“Jack Antonoff Reacts to Ticketmaster Canceling Some Harry Styles Ticket Sales After They ‘Caught Scalpers’: ‘You Caught You?’ – The ticket giant & Styles announced that they’re working together to sell tickets to fans at face value.”

https://ca.billboard.com/music/music-news/jack-antonoff-reacts-ticketmaster-refunding-harry-styles-tickets-1236229435/

No good deed goes unpunished.

In case this didn’t come over your transom yesterday, Ticketmaster canceled Harry Styles tickets at MSG that were bought by scalpers and is now returning them to the market at face value for fans and…

THEY’RE GUITLY!

Or you could read the “New Yorker” article about Ticketmaster where they leave out the salient point about Ticketmaster’s business, that there are exclusive contracts with buildings who are given advances against the huge share of fees they receive. This is what the recent lawsuit was all about. Can the press get it right?

OF COURSE NOT!

But Jack Antonoff? This is his business, he goes on the road, how can he get it so WRONG!

My inbox is inundated with musicians complaining about Spotify’s per stream penny rate. Only there is no such thing! They can’t get it through their heads that there’s a pool of money that is divided based on listening. They can’t get it through their heads that a stream is worth more on Apple because fewer people listen. No, Spotify is the enemy, it’s screwing the artists, the big bad evil empire run by billionaire Daniel Ek is a scourge on society, hurting musicians who are just trying to stay alive.

And you wonder why those in the business don’t bother correcting these falsehoods… Because it’s like trying to convince Trumpers that vaccines are good and everything Donald does isn’t right.

BUT JACK ANTONOFF?

Let’s be clear, the acts set the prices. Ticketmaster is beholden to them. Are there fees? ABSOLUTELY! But the reason there are fees is because the acts take 90% plus of the face value of a ticket, how is anybody else in the food chain supposed to make any money?

Of course, of course, the smaller the show, especially at the club level…the acts have less negotiating power, then again, today’s generation is not drinking and clubs are challenged and…

Musicians have a god-given right to be rich, to at least earn a living wage, and if this is not true, then it must be SOMEBODY’S fault!

But Jack Antonoff? This guy is making hit record after hit record!

I don’t care what ticketing company is employed, each and every one of them is dealing with scalpers/bots. As for the legendary Taylor Swift Eras on-sale… Ticketmaster’s only flaw was in saying that the company could sell all the tickets at once, all across America. They didn’t want to disappoint Swift, who wanted the mania to ensure she went clean, something her previous tour did not, and who also wanted the bragging rights involved. Ticketmaster’s majordomos should have their heads examined. Each and every person I’ve ever discussed this with, managers of household acts, said they would never do this, because of the bots/scalpers. And in the case of Swift, the bots were on STEROIDS! End result being a public brouhaha and a government clampdown…once again, Ticketmaster’s only mistake in the process was trying to sell all the tickets at once. There was no deviousness involved.

As for holdbacks… Blame the ACTS! The acts pull for their fan clubs, make deals with credit card companies, they want all this revenue. If you think the fault is Ticketmaster you’re as ignorant as Jack Antonoff!

Bots/scalpers go with the territory. And do you know why? BECAUSE THE TICKETS ARE UNDERPRICED! Price them at their true value and the secondary market goes away, because there’s no money to be made. But if tickets have a face value of a hundred bucks and they’re worth five hundred, it’s a FIELD DAY!

Think about this… I’ll sell you something that you can flip for very little effort at a multiple of three, four, five, even ten times! Which is why so many fans buy excess tickets that they flip, so they can make money, that’s where some of the StubHub inventory comes from.

But the professionals? This is their BUSINESS! They’ve got technology better than some nations. Let me ask you… Is your inbox completely clean, is spam totally gone? ABSOLUTELY NOT! E-mail has been a prevalent way of communication for thirty years, the biggest companies on earth are addressing the issue, from Google to Microsoft…and even they can’t solve the problem of spam. But Ticketmaster, since music is involved, should be able to eliminate scalpers… Ticketmaster canceled tickets it determined were purchased by scalpers and is now returning them to the general public. And for this Ticketmaster is being excoriated???

We can talk about the leverage of having Ticketmaster and Live Nation under one roof. There were a number of issues brought up in the trial, but Ticketmaster going rogue and profiting itself on tickets it pulled and resold…that never came up. But that’s not good enough for Jack Antonoff, NO!

We can ask whether Ticketmaster should be reselling ticket inventory on its primary platform. There are a lot of issues up for debate. But the company is not a nefarious no-good untrustworthy giant that is screwing artists on a regular basis. Hell, like I said above, if the artists didn’t take almost all of the face value of the ticket there would be no need for fees!

Let’s be clear, people are fans of the acts, not Ticketmaster. So when the acts say Ticketmaster is guilty… IT MUST BE!

Like streaming… Rock acts have convinced their audiences that streaming is the devil, so their music streams disproportionately low. Not only does this hurt the acts, but the entire GENRE! Look at country, those fans now stream, look at Ella Langley… But in rock…

Everybody’s the enemy but you. How does that work? It makes those involved dismiss you out of hand.

I’ll go even further, Ticketmaster is the best platform out there! Sure, there may be some minor players with features beyond TM, but they can only sell a modicum of tickets, not a boatload.

Hell, I’ll leave you with an e-mail I got yesterday. But before that I’ll just say the music business is now like politics, we can’t even agree on the FACTS! Spotify pays 70% of revenue to rightsholders, the business doesn’t scale, but they’re ripping off artists. Hate to burst your bubble, but Spotify single-handedly saved the recorded music industry, and is still its biggest payer. As for the physical market, it’s de minimis, you read all about the cassette coming back… Do you know how many were actually sold? “Life of a Showgirl” was #1, it moved 27,000. The top three were in five figures, after that it was four. #10, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend,” sold 6,000! This is merch, a souvenir business, who even has a cassette player, there’s no there there, yet you keep reading these inane stories…

From: Emory Damron

Re-Capping Resale

I should add, because I am experiencing schpilkes right now on an alternate ticket site:

AXS, ETIX, and EventBrite are all glitchy as hell.

Give me Ticketmaster just for its tech prowess.

It works, you log on, you get in the queue, they send reminders (others promise do but don’t).

Nuff sed.