False Hopes Fuel Keith Urban’s Ticket Frenzy

Wow, Gary Borman isn’t going to be happy about this.

To tell you the truth, I’m stunned that I was the only person who would go on the record re ticket shenanigans.  When I sat down for an interview I figured I’d end up on the cutting room floor, overshadowed by Nashville and ticketing bigwigs.  I didn’t expect to be the featured performer.

Let me tell you how this works.

Somebody I don’t know tracks me down and tells me they’re doing a story.  I pay attention because it’s television.  Not because of the power of TV, but because I know they’re legit.  They’re dedicating dollars and time, so they’re not wasting my time, so I take it seriously.

But I still didn’t think I could fit it into my schedule.

But ultimately, I did.  I sat down in a hotel room for an hour with the newscaster and answered questions about the ticketing business.  I didn’t think the focus of the story would be on Keith Urban.  But I want to be clear, that doesn’t make a difference.  I’M NOT TAKING BACK A SINGLE WORD!  I BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SAID WAS TRUE!

Of course, the station edited the story the way they saw fit.

But what’s it going to take to get to the bottom of this issue?  Where supposed fan heroes deflect rage on to Ticketmaster and scalpers when they’re the greedy bastards?

Ethan Smith did a great story on this in the "Wall Street Journal".

Barely any traction.  Could that have to do with the paper being behind a pay wall?  Is Rupert Murdoch saving newspapers or killing them by making people pay for online content?

"Rolling Stone" eventually picked up on the story, but the magazine’s website is about as up to date and believable and inspires about as much confidence as Jann Wenner’s other music enterprise, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  Hell, it’s 2010, and "Rolling Stone" keeps most of its content for the physical magazine.  That would be like refusing to license your music for MP3s, making people buy CDs.  Whoops!  There are people who still do that!  Then again, fans just steal what they want willy-nilly online.

But they don’t steal what they don’t want.

And so far, they haven’t wanted to know that the root of all evil in the concert business is the acts, that Ticketmaster is just a front for the acts.

Huh?

Don’t blame Live Nation either.  As the aforementioned "Wall Street Journal" stated, their business is "a river of nickels".  They’ve got to charge you for parking, even if you don’t drive, they’ve got to overcharge you for food, and they’ve got to get a kickback from Ticketmaster (if they went all in, the acts would want to commission the fee) to barely eke out a profit.

Huh?

Worse is the on sale date.

By time there’s the big ad in the newspaper, frequently there are only hundreds of tickets available in arenas that hold 20,000.  Because there’s the fan club pre-sale, the AmEx pre-sale, the platinum sales on Ticketmaster…  In other words, you can’t get a good ticket.

Which is why StubHub is the outlet of choice for so many people.  Shop at your leisure, get exactly the ticket you want.  Sure, you’ve got to pay a lot for it, but you don’t have to buy it!

So which way do the acts want it?  Do they truly want to be men and women of the people, insuring that their real fans get in the building at a cheap price, good seats for face value…  Or, do they want to pay lip service to the foregoing and employ shenanigans to insure that they make a fortune, all the while pointing fingers at everybody else?

Sure, brokers are a problem.  Then again, did you read that story where the major purveyors of talent sat down with the brokers to try and cut a deal?  Ultimately fell through, because how can two untrustworthy entities come to an agreement?

So, the public is the loser.

Assuming the public cares about going to the show.

And so many don’t.  They’d rather sit at home and watch HD content on the big screen.  Or surf the Net.  Do you really need to go to the show to know what’s going on in the world?  Almost never.  The gig is an overstylized, overmanaged, manufactured concoction.  The Emperor’s New Clothes.  And if you’ve already paid a fortune to see the Stones and Aerosmith already, why should you go again?  It’s not like they have any new hits!

So, ultimately, the business has to point the finger at itself.

It wants short term results.  Instantly successful acts.  Which makes about as much sense as forcing people to marry on the first date.

It wants to overcharge for concert tickets to make up for the revenue lost in the recorded music sphere.  Which is kind of like a fired employee showing up at the office of his old company with a gun, imploring the CEO to write him a check.

It wants to believe, like that old Talking Heads song, that it will be the same as it ever was.

But it’s not.

So who we gonna blame?

Oh, that’s right.  It’s the customer.  Stealing the music.

Without a customer, there’s no business.

Thank god the customer is stupid, and doesn’t want to believe that their favorite performers are greedy bastards.  Otherwise, there’d be a lot of soul-searching in the offices of labels, managers and concert promoters.

I just don’t get it.  We bail out bankers and they pay themselves bonuses.  Many of us don’t have health insurance and those that do have to pay for those that don’t, the public picking up hospital fees for the indigent.  But we take it.  I’m surprised there’s not a revolution in this country.  Maybe now that this story has made it to television, there will be.

Oh no there won’t.  In an endless news cycle populated by vacation kidnappings and fake news created by people who want to get a TV show do we really expect anything of substance to gain traction?

There’s a wealth of information on this website.  Because they got hard data, the law requiring its availability.  But you won’t read it.  You’d rather just sit back and blame Ticketmaster.  And Live Nation too.

It’s like that old movie.  What would Jack Nicholson say?  We can’t handle the truth?

Damn straight.