Feisty Underdog TicketMaster To Beat Scalpers At Own Game!

I just got confirmation from the Beacon Theater this morning that Ticketmaster processed a refund request I made several months ago by taking back the ticket and NEVER refunding any money for it. Wow, Ticketmaster you piece of shit, you really find sleazy new ways to make money!

Seriously, if you processed any refund requests with them, double check your credit card statements, and if nothing shows up, contact the venue. (I was also told by the venue not to contact Ticketmaster, contact them when requesting or checking on refunds. Venues should have a guest services or customer service number you can use.)

Wow... 18 years ago

Gone will be the days of camping outside a ticket booth in -40 C weather with a group of hard-core fans who are all hoping to get first crack at those tickets to the World Series, the Stanley Cup playoffs or Bruce Springsteen.

LOL

Hey Lil' Wayne at the Apollo! I mean, how can you not want to see Wayne at the Apollo?
https://www.ticketmaster.com/lil-wayne-new-york-new-york-04-16-2023/event/00005E3B08DA9760
Tickets start at $540 and go up to $3800 (with an inclusive $700 fee)

imagine paying $700 for the right to spend $3100 for one ticket

i would not pay that to see a resurrected Prince
okay i probably would but that's about it

That's it, I'm totally taking my business elsewhere.

well i'm certainly not seeing Wayne at the Apollo!

god i'm thankful i mostly go to smaller shows.

Madonna this summer i had to take an Affirm loan out on

Bob Lefsetz keeps insisting the performers can dictate to Ticketmaster re prices and fees . Now in his email Lefsetz has gotten onetime Jeff Beck manager Harvey Goldsmith to agree with him:

I read Jack Antonoff’s comment about ticketing issues, made at The Grammys over the weekend

"it’s not ‘cause of Artists" he says.

How wrong he is.

The Artists, through their representatives, totally control every aspect of Live Touring. From what is on stage, backstage and indeed the ticket price.

Promoters may recommend ticket prices, but the Artist always makes the final decision.

Ticketing Companies will suggest a whole tariff of ways to fleece the fans.
However the Artist always has the final say.
Those Artists that always blame everyone else are the same ones that sanction the problem.

It is totally in the Artist's remit to say whether ticket prices should be "as printed" on the ticket or not.

The Promoter can negotiate the Ticket Commission, but often the artist will demand its share if there are surplus profits.
The exception being if the Promoter has its own separate deal with the Ticketing Company.

At the end of the day only the Artists can stop the madness that besets us.

Some already do, but not nearly enough.

Harvey Goldsmith

I don't know about the added fees, but didn't Springsteen say something like - "I used to find out what our peers were charging, and said 'let's charge a little less'... but for this tour, I said, 'We're in our '70s, let's charge the same as our peers'," etc.

let's relegate lefsetz matters to the lefsetz thred plz

oh no it's the greedy artists that are ruining the music biz!

tho in this case, they def appreciate having ticketmaster around as a shield

I think if some artists told Ticketmaster no variable pricing, limit the fees to x, limit the price to y, that Ticketmaster would say that can’t be done unless you the artist work for free

oh hey, here's West Coast pop punk band The Garden playing two nights at Irving Plaza, popular enough that they can book more than one show but obscure enough that I'm sure tickets via livenation can't be too much aaaaaand GA for a punk show is $83 with seated tickets running up to $330

who the fuck is buying at these prices?

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/6-ways-to-fix-the-broken-concert-ticketing-system/

Pitchfork contributor on how to fix Ticketmaster mess

Well to comment on two of those suggestions...

Artists already can opt out of dynamic pricing. Every decision on how each tour is sold is a collaboration between agent/manager and their contact at TM. If artists care enough about the fans, they will be involved in that process and opt out - and some do. I think most artists selling through TM just remain wilfully ignorant of that process and leave it to their people to sort it out.

Similarly, artists also have the option of blocking resale - its been done by some massive artists already. Many don't because they take a cut of the higher resale prices, or actively get their people involved in doing the higher-priced reselling themselves (Metallica management got caught out on this).

Of course Ticketmaster have always been fine taking the blame for this stuff, they act as a convenient shield between the artist and the ripped off fans... who will never want to think the artist could have some responsibility in flushing out their bank accounts.

Springsteen claimed that if he blocked dynamic pricing that non- Ticketmaster approved ticket scalpers would up the prices and make money that Springsteen said should go to he and his band. I dunno.

Unwinding the Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger is definitely essential. That relationship alone makes it extremely difficult to fight price inflation - there would still be a lot of things that need to be done after a split, but they would be virtually impossible to pull off (at least effectively) with that merger intact.

