When big artists were upset they were losing money on streaming their music from platforms like spotify, they came together and created TIDAL to help pay artsits more money for streaming their music. It's much different when it's their fans losing the money. It would be nice to see some of those same big artists come together and create a ticket selling platform to compete with TM.
I am not sure how big the pit in Franklin, TN is, but there are currently over 180 pit tickets on stubhub alone. That is frustrating as hell, when I can't even find a good pair of seats anywhere in the venue
Last edited by arewhyehen; 02-10-2022 at 11:09 AM.
Queue hasn't moved at all for NIN 9/3 but I'm almost in for Halsey...
And this makes it increasingly more difficult for artists to say nope.
This is unbearable.
NIN this weekend on social media
Looks like tickets are gone for Red Rocks night 1
I don't even think I'm going to bother wasting my time with this again tomorrow and will just get raped in the TM reseller market. I fucking love capitalism.
I just missed a meeting for work and spent a stupid amount of money to make sure i got tickets lol
Try this link first for 9/2 show.
https://www.axs.com/events/425564/ni...2&locale=en-US
Scroll down to button that says 'AXS PREMIUM NON-TRANSFERABLE-TRANSFERABLE'. Click. Go forth!
Here is 9/3 if you need it instead or too:
https://www.axs.com/events/425567/ni...2&locale=en-US
EDIT: To be clear, these are NON-TRANSFERABLE! If you can't risk loosing this money, do not buy of course!
Last edited by m0reta; 02-10-2022 at 11:47 AM.
Mee too; I was in line before the goddamn thing opened and...yeah, it's like that South park episode where the kids in Afghanistan are about to go in the movie theater and then it blows up.
I actually liked driving to Denver and standing in a physical line better, I think, because... I like ...GOT tickets for both nights?
THIS way, I was able to NOT get tickets for EITHER night, all from the comfort of home!
BINGO.
When the initial ticket sales, the resale ticket sales and the venues themselves are all happening under the same corporate roof nothing short of legislative intervention to break up that monopoly is going to work. And so long as our legislative bodies are all bought out by these very same corporate entities that legislative intervention will never occur.
Apropos, from the perspective of one of the few remaining truly independent clubs in San Francisco, from 2018 before things got even worse: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2018/01/31.html
I agree that if, like, 90% of the bands currently trying to tour said "nope" to Ticketmaster (and thus almost certainly take on financial hits due to the realities of doing so nowadays, after ~2years of mostly having zero touring income), maybe Ticketmaster would be forced to start making concessions. But, like, can I muster much disappointment that NIN isn't among the vanguard taking that stand? I very much suspect that for NIN (and a lot of bands) nowadays, it's deal with Ticketmaster or Don't Tour At All. At least this way we're getting some NIN.
Anyway, on an unrelated note, alas! Got stuck in emergencyish work stuff all morning, so missed out on the second Cleveland presale today. Here's hoping I have better luck tomorrow morning on the public sale!
End up jumping in the queue for the Greek Theatre show and scored two tickets. Very happy, this venue's been on my bucket list and the whole thing being GA makes it so much more convenient to plan. Now to plan the rest of the cross-country adventure...
For everyone saying "go somewhere other than a Ticketmaster venue" Pearl Jam tried that back in 1995.The band continued its boycott against Ticketmaster during its tour of the United States, refusing to play in Ticketmaster's venue areas, but was surprised that virtually no other bands joined it in refusing to play at Ticketmaster venues.[1] The band chose to use alternate ticketing companies for the shows.
The tour of the United States faced various troubles. Bassist Jeff Ament said that the band and its crew had to "[build] shows from the ground up, a venue everywhere we went."[2] In June 1995, the band was scheduled to play at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in front of 50,000 people. Before the concert vocalist Eddie Vedder was forced to stay at a hospital after suffering from the effects of food poisoning. Vedder left the hospital to play the show; however, he was not able to finish and ended up performing just seven out of twenty-one songs with the band.[3] Neil Young filled in for Vedder for the rest of the show that day. Vedder said, "That whole [Golden Gate Park] thing was a blur based on some bad food. It was really, really bad. Looking back at it, it doesn't seem as intense as it was, but it was horrible. I just felt not human and looking back I should have got through that show somehow, and I think the fact that Neil [Young] was there made me feel like I could get off the hook in some way and I did go out for a few songs."[2] Because of Vedder's health the band was forced to cancel the remaining dates of its tour of the United States.[4] The Milwaukee dates at the Marcus Amphitheater and the Chicago date at Soldier Field were eventually reinstated and the rest of the dates were rescheduled for the fall.
