You have to hate Ticketmaster. It’s the law of us vs. them. If you question this orthodoxy, you’re a pariah. Truth be damned.

But the truth is there is no way underpriced concert tickets will end up in the hands of hard core fans. It’s literally impossible. Speak to the titans of the industry and they’ll tell you. People with decades of experience. So the question becomes how to address this problem.

At the end of this e-mail I’m going to print an e-mail that links to a CNN article about Coldplay playing India. The band kept prices low, so fans could attend, but resellers got the tickets and are now selling them for $11,000.

Now not only is Coldplay not getting the uplift, most fans can’t afford to go!

I’m also going to print the letter of someone who is contemplating buying extra Oasis tickets to resell himself.

I hear all this b.s. about only allowing ticket owners to be able to resell them at face value, but there are umpteen ways for scalpers to get around this.

It’s a cat and mouse game, trying to eradicate the secondary market. So far, no one has been able to accomplish this completely.

And, once again, if you tie up the tickets with the fans as opposed to the secondary market, the public doesn’t like this either. Because people want to believe if they’re willing to pay the freight, however expensive it might be, they can get a ticket at the last minute.

Michael Rapino, Jay Marciano, Irving Azoff, Coran Capshaw…they do this all day every day, with multiple acts. These are the questions they’re confronted with.

What both Live Nation and AEG have decided is it’s best to adjust prices on the fly, if they are underpriced. They watch the on sale and raise prices accordingly. Their goal is to capture fair market value before the scalpers do. Because if the scalpers see that the tickets are underpriced it’s a field day, they’re going to buy even more.

Now most bands are not constantly on the road. Most managers don’t represent bands that are constantly on the road. Which is why acts and managers can be out of the loop regarding modern touring conditions. Things change just that fast. You toured, took a year off, and now are going back on the road.

I’ve spoken with lawyers who try to set managers straight. They’ve been making these tour deals day in and day out and know the market conditions, but these managers are operating on old information, on gut feeling, and their beliefs are out of date.

Ticketmaster is imperfect. We can debate all day long whether Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s concert promotion division should be broken up. But one thing is for sure, even if there is a division it will not lower ticket prices. It’s not Ticketmaster setting prices that keeps them high, it’s fan demand!

Sure, there are fees. I’m not going to delineate them for the umpteenth time. I’m just going to say most of the money from these fees does not end up in the pockets of Ticketmaster and without fees there can be no show, because the acts take almost all of the face value of the ticket.

Once again, do not listen to club owners and developing acts.

Do you know how hard it is to keep a club in business? That’s why so many of them went out of business! So many were kept alive by record companies, purchasing tickets and drinks for showcases. That money has dried up completely. So, a club has to make it on the shows it’s got. And it’s great they can sell out on Saturday night, but what about the other six days of the week? And no one is obligated to play a club. There’s no guarantee you’ll get talent. And margins are thin and…

And developing acts. This is the world you’re living in. You can’t really make big money until you can go clean and can play bigger buildings. This is the way it works in essentially every sphere.

Let’s talk baseball. The major leagues pay extremely well. The minor leagues, the farm clubs, pay horrifically. Even though it’s a revolving door. You’re the same player in each, playing the same game, but until you’re called up to the majors, you’re making bupkes. Ditto those who can’t get re-signed by a major. They play for almost nothing trying to put up good numbers in order to get back into the majors for the big payday.

And you can’t listen to most agents and managers, because they’re posturing. They want more of this money for their acts. Which is one reason the fees were established in the first place, to keep a pot of money out of the pot that the acts can commission. And agents and managers are always trying to get more of this money. This engenders a whole ‘nother slew of shenanigans. Fake fees or fake upcharges the promoter instills in order to make a profit. Yes, the promoter can make a profit while telling the act it has not. The act got paid its guarantee, but the promoter doesn’t want the show to go into overages.

I could go deeper but you don’t want me to. This is a professional business. With history. Not easily understood unless you’re in it.

Let’s go one step further, in the old days it was more about percentages than guarantees, the acts and promoters were sharing the risk. Now it has flipped. An act can have a bad gig and make no money. So the act wants a big guarantee, and the promoter is on the hook for it, even if the show stiffs. And if you’re capable of selling tickets, the margin for the promoter, the upside, is tiny, predicated on a near sell out, if not a total sell out, and if you don’t sell these tickets, if you sell 15,000 in an 18,000 seat arena, the promoter might take a bath.

