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So the real complaint is dynamic pricing, which is essentially raising prices to what the market will bear, instead of having (what was formerly artificially) l

So the real complaint is dynamic pricing, which is essentially raising prices to what the market will bear, instead of having (what was formerly artificially) low prices that get scalped. Now the extra money that used to go to scalpers goes to TM instead, and the downside is that some % of fans that could previously luck out and get cheap tickets no longer can. Isnt this...not a bad thing? There's fundamentally just a supply and demand problem, with more people wanting to see these concerts than there are concerts. The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. Is there a better solution? Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert tickets, wouldnt they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for the same reason?

gregdoesit 4y ago
I was having the same question. Original situation: tickets are priced too low, and sell out almost immediately, with scrapers buying much of the tickets, then reselling them. Fans are furious! Plus: the band+seller is leaving money on the table, scrapers are making a killing. Current situation: tickets are priced at market value thanks to dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out instantly, and scrapers are discouraged from buying them. Fans are furious! Plus: the band+seller make more money than before, scrapers make close to none.
- exq 4y ago
  Do you have a source for the last sentence?
  - kolbe 4y ago
    I think he's using logic.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    The secondary market is sometimes the primary market. John Oliver did a bit on this awhile ago on how artists will get large blocks of tickets that they immediately put onto the resale market. Has a nice benefit of the show being almost immediately sold out plus doesn't it has slightly better optics since its not as obvious the venue/artist is "reselling" the ticket for a multiple of the "original" cost. https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY?t=1023 https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY?t=1023
- nicoburns 4y ago
  You can ban resale (except at face value), and enforce this technologically. Some people are doing this already.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    How will you prove whether it was resold at face value or not? I could see a 'refund' and then it replenishes on the website, and then ID verification to use it. Like refundable airline tickets with a fixed price.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      Yah you just force ID and you can trade back your ticket. Only get refund if they resell it.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - batty_alex 4y ago
      Names get associated with a ticket and they refuse entry if you bought a scalped ticket. You’re told to ask for a refund from the scalper
  - daniel_reetz 4y ago
    Yep. I'm using a no-good horrible app called "DICE" to access smaller venues here in LA. One of the simple tricks is that they don't show you the ticket until just before the show. Can't be seen, can't be sold.
    - Tsiklon 4y ago
      Interesting - I actually like the experience of using DICE here in London, UK. The UX I thought is pretty neat, presenting me with the artists I’ve told them I like to listen to. I thought the ticket experience is pretty cool too.
- akudha 4y ago
  Life is too short and there are big problems to deal with - my grocery bill went up by 25% in the last couple of months, and my salary is still the same. My rent went up by more than 9% this year. I don’t feel bad for people dropping hundreds, thousands of dollars to watch a band or a comic. I don’t feel bad for TM either - they are a monopoly. The Whole situation is just terrible. Same for sports events Me - I’m happy watching my favorite artists on YouTube or buying their singles or MP3s wherever available.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    I agree with you and food and shelter are way more important but culture is important. I live in NYC and it's very easy for me to see artists I listen to for ~$35 every other night of the week. I can easily skip big, expensive acts and not really be missing out on anything. But there are many people living in an area that don't have an opportunity to see smaller acts and only get access to stadium type shows in the closest major city. It's a shame people are missing out on culture due to monopolistic greed. You'll never remember the time watching an artist on YouTube but you would certainly remember going to their concert. The same as sports.
    - thunky 4y ago
      There aren't enough seats at these events to make it possible for everyone that wants the cultural experience to have it. If you accept this as true, how do you propose tickets are distributed, if not to the highest bidder?