“Make ticket scalping illegal, level the playing field, and get back to where it’s just normal fans competing for the same Taylor Swift tickets,”

Ticket scalping should be legal-ish but you should have to pay cash to a weird guy in a dirty San Jose Sharks Starter jacket for two tickets a block away from the venue like the good old days.

More ideas not broached in Hogan's piece (I don't think):

(Further) limit the number of tickets people can buy.

Sell tickets directly.

Cap the bullshit fees, or make them flat. Why the fuck should the *fees* be dynamic as well?

Anyway, the problem with that Fork piece and ones like that is that they all begin from the position that Ticketmaster actually provides a real service. But of course TM doesn't do shit, especially in this digital era. They've embedded themselves in the process like parasites.

Even if there were no Ticketmaster, i imagine most venues would still choose to contract with ticketing services, rather than try to set up and manage their own software…?

I mean, part of the problem is that many of these big venues aren't just partnered but are *owned* by Live Nation/Ticketmaster! But yeah, the venues - as individuals or as collectives - would need to have their own ticketing systems, though that would also mean (I assume) keeping more of the money, which might be an incentive.

Springsteen claimed that if he blocked dynamic pricing that non- Ticketmaster approved ticket scalpers would up the prices and make money that Springsteen said should go to he and his band. I dunno.

― curmudgeon, Friday, March 10, 2023 12:33 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's no reason to regard springsteen in this matter as anything else but a full of shit rich guy

That's more or less the exact argument the Eagles made back in 1994 or whenever when they smashed through the ticket price ceiling.

The Eagles were the first rock band to shatter the $100 ceiling for tickets. Azoff pointed out at the time that the only people who complained were journo types who got their tickets for free, and it’s true that fans didn’t balk, with Hell Freezes Over selling out every show.

Twenty-two years later, Azoff stands behind that pricing strategy. “Tickets should be priced at what the fans are willing to pay to see the performer,” Azoff explains. “The key element in breaking the $100 ceiling was that it changed the dynamic of resale (by) having the revenue generated by tickets going back to the business — promoters, artists, venues, etc.” Clearly, demand to see the Eagles live after 14 years was sky high, but, “it wasn’t just about making more money,” Azoff says. “It was also about sending the message that Eagles were America’s biggest band, and perhaps one of the biggest in the world — charging like it influenced both fans and media that we were the biggest ever.”

many of these big venues aren't just partnered but are *owned* by Live Nation/Ticketmaster!

So they’re “direct ticketing” already… haha

Statement from the Cure (#onethread):

"We want the tour to be affordable for all fans, and we have a very wide (and we think very fair) range of pricing at every show. Our ticketing partners have agreed to help us stop scalpers from getting in the way; to help minimise resale and keep prices at face value, tickets for this tour will not be transferable. If something comes up that prevents a fan from being able to use a ticket they have purchased, they will be able resell it on a face value ticket exchange."

"Unfortunately, despite our desire to protect our low ticket prices for fans, the states of NY, IL and CO make this very difficult. They actually have laws in place that protect scalpers! For shows in these states we urge fans to buy or sell tickets to one another on face value exchanges like twickets.live and cashortrade.org. Fans should avoid buying tickets that are being resold at inflated prices by scalpers, and the sites that host these scalpers should refrain from reselling tickets for our shows."

Restricting re-sale, but allowing face-value transfers, totally makes sense. More artists should do that!

When I saw the Death tribute in 2021, Tix were $50, but if you needed to sell one, you'd input your buyer's name and email on the ticketers site, which would give them a link to pay, and would void/refund your original transaction, so you broke even. I had to use it and it was a crude system but it was great.

Reselling Tix you can't use now and getting face value is very difficult otherwise, esp if you use a service that takes a cut. And Craigslist is so filled with scams, people just don't want to use it

Yeah, if you're not doing it with someone you semi-trust, like a co-worker ("Ok, the Venmo went through... I'll transfer the tickets now"), you need some kind of digital escrow system.

My best friend and I once got scammed for Lightning tickets during the Eastern Conference Finals. He seemed legit and she had actually chatted with him for a bit, I sent the money via CashApp, nothing. Since you can't mark Goods/Service, they refused to refund. She was in tears.

I decided to use a credit card and pay a majorly marked up price to acquire resale Tix on Ticketmaster. Something like $150 each. It was an expensive day but the look on her face during the game made up for it.

So yeah fuck tickets

We need to go back to the early 2000s, where I would physically meet up with some dude in an In-N-Out, and hand him a wad of cash for Strokes tickets.