About cancelling the dates, Vedder said, "I think we all agreed that it had gotten insane, that it was no longer about the music."[5] Ament later said, "We were so hardheaded about the 1995 tour. Had to prove we could tour on our own, and it pretty much killed us, killed our career."[2] A concert video of the Australian tour was planned,[6] but later scrapped.
Bands can sell tickets directly and mostly skip TM, but they dont do it. Theres plenty of ticket companies who can do that, it just stopped happening as much. Imagine if NIN kept using MusicToday as a ticket provider like they had for all those years of presales, there wouldnt be such a big mess like this week. Adele sold the bulk of her tour tickets in 2016 via Sandbag direct ticketing and left some scraps to ticketmaster during public onsales. Email subscribers all received a unique code to enter during the presale so there wasnt going to be any sharing of passwords. Radiohead still does it every tour via Sandbag so that people can get tickets at better prices and better selection. If the artist has input, theyll do something about it. BTS, who youre all going to roll your eyes over cause its a Kpop group and such, did not allow platinum pricing to be used on their tours in the u.s. As Ive said, its an option and can be turned on or off. Their people knew that the algorithm would push pricing to unhealthy levels due to the demand their shows have. They figured out how to maximize profits from their tours by keeping the tickets prices as reasonable as possible so that the fans would be willing to spend more money on merchandise which is what makes the real big bucks. Why would the average person go buy a $40 t shirt if they had spent $500 on tickets already. Why not have them spend half that on tickets and the other half on merch.
The looming issue with all that is that the venues are being bought up by the promoters and then theyre stuck with whatever service is being used. In LA during the pandemic there were 5 indie venues that got sucked into the LN hellhole and now sell via TM. Thats happened everywhere but nobodys noticed as much.
There is government legislation in the works, but you know how congress is, it takes forever. LN has been fined and been constantly taking to court over violating the deal they made when they bought TM.
Last edited by suprefan; 02-10-2022 at 01:37 PM.
Bands are not set up for this. Most don't even handle their own merch...now they're supposed to assume ticketing, too? On top of that doing so would close them out of most large scale venues, including nearly all arenas. "oh, you don't want to use Ticketmaster? We won't book you in any of our venues."
I don't think anyone's saying that it's entirely impossible to avoid Ticketmaster shenanigans (though I'd argue it was probably easier pre-pandemic than during). Your examples are all "huge" groups with, dare I say, a lot more draw than even NIN has, who were almost certainly at the time in the middle of "big" touring cycles where they'd have a lot more power to negotiate that kind of thing. And, more to the point, spend the immense amount of effort required to do that kind of negotiation themselves. Hell, we all know that TR's at least tried to do that kind of thing as well, in the past, while on big touring cycles.
It's 2022, though, and shit's still fucked pandemicwise, and they're doing a handful of shows separated by months inbetween them, when they're probably still working on a million scores and have their attention divided in many other ways besides. Sure, TR probably could have put more energy into continuing to fight the Ticketmaster monstrosity, but I just can't muster any sense of indignation that they're not. By all accounts, it's tiring as hell to have to fight those fights, and when you've got financial and psychological uncertainty on top of all of it, thanks to waves hands, I really can't blame any band from wanting to take the relative easy way out.
Last edited by xolotl; 02-10-2022 at 02:04 PM.
Someone made a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about TM's "Official Platinum" tickets and submitted a PDF with examples: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/doc...713-163064.pdf
This press release from 2010 cites TM's deceptive practices for some Springsteen shows.
This 2019 PDF from Stubhub seems to be a response to a Congressional inquiry, but I haven't read the whole thing.
Ticketmaster/Live Nation are a global monopoly controlling ticket sales, performance venues, and touring/merchandise deals for artists. They consistently fuck over consumers with no penalty (unless you count vouchers for shows that have so many restrictions you can't use them for anything worthwhile).
Last edited by FULLMETAL; 02-10-2022 at 05:32 PM.
I remember 20 years ago I was mad at a $25 "convenience" charge. Now those are about as much as the ticket now.
It's getting out of hand and honestly don't see this bubble ever bursting because all the right pockets are being filled with cash. Can't blame the bands for doing this. Touring logistically sounds like a nightmare and they don't want to have to put more on their plate. Ticketing shouldn't be hard, the act of selling tickets shouldn't be hard for the fans.
Bringing back a fan-club style ticketing service would be awesome. It doesn't even have to be elaborate. Or do something like Metallica where they have a black card where you pay like $5-600 for it and you have a ticket to every single show. LOL. I'd be in for that.
So I'm in the waiting room for general sale cleveland tickets and the wait time goes from 1 to 2 to 3 mins left? What is this Ticket Master hell?
woooowwww, finally got in and selected tickets then it said "please make sure you're signed into your Ticketmaster account." Which I am. I'm signed into both Ticketmaster and Livenation. What the fuck!!!