{"id":30,"date":"2009-07-03T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2026-06-27T15:18:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T15:18:34","slug":"trouble-with-tickets-merger-of-live-music-giants-could-turn-ticket-business-into-one-big-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Trouble with tickets: Merger of live music giants could turn ticket business into one big auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since this is a tale about control, let\u2019s start by stopping.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pull your eyes off the page and scan the horizon. Off in the distance they sit (no, wrong word, they LOOM), down dusty roads, on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, turning open fields into rigid angles of steel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Never too far, these man-made erector sets clutter the countryside.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can you see them?<\/span><\/p>\n

High tension wires.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dangerous but necessary, without them there is no light, no sound; they transfer power and eviscerate skylines. Some say they don\u2019t need to be there, that the energy belongs underground (yes, the underground!), but it\u2019s too late for that now. They\u2019re here, they\u2019re established. Get used to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fine you say, but what does this have to do with buying tickets to a Phish show? <\/span><\/p>\n

Everything. <\/span><\/p>\n

The future of live music, with its verve <\/span>and promise, is perched to become the charge of such monoliths.<\/span><\/p>\n

And many a fan may be left in the dark.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe last conglomeration of the monopolies is trying to stick together and find the last few ways to gouge something,\u201d said Dave Wakeling, the leader of not one but two noted bands (The English Beat and General Public). \u201cThere\u2019s starting to be less and less places in the music industry to make money off of. Just like carrion crows, you\u2019re going to end up with more concentration on the few corpses that remain to pick at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Carrion crows. They nest atop high tension wires.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

In three decades traversing the music business, Wakeling has seen it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 53-year-old Brit has been on stages big and small, playing in front of tens of thousands and sometimes just tens. Much of the industry has changed in those 30 years \u2014 once a realm inhabited by the connected few, the personal computer and Internet opened the gates to everyone, whether you want to listen, create, or simply learn about music.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe old model we had of the music industry may be dead, but the music has never been more alive,\u201d Wakeling said as he prepared to take The English Beat out on a lengthy American tour. \u201cIt was all so sown up and cut and dried when I started, and certainly who you knew or who you could meet could make a whole big heap of difference. Monopolies were guarded very tightly and to be invited into the monopoly was much sought after. It\u2019s always been a mixture of sharks and angels attracted to the music business and I think it\u2019s all for the better now. The whole thing has fallen to bits. It deserved to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid those bits lie remnants of an industry\u2019s past \u2013 concept albums, cassettes, large record companies, David Lee Roth \u2013 while what arose remained lean and compact. Small, tightly-run record labels, CD collections stored in electronic boxes the size of your hand, the music itself reduced to one or two downloadable megabytes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everything got smaller. But not the live spectacle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerts became the behemoth. Amphitheaters of steel built-in empty lots, showcasing lights of all colors and sounds to deafen the sky. Lead singers displayed their faces and egos on television screens 200 times their size (or 100 times, in Kanye West\u2019s case). The crowds grew, the venues grew, and the tickets prices \u2014 oh my did they grow. A show that was once $35 became $100 (thank you Eagles), then became $350 (thank you, Paul McCartney).<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet for the last decade, this growth was steered by the power of two \u2014 Live Nation (the world\u2019s largest live music company) and Ticketmaster (the world\u2019s largest live entertainment ticketing company).<\/span><\/p>\n

Now they want to be one.<\/span><\/p>\n

One company controlling the tickets, the venues, the promotion, the secondary ticket market as well as many of the world\u2019s top musical acts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where we\u2019re at.<\/span><\/p>\n

In February of this year, Ticketmaster and Live Nation announced they wanted to merge and become Live Nation Entertainment, a full-service company uniting the largest ticket distributor with the largest concert promoter. The two entities spent years fighting, as Live Nation ended its contract with Ticketmaster in 2007 \u2014 which gave it sole control to sell tickets at Live Nation events \u2014 and started a ticket service of its own. Ticketmaster countered, buying Front Line, one of the world\u2019s largest artist management companies, and TicketsNow, a secondary ticket sales subsidiary (read legal scalpers).<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years ago, Live Nation started signing several top artists (Madonna, Jay-Z to name a few) to \u201c360-deals,\u201d giving them multi-million dollar payments upfront in exchange for future percentages of their recording, touring and merchandising sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fight proved costly, as a weakened economy saw the companies\u2019 sales and stock prices plummet.<\/span><\/p>\n