      - akudha 4y ago
        I don’t have an answer to your question. That said, if every experience is sold to the highest bidders, only rich people can experience these events, isn’t it? Maybe I am just old - what is so special about these events anyway? Everything is expensive, it is super crowded, everyone around you is sweaty, many drunk/high…
        thunky 4y ago
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Current situation: tickets are priced at market value thanks to dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out instantly And that means that ordinary working class people can't afford a lot of concerts any more. Entertainment only for the rich elites, bravo.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    They couldn't go anyway considering the only way to get a ticket was to pay a scalper the 2k now going to the artist. Economics would suggest making it affordable to average joes means staying in town for a while and doing 15 shows instead of 2.
  - Karsteski 4y ago
    Well we can go to concerts. Just not the expensive ones.
  - eropple 4y ago
    You're right, and this is the thing that's frustrating about the conversations here--I guess I'm not surprised that this is an audience that doesn't get it. A lot of music acts, even popular ones, were broke as hell for a long time. It is reasonable and, I think, actively laudable to want folks who are not of the Patagonia-jacket class to be able to see them live for a reasonable price. There is a point where decent people can go "y'know, I make enough money" and not seek to squeeze out every ounce of blood from that stone; those same decent people can find it objectionable that other people attempt to do so on top of it. Not everything must be profit-maximized. Sometimes things like "bringing joy" might actually be more valuable. And even if you are a meat-variant paperclip maximizer, there's obvious value into getting people who do not make onewheel-through-San-Francisco money into your music or your art. The people who currently make that money are usually older and will eventually age out. I still go see certain 90's bands every time they roll through in no small part because I saw them as a kid and I think they're fun.
    - benji-york 4y ago
      I think I am in total agreement with your comment and I have another angle to add for your consideration: Assume someone wanted to sell highly sought-after tickets for less than the market clearing (profit maximizing) price—as you suggest. Lowering the price will increase demand (because more people can afford them). We now have more demand for the tickets; how will that demand be expressed? Will some people stand in line for days to get the tickets? Is that a form of payment that some people can "pay" more easily that others because they are "richer" in disposable time? Will some people write software to shave milliseconds off of their ticket-buying reaction time? Is that a form of payment that some people can "pay" more easily than others because they have the requisite skills? Will some people pay others to do the above (or something similar)? It seems to me that these are all forms of payment and that the total payment (in currency or otherwise) will approximate the market-clearing price in pure currency from the other scenario. What do you think?
- pedrogpimenta 4y ago
  I think the premise is wrong because: - "tickets are prices too low": What do you mean by "too low"? Is the price that's set by the people involved low? Or is it what they think the value of the ticket is? - Can you imagine if bananas were now $50 per banana? I mean, if there was only ONE company selling them, it would actually probably have already happened. So that would ultimately be the "market value".
  - anoonmoose 4y ago
    What's the price of a GPU- the MSRP or the current bid for the only one available on eBay? In my opinion, it's the value I can actually buy the thing for.
    - pedrogpimenta 4y ago
      Key difference: > the only one available vs > all the tickets since day one
      - anoonmoose 4y ago
        I don't think there's a difference there. If there are no GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or hundreds available for 2-3x MSRP, the price is 2-3x MSRP. Whether it's day one or day N, the price is what you can buy it for that day.
        matwood 4y ago
        Exactly. And people forget that market prices do not always go up. I've been to quite a few sporting events where I bought scalped tickets day of for less than face value. Tickets have expirations like options do. No seller wants to be still holding tickets when the event starts.
        pedrogpimenta 4y ago
        That's not what we're comparing. > If there are no GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or hundreds available for 2-3x MSRP. If you want to extrapolate, it should be > Last year's $100 model has been selling for $500 on ebay. The new one would cost $110 but because of that, we'll now price it $550, because people pay for that. But hey, if you agree with that, you agree with that. I don't.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  The crux of it is this change was implemented at a time when people are already being squeezed five ways from Sunday by everything else. It may feel more fair that the fastest clickers win and ticket prices don't change (and many people don't get them) versus the fastest clickers get the cheapest tickets and other people have to pay 2-5x as much.
