Correct WSJ URL
SOLUTIONS
Ticketmaster
1
A manifest for each and every venue. I can log on to Orbitz and see every available airline seat, but Ticketmaster wants me to jump at what it’s offering, warning me that if I don’t take it, I lose my place in line and will get worse tickets?
Back in the days before the Net, you picked from the available seats at the Ticketmaster location/machine. Now, with Internet "progress", you can see where your seats are on a map, but you have no idea what’s truly available.
Would you rush and pay a scalper if you found out there were good seats available in a preferable location?
As for available seats…
Tickets blacked out, sold by the venue to season ticket holders, must be noted. Tickets held back for the venue, band and promoter must be delineated. And, if we want to be truly egalitarian, there should be no pre-sales other than the ones to fan clubs. You shouldn’t need to have an American Express card in order to get a good concert ticket. Imagine if Toyota said you had to purchase an SUV to buy a Prius!
2
Charges/fees must be delineated on the Ticketmaster page where you buy your ticket.
How much was kicked back to the building, promoter and band. And, if it’s an annual fee to the building, there must be a link to this information, and how much it is.
Live Nation
Must publish how much it’s paying the band and what the gross is.
We know how many people go to a baseball game, and what the salary of each player is, how come we can’t know concert statistics? If a player is making 20 mil and hits badly, fans are angry. By the same token, if a player is making the minimum and hitting just under .300, he’s a hero.
The only way to fix the mess we are in is through transparency.
But all we’ve got is smoke and mirrors, subterfuge.
The building doesn’t want to pay the act on season tickets. The promoter doesn’t want to account accurately because the guarantee was so big and it’s almost impossible to make any money.
All of the foregoing changes can never happen. Not because Ticketmaster and Live Nation don’t want to divulge this information, but because the acts don’t want them to. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. You mean that all powerful being who we worshipped is a tiny man just like us, but greedier and more narcissistic?
Is it any surprise in a nation where citizens are not interested in the common good, don’t want to pay for services they don’t use, that the musicians are greedy too? I’ve never had any children. Give all that money back I paid for schools! And lower my taxes and fix those potholes. Huh? Don’t people see that money sent to the government is for the common good, infrastructure and services? I’m not saying there’s not waste, but if no one pays, you end up with what we’ve got…crumbling streets and bridges and inadequate schools.
So if the public has changed from love your brother, we’re all in it together, to fuck you, what’s in it for me, is it any wonder the acts have the same philosophy? If you’re not willing to suffer, surrender, let someone else be taken care of, do you truly expect the acts to do otherwise? If you cheat on your taxes and lie in court, are you really going to hold the acts to a higher standard?
If there were little money in music, we’d have few of these problems. But success makes people greedy. And the closing of the window, sales decreases, recession, brings out the worst in acts. Do you really expect a classic rock act to leave money on the table? Why? To appease their fans who blow tons of money in Vegas and may be retired and living on a fixed income the next time the band comes through town?
The problems in the music business are a reflection of our society. With a little gasoline poured on the fire as a result of the Napster effect. Not that it’s solely about stealing music, you can’t get everybody to pay attention to the same thing anymore anyway, not in a land of 500 TV channels and an infinite Web.
How do the sports teams deal with the problem?
They field winners. They spend prodigiously on their product, trying to get people to come. Except for a few brilliant minds, spending less is the beginning of a downward spiral.
We’re on a downward spiral in the music business. No one wants to take less. Not the label, not its executives, not the agents, not the promoters, not the act. So they squeeze the fan, the customer. They don’t want to admit it out loud, so record labels sponsor disinformation campaigns, scapegoating anybody with an online solution. And acts scalp their own tickets.
And you wonder why we don’t care about the music anymore. It’s not a higher calling, we’re not informed and illuminated, these people are just like us, except more desperate. Like Bernie Madoff, they’ll do ANYTHING to keep what they’ve got. The government didn’t discover Bernie’s shenanigans for eons, do you really think the government is going to solve the problems in the music industry, a field over which they have very little oversight to begin with?
No, change must come from the fan. Who votes with his dollar. As long as you keep paying, things are going to get worse. Once you stop, change begins. The greediest get out, it’s not worth the effort to make so little money, they take their tens of millions of dollars and retire. Those left, must adjust. And eventually, if we’re lucky, we’ve got a new act that’s not in it solely for the money, that we can rally around, believe in.
We’ve got a few now. But the Dave Matthews Band does not make riveting music. You can’t convince a non-fan to care. Metallica is better, but they function within a genre. To get everyone to like metal is like expecting all grandmas to suddenly buy Harley-Davidsons.
But that does not mean someone can’t be bigger than the niche. But they’re going to have to be supremely talented. And despite their inevitable flaws, we’re going to still have to admit how great they are. We can castigate Fleetwood Mac, but what have they done lately to counteract our negative comments? If Stevie Nicks recorded a new "Rhiannon", we’d give her grudging respect. Instead, she’s milking the past for her pocketbook, so it’s open season for haters.
I use Fleetwood Mac as an example because they went on tour without any new material, without Christine McVie, performing the same show they did ad infinitum just a few years ago at exorbitant ticket prices. The public didn’t buy. Create great new material, we might be interested again. But I won’t hold my breath.
The oldsters don’t have it in them. They’re too inured to their lifestyles, just like their handlers. But those who need to express themselves, who need to make music, who aren’t doing it solely for the money, they’re our hope. But like I said earlier, if you want the freedom to express yourself without interference, write an iPhone App, don’t sign with a major label. And, if you’re going it alone, are you willing to starve for a decade until you hit critical mass? While your friends graduate from college, get MBAs and go to work for McKinsey?
If the public wants a safety net, if everybody wants to go into banking, as so many Ivy League graduates have done since financial mania began in the Reagan era, do you really expect the acts to be any different? Either they’re going to be mercenary also, or too dumb to play it any other way, and thus too lousy for us to care.
We all know what’s great.
And we all agree there’s less of it than ever before.
The business isn’t excited about music. Most of the superstar acts aren’t either. It’s a living, it’s the only way they can make this kind of dough. What a long strange trip it’s been.