Saw this going around re: The Cure (fees for each ticket exceeding the ticket price):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrREw7YWwAAu9Nx.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Guillotine%2C_Mus%C3%A9e_de_la_R%C3%A9volution_fran%C3%A7aise.jpg

^^ rejected alternate cover for Carnage Visors

(not really)

When I got the Ticketmaster email that said I had been *waitlisted* to be a "Verified Fan," my immediate reaction was, fuck that, I'm not going to be their dancing monkey, and didn't even bother trying for tickets.

But hey, I can go on Stubhub right now, and pay $150 a pop (before fees) for nosebleed tickets for a show in June that literally only went on (pre)sale this morning.

Sounds like the Drake presale was another clusterfuck.

And Drake tickets were apparently super expensive even without fees

Not playing this three-card-monte game again. Spending my money on new bands that could use it...

it wasn’t just about making more money,” Azoff says. “It was also about sending the message that Eagles were America’s biggest band

god, what a piece of shit

Robert Smith of the Cure got Ticketmaster to offer a $10 refund on service fees to verified fan Cure ticket buyers who bought those cheapest Cure tickets ; and $5 to other verified fan ticket buyers

https://consequence.net/2023/03/robert-smith-the-cure-ticketmaster-refund/

I seem to recall that sort of outcome being the straw that broke Pearl Jam's back, that after months of fighting they were only able to shave off something like $5.

Not only are tickets priced high, not only do shows sell out immediately and tickets appear on secondary markets just as fast, but sometimes it's the artist themselves sneakily selling those tickets on secondary at (further) inflated prices.

Depends on the venue, artist, etc. And many shows you can find tickets in the days leading up to the date at below face value.

Dylan’s playing the Outlaw Tour with Willie Nelson, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams this summer. At Jones Beach tickets start at $54.50 with fees.

Saw Dylan there last summer, with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (and should have also been Willie Nelson, but he was out sick and one of his son’s subbed). Was a great place for the show (and Bob was fantastic that night, making up for a lackluster show I saw a few months before).

i see live music all the time, and 95% of it exists totally outside of this totally predatory and whack system, thank god

maybe this sounds strange

Not at all! I've been to hundreds of shows and exactly one of them (my first, The Cure) was an arena show. That type of concert experience just doesn't appeal to me.

I have no problems with arena shows, per se. The problem is that the arenas are all owned by the same bad-faith players and therefore prone to the same ticket dishonesty.

Yeah, there are always solutions that aren't really solutions so much as coping mechanisms. Unless it's something I really, really don't want to miss, I'll wait until the week of and start watching prices then, and be prepared to walk away if they stay ridiculously high. That's not a solution to the problem, that's a strategy to deal with the problem.

I've started using cashortrade.org, by the way, which has yet to get bogged down in bullshit. When I wanted to see John Zorn at the Village Vanguard in NY, a tiny place, I found a guy on that site selling a single for face value. Right now there are zero Dylan tickets, which reaffirms that it's more a fan site and not just another cog in a corrupt wheel.

lol i just bought tickets to see Cymande and i have to download an app on my phone to use the tickets? seriously fuck off

I had to do that when I saw Garcia Peoples last year. It was annoying but the venue was so small and intimate that I didn't want to pass it up.

My best friend's husband got us NIN tix through AXS, and he'll have to download an app to get into the venue.

let me guess, the app to view/use the tickets is Dice? yeah it's annoying but the ticket buying experience is a million times less anxiety-inducing and annoying and evil there than Ticketmaster, a trade-off

Ha, mine was. I was just annoyed because I'm not sure I've had a chance to use it again since.

oh, I'm sure you will

at least here in Toronto, more and more non-arena/stadium shows are using it

i had to use Dice a few years ago to see the Sun Ra Arkestra. the app i had to download this time was Live Nation :(

hopefully i can just keep downloading different apps for each new show

The apps I've been encouraged or forced to use have been Dice, Ticketweb, Ticketmaster, AXS and occasionally some sort of bespoke app for a smaller venue. A whole generation or two has missed out on the joys of collecting ticket stubs.

all my ticket stubs are in the zip-up pocket of a CD wallet I have at my parents' place, pretty sure if I go through them the skin will slide off my bones

Music fans of the future will trade defunct venue apps in grimy basements while the Live Nation secret police scour the streets for any sign of the miscreants.

email from live nation a few days after the concert:

[Name], what did you (really) think of Cymande? Share your review!

okay so first i have to download an app, and now you want me to snitch?? unbelievable

gimme gimme free content!

https://bsky.app/profile/futureofmusic.bsky.social/post/3lmafjumw3c2y

Future of Music Coalition did an interesting bluesky thread about this CBS Sunday morning report on ticketmaster and ticket sales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dRcD6DPhdE

Future of Music Coalition notes that -- If Ticketmaster wanted to be more closely aligned with fans, they could do what they've done in the UK and voluntarily exit the resale-above-face-value market. But they'd rather complain about resale while profiting handsomely from it.