- MrPatan 4y ago
  Everybody understands economics. Everybody pretends not to when it's in their benefit.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > Fans are furious! Fans who remember when Ticketmaster didn't have a vertical monopoly on arena tours are furious at how everything they warned other fans or the industry about 20 years ago came boringly true. Fans who had a slim chance of affording a $60 ticket that they had a slim chance of actually buying under the old model are furious because now they have a zero chance of affording any ticket to any in-demand show. Fans who could always afford and always bought $250 tickets, whether through resellers under the old model or first parties under the new model, are less angry but still have complaints about how Ticketmaster is still as bad 20 years into selling tickets online at the actual ticket sales motion - carts getting dumped out before the end of the transaction, timeouts due to overloaded infrastructure, bad venue experiences. (Resellers could actually exchange money for goods and services about as well as or better than TM, and when the tickets were legit they actually got you into the venue 100% of the time.) All three face the same core problem - Ticketmaster's monopoly makes their lives worse. Artists _who are big enough for TM to pay attention to_ are about the only typically shorted party who like how this played out. The rest of the industry is basically locked out with few or no alternatives depending on the market.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Some bands don't want to maximize their profits. Shocker: Some artists want people of all incomes to enjoy their work. But allowing scalpers/TM to do pure market pricing can fuck over the ability for a lower-middle income person to see these kinds of shows that to them might be the equivalent cost of a weeklong vacation. Therefore, the idea (which should be at the discretion of the artist and only the artist, to hell with TM) is "charge an affordable price and ban scalping". Scalping can be controlled by technology; making sure any resales/transfers of ticket ownership go through the ticketing agency and only for the original price.
- polio 4y ago
  I think it's worth mentioning that price is only one way to allocate the scarce resource. What strikes me as better socially and for the liveliness of the audience is to offer discounts to the top 25% of fans, as determined by Spotify or Apple Music, and then let the free market fill in the rest. Some balance of this would let regular fans get a shot while also maximizing revenue for the other block of tickets.
jypepin 4y ago
Yeah, high prices suck but I do agree and fail to see what, exactly, is wrong here? Don't get me wrong, I don't like TM, I don't like monopolies and I don't like high prices, but... price = equilibrium between offer and demand, it's the basics of our capitalist society, and all this look like to me is that TM is doing a good job at figuring out the equilibrium price for their tickets?
- conradfr 4y ago
  You have priced out part of your fanbase which can create resentment, and concerts where only the rich people attend are not the best, ambiance wise, especially if you want to play other songs than the radio hits.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Do you think rich people listen to more hits radio than others? Doesn’t seem likely to me.
    - conradfr 4y ago
      There is a lot of people who go see established artists without really listening to the albums so they mostly know the hits and that's what they want to be played at the concert.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    People have been claiming "you'll price out your fan base" as long as I can remember, meanwhile Blink 182 is a 25-year old band with demand for tickets seemingly higher than ever.
- pfortuny 4y ago
  With the consequence that “only rich people get to see Beyoncé live”. Which may be good or not, I have not an opinion.
  - Filligree 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bena 4y ago
Yeah. The problem is really scarcity. A venue can only hold so many people. And one of the easier ways to filter out people is to price the item so that only so many would buy a ticket. That's essentially what scalpers are taking advantage of. They're betting that the ticket will sell for more than the cost to someone, they just have to find that person. If tickets were $5 or whatever is deemed reasonable, that doesn't mean more people can go, it means a slightly different group of people will go.
xeromal 4y ago
This is just my shower thoughts, but I think it's because getting tickets for the past century has been getting in line early / getting lucky, but now it's just whoever is the richest wins.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  In practice, can't rich people just pay people to stand in queues on their behalf and acquire tickets the same way?
  - svachalek 4y ago
    More or less what scalpers are.