What could save them? A gathering of the giants.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis combination will drive measurable benefits to consumers and accelerate the execution of our strategy to build a better artist-to-fan direct distribution platform,\u201d Live Nation\u2019s Michael Rapino said in a statement after merger plans went public. \u201cThis merger, and the resources of these combined companies, will create a new dynamic and unique creative platform of choice for fans across all levels of the live entertainment experience,\u201d Ticketmaster\u2019s Chief Executive Irving Azoff said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sounds good?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMonopolies are inherently bad,\u201d said longtime rock critic Jim DeRogatis, who has written for Spin, Rolling Stone, and now resides as pop critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. \u201cI miss the corner coffee shops. I like Starbucks I drink Starbucks, as a writer, I drink coffee by the boatload. But I would like to have a choice. Whether the product is good or bad it\u2019s just no choice and that\u2019s not good for the consumer. The lack of competition is never good for the consumer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In an analysis of the merger released by the American Antitrust Institute in April, James D. Hurwitz, who worked with the Federal Trade Commission, wrote: \u201cLive Nation Entertainment would be a vertically integrated enterprise with dominance or substantial power on five market levels. The new entity would, therefore, be able to use its strengths in some markets as leverage to gain customers or compliance in others. This vertical integration would effectively frustrate new entry because, as a practical matter, it would require firms seeking to compete seriously against Live Nation Entertainment to enter the industry on several levels at once. The second factor is that the merged entity would likely enjoy market power not just as a seller but also as a buyer. In essence, the company\u2019s market dominance would benefit it in both ways.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what it means either, but it certainly doesn\u2019t sound good.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

Face it, the arena concert-going experience is a pain in the ass.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lucky to get tickets to the concert of your choice before a) it sells out, b) Ticketmaster times out your computer before you can make a purchase or c) Ticketmaster sends all the best seats to its secondary-selling site where you can buy tickets for five times the base price (a practice which reared its crooked head with Bruce Springsteen tickets earlier this year), you\u2019re still left paying a small mint for a few hours of entertainment in what may be crappy seats.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, for the convenience of buying tickets online and printing them out yourself, Ticketmaster charges you a fee.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kind of on the cheaper end of the tickets and I\u2019m grateful of that,\u201d Wakeling said. \u201cWe do hear it sometimes, where you might have a $20 ticket and by the time you finished buying it you might be paying $32 or $35 for the same damn ticket.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is convenient?\u201d said Iain Bluett, president of Atlanta\u2019s Ticket Alternative, a company fighting Ticketmaster for a small piece of the ticket-selling pie. \u201cThe convenience was allowing you to buy the ticket online? They have no competition and they built this huge infrastructure and that fee just kept creeping up and up. If they\u2019re so worried about their fees why are they charging you $2.50 to print out the ticket yourself? Your printer, your paper, $2.50 to do that? Ohhh, they have to pay for that technology. Well, you know what, I don\u2019t know how much technology costs but it\u2019s not that hard to print out your own ticket.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So you paid for the tickets, the fees, now it\u2019s time to go to the show to have some fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re treated like a piece of shit,\u201d DeRogatis said. \u201cWith Live Nation, I resent being treated like cattle. Whether it\u2019s the added parking fee which they do per ticket \u2013 four people carpool out to a show and each of them is paying $15 to park? $7.50 for a beer? $5 or $6 for a hot dog? And then in between, they have the audacity to advertise to me? I paid $50, $60, $100, $250 for a ticket, I just paid $60 for the whole car to park in the middle of nowhere in a dirt field. You\u2019re lined up, they search your bag and God forbid you brought in a bottle of water \u2013 throw that away because they\u2019re going to sell you one for $5. The experience is an inferior one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This will change with the merger, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Trent Reznor, the mastermind behind Nine Inch Nails, is quite vocal about the merger, especially in what happens to ticket prices if it were to go through. On the NIN Web site, Reznor wrote a scathing review of the events, with a harbinger of things to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy guess as to what will eventually happen if\/when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they\u2019ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme \u2013 which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show,\u201d Reznor writes. \u201cThey will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re moving to this world where you have to be filthy fucking rich to see a concert and if you\u2019re not you\u2019re out of luck,\u201d DeRogatis said. Auctioning off tickets \u201cis absolutely what they\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll start to see dynamic pricing,\u201d Bluett said. \u201cYou\u2019d have thresholds. You would sell the first couple of thousand tickets at $100 and then once they sell out you put the tickets up to $120, very much like the airline industry. It gets more complicated because the artists are looking to get more money out of it as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Surely the artists will put a stop to this ticket-selling plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