Another brilliant move (the actual headline says it all)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-industry-news/ticketmaster-appoints-new-global-president-saumil-mehta-1236401165/

The real opportunity lies in how we evolve the experience by building smarter and more intuitive ways for fans to connect with the live experiences that matter so much to them

i can't wait til we start guillotining all these people

Build more guillotines

From https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/harry-styles-tour-blood-tickets-1235505811/

“I do everything right. I’m not a bot. So the fact that I’m still [100,000th] in line and then when I get in, I see the ticket prices, and there’s barely anything available, and it’s all over $1,000 or like, $700 and they’re not even amazing seats. It’s so frustrating,” Engle says. “It’s like, ‘Harry, what are we doing?’”

(BTW, Styles' manager is Jeffrey Azoff - the son of you know who)

And also from https://www.ticketnews.com/2026/02/live-nations-two-front-strategy-fight-breakup-pressure-in-d-c-rewrite-the-rules-in-the-states/

Those cases have helped fuel rare bipartisan agreement that the ticketing market is fundamentally broken. But rather than allow that consensus to coalesce around structural remedies, Live Nation has pursued a more political track — one aimed at shaping the regulatory environment itself.

TicketNews has covered this effort extensively over the last year and a half.

Lobbying Muscle - Trump allies including Mike Davis – who helped guide a friendly DOJ settlement for Hewlett Packard in 2025, longtime GOP fundraiser Brian Ballard, whose firm disclosed ticketing‑policy lobbying earlier this year, and Kellyanne Conway have all been put on the payroll by Live Nation.

Board access - In May, Live Nation added Richard Grenell, a trusted Trump confidant and current Kennedy Center president, to its 11‑member board despite his limited entertainment résumé. Industry executives called the move “the most thinly veiled attempt to influence a legal proceeding that I’ve ever seen.”

Venue investment blitz - In June, the company announced a $1 billion plan to build or upgrade 18 venues, lavishing credit on a March 31 Trump executive order aimed at “combating unfair practices” in ticketing. Internal timelines reviewed by TicketNews show most of those projects were conceived long before the order—and well before Trump’s return to office—raising questions about the real motive.

Cold hard cash - Federal filings revealed this spring that Live Nation donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, making it one of the top corporate backers of festivities surrounding the 47th president’s swearing‑in.

Long breakdown on the Harry Styles MSG ticket fiasco and Ticketmaster/LiveNation ripoffs in general https://finelineproject.substack.com/p/take-the-money-and-run-harry-styles

It's really depressing what's happened to the concert industry.

So many people accept never seeing any of their favorite acts or paying so much for them they're too stressed to enjoy them

Also artist complicity in it is depressing

Trump fired the head of the Antitrust division recently, and today one week into the trial, Live Nation and the Justice Department announced a tentative settlement that allows Live Nation to Keep Ticketmaster.

Under the settlement, Ticketmaster will be required to open parts of its platform to rival ticketing companies, allowing third-party sellers such as SeatGeek or Eventbrite to list tickets directly through Ticketmaster’s technology.

The deal also places new limits on the long-term exclusivity contracts Ticketmaster has historically used to lock venues into its system, cutting those agreements down to four years and allowing venues to allocate a portion of their tickets to competing platforms.

The Justice Department argued the company controls roughly 78 percent of the country’s major amphitheaters, a scarce venue category that gives Live Nation outsized leverage.

Under the agreement, Live Nation will be required to divest more than 10 amphitheaters, creating more independently operated venues and loosening the company’s hold on the live music ecosystem.

The settlement also takes aim at Ticketmaster’s service fees at its amphitheaters. Under the deal, the company will be required to cap those fees at 15 percent of a ticket’s price.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/09/live-nation-reaches-settlement-with-doj-in-antitrust-fight-00818564

“The settlement recently announced with the U.S. Department of Justice fails to address the monopoly at the center of this case, and would benefit Live Nation at the expense of consumers. We cannot agree to it,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement, vowing to continue New York’s suit against the company. James said that attorneys general in 25 other states and the District of Columbia also plan to keep fighting in court.