    - m000 4y ago
      No, it's not. If there's a cap for how many tickets you can buy, you need 100 persons to buy (100 * cap) tickets. This doesn't scale the way electronic scalping does.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        In the era before electronic scalping, they'd do exactly that (get a bunch of people together, you could often buy two or five tickets) and/or cycle through multiple times.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    Yeah, we're on hackernews so I assume most people on here are making a healthy dev salary so hopefully my comment isn't in bad taste, but I've done that with TaskRabbit.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Feeling bad about paying for this kind of thing is one of the differences between the upper-middle class and higher, and the middle and lower. Me, my upbringing was at least as much Fussell's "Prole" as his "Middle", so I don't even feel right having contractors do stuff on my house. Feels weird to pay people to do shit I could do, while I'm working or just fucking around or playing with my kids or whatever. I always feel like I ought to be helping. Took me a long time to stop feeling really uncomfortable having a cleaner come in every couple weeks. Still not totally OK with it, even years in. I think some of this plays into success in business. Probably easier to climb the ladder (or just start higher on it) or start a business when you find it totally natural and ordinary to pay people to do stuff for you. TaskRabbit and such are just... I guess, "democratizing" (seems especially wrong in this case) the same shit rich people have always done. Making it accessible a rung or two lower than it used to be. It makes me feel gross, but so does the other stuff that's not some new tech-enabled thing.
nicoburns 4y ago
> Is there a better solution? The other option is to prevent ticket resales (except through the original ticketing website at face value). This arguably leads to a more equitable distribution of tickets as your ability to buy tickets isn't dependent on how wealthy you are. > Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert tickets, wouldn't they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for the same reason? Not necessarily. It would presumably depend on the preference of the artists (who would choose which ticketing company they use). I see two models being popular: one with dynamic pricing where the extra money in paid to the artists. One with fixes pricing. I can't see any artists freely choosing a model with dynamic pricing where the ticketing company pockets the difference.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  This isn't better for the artists or venues because they're leaving money on the table. Dynamic pricing means artist and production share the money scalpers used to make.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    I’d argue it’s better for artists, because more people get a chance to see their shows.
- tylermenezes 4y ago
  Ticketmaster has exclusive agreements with most large music venues, artists have no real choice. (I have booked large venues before.)
- patmorgan23 4y ago
  Tickets are usually sold by the venue through a vendor (ie Ticketmaster, seat geek,etc) not by the artist. This way the venue's box office/event staff only have to learn one ticketing system.(and they easily can sell venue specific add-ons like parking)
nordsieck 4y ago
> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. I think a big part of the problem is: it's challenging to estimate the demand for events. It's just less risky to consistently underestimate than over estimate. A sold out venue is annoying to fans who can't attend or who have to play a lot. But an under-attended event can be financially bad for the performer (depending on how deals are structured). Combine that with the limited number of venues that can accommodate large audiences, and I think it's generally not surprising that this is a persistent problem. I think there is a good solution; it just takes more work on the part of the performer: ticket pre-pre-sales. If the performer can "sell" all/most of their tickets before they even start talking to Ticketmaster, that should give better control over pricing since they can "rightsize" the number of performances they do in each place.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  You’re right. The strategy Brooks is taking (based on what the linked article in the linked article says) is that he announces a set of shows. If they sell out and the secondary market prices are very high, he adds another set of shows. And then keeps doing that over and over again. The problem for his fanbase is that there is no reliable way of knowing whether another set of shows is going to be added. So you have to gamble on whether to wait for another show to be announced or to buy the tickets on the resale site. Some factors affecting the situation include the fact that the band is scheduled to be in another city on some near-future date, as well as the fact that the venue is scheduled to host a different band/event on a near-future date. The Garth Brooks solution isn’t really a solution but it does make things a little better. Pre-pre sales are also something that will help, as you mention. But ultimately, without some sort of legislation, there is almost certainly no solution to the “problem” of a band choosing not to maximize revenue.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The absolute amount of logistics required for a show is tremendous, and if you look at a tour schedule you'll often see that it's absolutely packed - no time to add in extra shows if others sell out. This is why the artists will have fan clubs and such, it can greatly help them determine what they could sell and how many shows. Sometimes you can switch to another venue in the same city, but that only works when they're both owned by the same company, usually. And it other cases you can open up more "seating" but that really only works when playing to stadiums.
