photo by Manuel Lino

A nice, fresh rant on ticketing and the “secondary market” from Trent Reznor (via the Nine Inch Nails forum):

TR thoughts on ticket re-sellers / scalping
As we approach on-sale dates for the upcoming tour, I’ve noticed lots of you are curious / concerned / outraged at the plethora of tickets that somehow appear on all these reseller sites at inflated prices – even before the pre-sale dates. I’ll do my best to explain the situation as I see it, as well as clarify my organization’s stance in the matter.

NIN decides to tour this summer. We arrive at the conclusion outdoor amphitheaters are the right venue for this outing, for a variety of reasons we’ve throughly considered*. In the past, NIN would sell the shows in each market to local promoters, who then “buy” the show from us to sell to you. Live Nation happens to own all the amphitheaters and bought most of the local promoters – so if you want to play those venues, you’re being promoted by Live Nation. Live Nation has had an exclusive deal with TicketMaster that has just expired, so Live Nation launched their own ticketing service. Most of the dates on this tour are through Live Nation, some are through TicketMaster – this is determined by the promoter (Live Nation), not us.
Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this. So…

The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice that happens more often than not. There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it. There are a number of scams they employ to pull this off which is beyond the scope of this note.

StubHub.com is an example of a re-seller / scalper. So is TicketsNow.com.

Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

NIN gets 10% of the available seats for our own pre-sale. We won a tough (and I mean TOUGH) battle to get the best seats. We require you to sign up at our site (for free) to get tickets. We limit the amount you can buy, we print your name on the tickets and we have our own person let you in a separate entrance where we check your ID to match the ticket. We charge you a surcharge that has been less than TicketMaster’s or Live Nation’s in all cases so far to pay for the costs of doing this – it’s not a profit center for us. We have essentially stopped scalping by doing these things – because we want true fans to be able to get great seats and not get ripped off by these parasites.

I assure you nobody in the NIN camp supplies or supports the practice of supplying tickets to these re-sellers because it’s not something we morally feel is the right thing to do. We are leaving money on the table here but it’s not always about money.
Being completely honest, it IS something I’ve had to consider. If people are willing to pay a lot of money to sit up front AND ARE GOING TO ANYWAY thanks to the rigged system, why let that money go into the hands of the scalpers? I’m the one busting my ass up there every night. The conclusion really came down to it not feeling like the right thing to do – simple as that.

My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they’ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme – which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix.

Nothing’s going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem – which of course they don’t see as a problem. The ultimate way to hurt scalpers is to not support them. Leave them holding the merchandise. If this subject interests you, check out the following links. Don’t buy from scalpers, and be suspect of artists singing the praises of the Live Nation / TicketMaster merger. What’s in it for them?

(hat tip to BrooklynVegan for the link)

I’ll let this one stand out on its own for now. More ticketing thoughts to follow…

Hey, it’s all the rage these days.

Grab a cup of joe, and check it out, yo!

The LA Times has reported that Michael Rapino (head of concert giant, Live Nation) has called out Ticketmaster over high ticket prices, suggesting lower prices will encourage higher attendance. This is a pretty big development, given that Rapino himself has suggested that high ticket prices aren’t really that much of an issue, but also given most live music fans’ absolute distaste for ticketmaster in general.

I’ve had several in-depth discussions with concert buddies over this very issue, often musing on what I consider an “average concert-goer’s threshold for getting off their ass” on a Thursday night to see a concert. I have long held the belief that a lower ticket price would only help lower this “threshold” and boost attendance for concerts (both big and small). Given the competition for consumer’s free time and disposable income, the push for higher attendance is even more competitve, so it’s nice to see Rapino changing his view, and as importantly, calling out a huge player in the game. Of course, Live Nation (which has stakes in both MusicToday and Next Ticketing) also has some specific reasons for calling for competition…but what concert-goer could disagree with this?

Hopefully, LMM will have more on this topic later, but for now, the above article is a great read for any live music fan.

More speculation about a tough summer for the concert industry. Hypebot asks some great questions in regards to the industry’s general interest in big acts selling high-end tickets in large venues. Perhaps the wealth can simply be spread amongst the second- and third-tier live acts, playing smaller spots? My sense is that the larger industry giants are continuing to lose ground, both in sales of recordings and concert tickets. While their slump continues, we continue to see underground, independent acts finding innovative ways to get their songs heard and get fans to shows, which is fine by me.

The summer festival and concert season is alive and well in my book. Check out Pitchfork or Jambase for plenty of examples. I already bought my tickets to Lollapalooza and that’s (hopefully) just the beginning.

Lots of New Takes on Larger Music Industry Woes:

• Mintel study on state of recording industry, which points a large portion of the blame on the industry itself. Nice to see some more substantial criticism of the ongoing meme that file-sharing has been the only problem.

• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Digital distribution on the rise

• Great story in the San Diego Tribune on the potential of the album losing importance and the single regaining it in the digital world

• The Long Tail forecasts the end of the music “hit” (oh, and if you’re not familiar with the Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory, take a look around the site; apparently the Wired editor is now turning his idea of Internet niching into a book)

• Pitchfork’s Interviews Steve Gordon of Digital Music News: Live at the Witch Trials (referencing the RIAA lawsuits)