{"id":2211,"date":"2009-09-04T07:43:04","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T15:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2211"},"modified":"2009-09-04T07:43:04","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T15:43:04","slug":"correct-wsj-url","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/04\/correct-wsj-url\/","title":{"rendered":"Correct WSJ URL"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Big Ticket Seller Tried Deal With Scalpers<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

SOLUTIONS<\/span><\/p>\n

Ticketmaster<\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/span>
A manifest for each and every venue.\u00c2\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

Back in the days before the Net, you picked from the available seats at the Ticketmaster location\/machine.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, with Internet "progress", you can see where your seats are on a map, but you have no idea what’s truly available.<\/p>\n

Would you rush and pay a scalper if you found out there were good seats available in a preferable location?<\/p>\n

As for available seats…<\/p>\n

Tickets blacked out, sold by the venue to season ticket holders, must be noted.\u00c2\u00a0 Tickets held back for the venue, band and promoter must be delineated.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if we want to be truly egalitarian, there should be no pre-sales other than the ones to fan clubs.\u00c2\u00a0 You shouldn’t need to have an American Express card in order to get a good concert ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine if Toyota said you had to purchase an SUV to buy a Prius!<\/p>\n

2<\/span>
Charges\/fees must be delineated on the Ticketmaster page where you buy your ticket.<\/p>\n

How much was kicked back to the building, promoter and band.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if it’s an annual fee to the building, there must be a link to this information, and how much it is.<\/p>\n

Live Nation<\/span><\/p>\n

Must publish how much it’s paying the band and what the gross is.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 By the same token, if a player is making the minimum and hitting just under .300, he’s a hero.<\/p>\n

The only way to fix the mess we are in is through transparency.<\/p>\n

But all we’ve got is smoke and mirrors, subterfuge.<\/p>\n

The building doesn’t want to pay the act on season tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 The promoter doesn’t want to account accurately because the guarantee was so big and it’s almost impossible to make any money.<\/p>\n

All of the foregoing changes can never happen.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because Ticketmaster and Live Nation don’t want to divulge this information, but because the acts don’t want them to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like the Wizard of Oz.\u00c2\u00a0 You mean that all powerful being who we worshipped is a tiny man just like us, but greedier and more narcissistic?<\/p>\n

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?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never had any children.\u00c2\u00a0 Give all that money back I paid for schools!\u00c2\u00a0 And lower my taxes and fix those potholes.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t people see that money sent to the government is for the common good, infrastructure and services?\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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?\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re not willing to suffer, surrender, let someone else be taken care of, do you truly expect the acts to do otherwise?\u00c2\u00a0 If you cheat on your taxes and lie in court, are you really going to hold the acts to a higher standard?<\/p>\n

If there were little money in music, we’d have few of these problems.\u00c2\u00a0 But success makes people greedy.\u00c2\u00a0 And the closing of the window, sales decreases, recession, brings out the worst in acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really expect a classic rock act to leave money on the table?\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

The problems in the music business are a reflection of our society.\u00c2\u00a0 With a little gasoline poured on the fire as a result of the Napster effect.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

How do the sports teams deal with the problem?<\/p>\n

They field winners.\u00c2\u00a0 They spend prodigiously on their product, trying to get people to come.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for a few brilliant minds, spending less is the beginning of a downward spiral.<\/p>\n

We’re on a downward spiral in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 No one wants to take less.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the label, not its executives, not the agents, not the promoters, not the act.\u00c2\u00a0 So they squeeze the fan, the customer.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t want to admit it out loud, so record labels sponsor disinformation campaigns, scapegoating anybody with an online solution.\u00c2\u00a0 And acts scalp their own tickets.<\/p>\n

And you wonder why we don’t care about the music anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not a higher calling, we’re not informed and illuminated, these people are just like us, except more desperate.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Bernie Madoff, they’ll do ANYTHING to keep what they’ve got.\u00c2\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

No, change must come from the fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Who votes with his dollar.\u00c2\u00a0 As long as you keep paying, things are going to get worse.\u00c2\u00a0 Once you stop, change begins.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Those left, must adjust.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a few now.\u00c2\u00a0 But the Dave Matthews Band does not make riveting music.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t convince a non-fan to care.\u00c2\u00a0 Metallica is better, but they function within a genre.\u00c2\u00a0 To get everyone to like metal is like expecting all grandmas to suddenly buy Harley-Davidsons.<\/p>\n

But that does not mean someone can’t be bigger than the niche.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re going to have to be supremely talented.\u00c2\u00a0 And despite their inevitable flaws, we’re going to still have to admit how great they are.\u00c2\u00a0 We can castigate Fleetwood Mac, but what have they done lately to counteract our negative comments?\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 The public didn’t buy.\u00c2\u00a0 Create great new material, we might be interested again.\u00c2\u00a0 But I won’t hold my breath.<\/p>\n

The oldsters don’t have it in them.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re too inured to their lifestyles, just like their handlers.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you’re going it alone, are you willing to starve for a decade until you hit critical mass?\u00c2\u00a0 While your friends graduate from college, get MBAs and go to work for McKinsey?<\/p>\n

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?\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

We all know what’s great.<\/p>\n

And we all agree there’s less of it than ever before.<\/p>\n

The business isn’t excited about music.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the superstar acts aren’t either.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a living, it’s the only way they can make this kind of dough.\u00c2\u00a0 What a long strange trip it’s been.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big Ticket Seller Tried Deal With Scalpers SOLUTIONS Ticketmaster 1A manifest for each and every venue.\u00c2\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-zF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions\/2212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}