Bono didn\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked by DeRogatis about the of Ticketmaster\/Live Nation merger, the bespectacled honorary knight, who seemingly knows something about everything, was clueless to the news.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA charlatan and a fraud,\u201d DeRogatis said of Bono. \u201cIf you just made $50 million from somebody, you would know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact in 2008, Live Nation signed U2 to a 12-year touring deal worth $100 million. And therein lies the next dynamic piece of this improbable puzzle \u2013 what are the artists to do?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are vocal barbs on both sides of the issue. Many top artists signed deals with either Ticketmaster or Live Nation, and their silence is deafening.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a certain amount of artists spitting in the face of the fans,\u201d DeRogatis said. \u201cWhen Paul McCartney was 15 or 16 he was able to see Little Richard in Liverpool for the equivalent of a dollar or two and it changed his life. Now some kid who\u2019s sitting in a basement learning to play those Beatles songs, unless he has access to his dad\u2019s gold Amex card at $350 a ticket, can\u2019t see that experience. Paul McCartney has the right to charge whatever he wants, but don\u2019t you tell me you\u2019re an artist anymore. You\u2019re not. This is now some capitalistic cash-in enterprise. How much money does everybody need for 90 minutes of work?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Springsteen fans bellowed after Ticketmaster sent tickets to his show to its secondary selling site, TicketsNow. The Boss himself got involved, scolding the company for its practices and demanding they stop: \u201cThe one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near-monopoly situation in music ticketing . . . the abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you.\u201d Springsteen wrote on the band\u2019s official Web site. Ticketmaster relented and apologized.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then there\u2019s Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins\u2019 frontman, who wrote to a U.S. Senate Committee earlier this year that \u201cthe combination of these companies creates powerful tools for an independent artist to reach their fans in new and unprecedented ways, all the while restoring the power where it belongs.\u201d Corgan, as it turns out, is managed by Azoff.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s starting to look a little less appropriate for $150 or $1,000 stadium seats tickets to go on and watch a band that\u2019s in front of television screen with the singer dancing and miming their latest,\u201d Wakeling said. \u201cIt\u2019s becoming to appear a bit pretentious and particularly in this social clime when people are losing their jobs, their houses, losing any sense of hope for the future. It\u2019s as though the artists have in some ways separated from the people they\u2019re meant to reflect on and service.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know Ticketmaster makes a lot of money,\u201d Tim Mahoney, lead guitarist of 311 said. \u201cTo charge for a ticket now, most people buy it online, but the cost for that service charge just seems like a ton of money. I know our band; we don\u2019t get any of that. It\u2019s not like the bands or artists are getting any sort of cut of it \u2013 it interests me where all that money goes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, the artist will set the price at what the people will pay.<\/span><\/p>\n

And they\u2019re paying.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I was in a band like Coldplay and U2 and I heard that people weren\u2019t going because of the price, I would do everything in my power to change it,\u201d Bluett said. \u201cUnfortunately there are 80,000 other people at the Georgia Dome who don\u2019t care and suck it up and say \u2018Well that\u2019s what it is, screw you,\u2019 click and they bought the tickets. We all do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