From Washington Post

Imagine how much that Velvet Underground pair of tickets would have cost of it happened now, as opposed to 1993

https://undilutableslangtruth.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/velvet-underground-ticket.jpg

https://prospect.org/2026/03/09/live-nation-settlement-spurs-chaos-in-court/

The Trump administration settled its antitrust case against Live Nation last week, but no one told the judge, the 12-member jury, or the Department of Justice attorneys prosecuting the case about the deal until this morning, causing a meltdown

https://prospect.org/2026/03/09/live-nation-settlement-spurs-chaos-in-court/

The Trump administration settled its antitrust case against Live Nation last week, but no one told the judge, the 12-member jury, or the Department of Justice attorneys prosecuting the case about the deal until this morning, causing a meltdown

Imagine how much that Velvet Underground pair of tickets would have cost of it happened now, as opposed to 1993

Brendan Canty on a hypothetical Fugazi reunion:

Say Fugazi got back together and put out a ticket for that show at the insane price of $25. All those tickets would sell out and immediately be sold through the third markets for $500 each or whatever. And then we’d be back to being complicit in a system that we don’t want to be involved with in the first place. The way that tickets are sold and resold by computers over these third-party dealers is really disgusting.

https://www.theverge.com/policy/893272/live-nation-ticketmaster-doj-settlement-states

Plus, as long as Live Nation and Ticketmaster are linked, the company could theoretically shift around lost revenue from fee caps to other areas. It could either offer less to artists, or drive up ticket prices in the underlying costs before fees, Werde said. Similar dynamics may persist for the company’s power over concert venues, too. “As long as Live Nation still owns Ticketmaster, whether the Justice Department has proven anything or not, whether Live Nation is threatening people with this or not, the leverage is pretty clear and implied,” Werde said. “The thing about leverage is, if you really have it, you don’t usually need to throw it around.”

From a Rolling Stone mag tweet about their paywalled article on the live nation lawsuit and settlement

Two Live Nation ticketing directors boasted about “robbing” fans blind and “taking advantage of them” with high fees in newly unsealed chat records tied to the company’s antitrust lawsuit.

Baker shared a screenshot of a spreadsheet showing how premier parking gross revenue had jumped from about $470,000 in 2018 to about $666,000 in 2021. He commented: “Robbing them blind baby That’s how we do.” Weinhold replied, “lol.” ... “I have VIP parking up to $250 lol.” He then said, “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them,” followed by an all-caps, “BAHAHAHAHAHA.”

Another reason why we need higher taxes, these folks willing to pay $250 for a parking spot

In a statement LiveNation described the guys from these chats as "a junior staffer and his friend" - Baker is literally their head of ticketing.

They didn't fire him

https://www.theverge.com/policy/894851/states-live-nation-monopoly-trial

While some Republican led states have agreed to a similar settlement deal as the Trump administration did, the Judge is allowing the remaining states (mostly Dem led) to continue the case and trial.

of course they didn’t fire him, he was just stating the live nation ethos and they basically won the federal case

Kid Rock complaining on X about those Live Nation guys overcharging for parking at his shows and laughing about it. But Kid Rock doesn’t mention that his boy Trump settled the fed lawsuit

he was on the plaintiff's list of people to testify!

it'd be funny if this gets under his skin and makes him flip

Wall Street Journal- Now, lawyers and lobbyists representing companies under scrutiny by antitrust regulators regularly make their arguments directly to senior DOJ officials. Trump himself intervened in the department’s antitrust investigation into the concert promoter Live Nation, urging aides to reach a settlement.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/lobbyists-antitrust-trump-davis-f6a02e04?st=HbDgTW&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Ah but!

https://apnews.com/article/live-nation-ticketmaster-antitrust-trial-f0ffdd20dd4f64e8b4bb9d97134b826f

can a legal/industry type person explain to me what the difference is between this trial and the suit that was dismissed recently?

It's all the same trial. Basically the DOJ said they reached a settlement but many participating states in the suit all went "Yeah fuck that" and pressed ahead and here we are.

ty!

get em

When the feds were bringing the case there was talk that Live Nation and Ticketmaster could be split up as part of a winning verdict in addition to new rules on resales of tickets and such; more limits on Live Nation owning so many arenas themselves; but not clear here what this more limited number of states and the judge will decide here-

After the victory, Kessler would not say specifically what the states will seek in the next phase of the litigation, which was expected to involve another lengthy legal proceeding before penalties are decided.

Testimony now from club owners, promoters and musicians like Franz Nicolay.

https://www.c-span.org/event/public-affairs-event/lawmakers-hold-forum-on-ticketmaster-amid-illegal-monopoly-verdict/443209