exist, and you need to find new ones. Same if you go to the west coast. On the other hand, if my sister wants to go see a major act likeKesha or something again, she can just search that artist and see all their upcoming shows across not just the whole of the US, but in multiple other countries and buy tickets with the one account for any of them.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation definitely suck, and people are rightfully pissed about it, but I don’t know how many of them are actually mad enough to go back to doing the legwork of keeping up on show listings for multiple venues and installing 5 different apps to avoid them.
This as well as many of the contracts the venues have with Live Nation/Ticketmaster have non compete clauses barring them from being able to sell tickets directly or use another service.
I think you identified the need for a law to be written to ban such agreements on monopoly grounds. We could just ban all non compete clauses and the world would be a better place as the majority of them are unenforceable and unethical to begin with.
Problem is our FTC approved the merger allowing the monopoly to proceed. So I doubt any type of law blocking that will be passed any time soon with this clown circus in charge.
I bet they have lost a lot of customers because of this enshitification
They lost me. Fuck them for monopolizing Acid Bath and every other band I didn’t see because I’d rather eat shit than give them cash.
Yeah I don’t even try to go out to concerts anymore
They kind of ruined one of the best things about life if you think about it.
The world would be a better place without shareholders
I remember that the Eagles were going to play the local college football stadium in the early 90s. Everyone was pissed that they wanted $50 for a ticket!
My first concert was the Eagles in 1975, and tickets were $15.
lol based, they’ll pay for it anyway.
Go see local and underground bands and groups, buy their merch, support them on social media.
Yeah, the punk/metal scene is still solid and largely outside of the Ticketmaster bs, with the exception of the huge acts. I see lots of shows at independent venues in Philly