What, if anything, is being done? As the economy continues to falter while tickets continue to rise, is anyone paying attention?<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the country\u2019s larger festivals remain a great bargain, and all are allowing people to pay on layaway. April\u2019s Coachella festival (The Cure, Paul McCartney, Morrissey) checked in at $269 (or less than a single top-tier seat for one McCartney show) to see more than 100 bands during the three-day event. June\u2019s Bonnaroo (Springsteen, Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys) charged $250 for the three-day festival, while August\u2019s Lollapalooza (Depeche Mode, The Killers, Jane\u2019s Addiction) runs $190.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Bluett, for one, is trying to tackle the dreaded convenience charge. Ticket Alternative, handling between 150 and 400 venues nationwide in usually smaller venues (such as The EARL and Smith\u2019s Olde Bar in Atlanta), charges less than half of what Ticketmaster does.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe only make money if we sell tickets,\u201d Bluett said, \u201cso we work really hard for our venues to help them sell tickets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course the merger can only help him, since the overwhelming presence of one company could spur venues to look for alternatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually a great thing for us if it goes through because a lot of the smaller venues are looking now to jump ship like this is the final straw,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a win-win, lose-lose for us. On one hand, I don\u2019t want it to go through because consumers have a hard enough time getting good deals on buying tickets and the exorbitant fees those companies charge are outrageous. On the other hand, if it does go through it could mean great things for us because it\u2019s going to push more promoters to look for other alternatives which is where we step in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the billion-dollar question remains: Will the merger go through?<\/span><\/p>\n

Bluett sees it happening, though with some concessions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTicketmaster is going to be forced to sell TicketsNow, and if they do that I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reason why it wouldn\u2019t go through,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are a complete conflict of interest, how on Earth anyone ever let that go through blows my mind. But if Ticketmaster does that, then they\u2019ll likely merge with Live Nation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the U.S. Congress and the Justice Department are looking into the merger, and some have vowed it will not go through. Of course, the winning of mergers such as this depends on how deft the companies are at playing political poker \u2014 and Live Nation has a face card in the hole.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a 50-50 shot, I think this is a really bad time to be selling the American public this argument of bigger is better,\u201d DeRogatis said. \u201cOn the other hand, the Live Nation board has a really interesting fellow on it named Ari Emanuel who happens to be Rahm Emanuel\u2019s brother.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is Rahm Emanuel? He\u2019s President Barack Obama\u2019s Chief of Staff.<\/span><\/p>\n

Live Nation with a straight to the king.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s stop where we started.<\/span><\/p>\n

For fans of the underground, none of this matters much. Clubs and bars were never tied to Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and likely never will be. The underground, after all, is the future before anyone is aware of it, and monopolies are never too good at seeing much past their balance sheets.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the window of opportunity to see bands before they ascend to a new level could be closing faster by the day. With controlling interest in all music matters, the merged companies could seek 360 deals with smaller, lesser-known bands to join their cadre of superstars. Suddenly the up-and-coming band you wanted to see before it was big has reached the land of $50 tickets and $9 beers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The power of live music has never been more important, or valuable, as it is now. There\u2019s a belief that if the merger goes through, live music\u2019s best of the best (and maybe even its middle of the pack) will be reserved only for the affluent and connected.<\/span><\/p>\n

And those anchored amphitheaters, much like the high tension wires they sit aside, will be forever seen but never touched.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that is old as mankind itself is the traveling troubadour who goes from village to village with his mandolin, puts out his hat and if he\u2019s any good he winds up with a couple of loaves of bread and pennies,\u201d DeRogatis said. \u201cIf he\u2019s not, he better become a blacksmith.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk about cybersex, but it\u2019s still just jerking off. It\u2019s not as good as the real thing. The one experience that cannot be duplicated in this digital age is sitting in a room with a musician you admire and he or she is playing this incredible music. That remains incredibly valuable \u2013 that may be the only part of the music industry that is still viable. And to have that in the controls of one company is outrageous.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since this is a tale about control, let\u2019s start by stopping. Pull your eyes off the page and scan the horizon. Off in the distance they sit (no, wrong word, they LOOM), down dusty roads, on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, turning open fields into rigid angles of steel. Never too far, these man-made erector […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,145],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-dave-wakeling","tag-english-beat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}