Not that the punters know any of this. They just know that concert ticket prices are high and they want to be inside the building.

But they are not the only force involved. There’s the building itself, and its costs. And Ticketmaster’s costs. And the band’s costs, never mind the commissions to agents, managers, attorneys and accountants. This is not the Little Rascals putting on a show, this is complicated, a world where a percentage point here or there can make all the difference.

You may not want to believe this, but there’s so much you don’t want to believe. But music hits you in an emotional way, so you’re concerned about the price of concert tickets.

There is a way to solve this problem, charge what the tickets are worth. Why is it only in music that tickets should be underpriced, why should high ticket prices reflect negatively on an act if that’s what the public is willing to pay?

As for waiting online hours to buy tickets… There are multiple causes. An act wanting to put multiple shows on sale all at once to create mania so the shows will sell out. But even more, the secondary market, the scalpers, the bots. And in many cases the use of bots is illegal. But this is another thing the public doesn’t understand. A law doesn’t mean anything without enforcement. As for going to court… A lawyer will tell you not to bother if the defendant is judgment proof. And even if you win in court, good luck collecting the money. Hell, look what is happening with Alex Jones! The judgment is clear, getting the money is taking years, and still hasn’t really happened.

I hate to go all Jack Nicholson on you, but most people can’t handle the truth. But that does not make it any less true.

Shoot the messenger all you want, but it’s not going to change reality.

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From: James Spencer

Re: Oasis Won’t Use Dynamic Pricing In The U.S.

I saw the Apple/Zane Lowe Coldplay interview..The guys were beaming with pride about being able to keep ticket prices reasonable..I got the “warm fuzzies”..Who WOULDN’T?

Then, this morning, THIS..

“Coldplay tickets for $11,000? Uproar in India after tickets sold out in minutes and resold for outrageously high prices”

https://t.ly/2empg

_____________

From: Jason Orr

Re: Oasis Won’t Use Dynmic Pricing In The U.S.

I loved Oasis.  I mean, loved.   I’d carry around my anti-skip discman with my headphones singing their dumb songs like Digsy’s Dinner or Girl with A Dirty Shirt all day long.  My purple Oasis shirt with their orange logo shirt was so stained and faded from wearing all the time.  It was gross.  I think I had a moppy hair cut to boot.  I was a total dweeb.

I remember going to see them one time in Duquesne University basketball gym in the 90s.  I got the tickets as a Christmas gift from my grandmother (God rest her soul, what a woman).  I’ll tell you tho, guaranteed she didn’t scalp those tickets. She probably drove her Oldsmobile into the mall a few days after they were released, parked and went in to Camelot or Sam Goody, and bought those hard tickets in person.  I remember that I couldn’t even get anyone to go with me.  I begged my best friend and he finally relented, persuaded by a free ticket and assurance that I’d never tell anyone he went.  (He had a rep to keep up, ya know, his Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera fandoms were well known.)  That show was one of my favorites tho.  Small venue.  Probably only die hards there.  Loud as hell and raw sounding.  Oasis in peak form. Thank you grandma.

Today, when I got the email for the Oasis pre-sale or lottery access or whatever it is, I immediately signed up.  Then, I turned to my “make a quick buck” colleague and said, ‘ya know what might be a better opportunity than those Travis Scott sneakers you were trying to get last week? Oasis tickets if they don’t do that dynamic pricing like they did in the U.K.   Six shows over here.  Only one in the U.S. on the east coast.’ He only feigned interest.

Lo and behold, your email comes thru and I had to laugh.  First time I had heard they weren’t doing dynamic.  But then I started thinking about what you said… are they even going to sell out?  Do I even know anyone now that would go with me?

And on the other hand, if they sell out in seconds and I somehow get them, would I even go if I could scalp them for two grand each or whatever they are going for across the pond? Would I be selling out, or wallet first, as you said?  They haven’t been in my Spotify top 100 songs of the year in the last decade.  Sure, the show would be a trip down memory lane I never thought I’d get.  Hell it could be new memories! But I saw them plenty in the heyday.  Will it even be the same?

I guess the question we’ll get answered soon is, what’s it actually worth to be here now?