datadata 4y ago
Dynamic pricing isn't the issue here, the issue is that the extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to ticketmaster rather than to artists. If artists took home the extra profits, there would be more incentive for the market to provide more quality artists, more concerts, and cheaper prices, supply would meet demand. But since the profits go to ticketmaster, ticketmaster might not even have higher total earnings if it increased supply, as prices might decrease faster. Higher supply of concerts would also give opportunities for competitors to ticketmaster to emerge, as it would have to control a bigger market.
- ethagknight 4y ago
  Can you provide a source that Ticketmaster keeps extra money? I would find that unlikely.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Knowing Ticketmaster’s past actions, I find it highly likely. But I would appreciate a source too.
  - boringg 4y ago
    Is this a serious comment? I can't believe that this is a serious comment.
    - function_seven 4y ago
      No artist is going to price their tickets at $50 face value, then shrug when TM sells them for $500 and keeps the additional $450 for themselves. Of course Ticketmaster isn't just keeping all the extra money. They're probably splitting that with the performer as well.
      - boringg 4y ago
        You do understand that Ticketmaster has an effective monopoly and has a past history of sketchy business practices. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they pocketed it themselves or a large majority of it. It would be completely congruent with their business practices.
duxup 4y ago
Yeah the whole monopoly aside. If $600 is the market / people will pay, that's the market. Lets say the same band plays the same venue, but no ticket monopoly. Everyone knows folks will pay $600, so they're going to charge it, fees or not.
raldi 4y ago
If an artist wanted to allocate tickets by lottery at lower than market price, they would need a solution that would prevent ticket brokers from vacuuming them up and reselling them at market rate. For instance, at time of sale (or signing up for a lottery ticket) they could ask for your name and then check everyone's ID at the door to make sure it's a match — just like airlines do. But this would introduce long delays. Another option would be an app that used FaceID at time of lottery signup and then again to pull up a barcode to display at the gate, to make sure it's the same face.
- redthrow 4y ago
  > allocate tickets by lottery at lower than market price I think that's what Kid Rock does for the best seats in the first row, while selling the rest at market rate Kid Rock Vs. The Scalpers https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/20/475023002/episode-468-kid-rock-vs-the-scalpers https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/20/475023002/epis...
chimeracoder 4y ago
> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. Is there a better solution? Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert tickets, wouldnt they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for the same reason? It's a little more complicated when you realize that Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, a conglomerate which has bought out most of the major performance venues over the years. Many bands (including Blink 182, I believe) get contracted to Live Nation for the entirety of a tour, which means that they will only be performing in venues that Live Nation owns and operates, using Live Nation's ticketing system (Ticketmaster) and accepting all of the terms and issues that come along with that. As a condition of the 2010 merger, Live Nation promised the US Justice Department not to retaliate against venues that partnered with other ticketing providers until 2020. Because they violated that agreement, it was extended until 2025. You can look at that as "Live Nation is legally prohibited from retaliating against other venues", or you can look at it as "Live Nation has already demonstrated that they will leverage monopoly power in flagrant violation of the law, and in 2 years they will be permitted to with no recourse". Both are true. You can refuse to use Ticketmaster, but that means likely getting locked out of most of the venues you'd want to perform at - both the ones owned by Ticketmaster/Live Nation and the ones that have an exclusive contract with them (ie, de facto owned by Ticketmaster/Live Nation). Look at how things went for Pearl Jam, and realize that Ticketmaster/Live Nation has even more of a vertically integrated monopoly now than they did 30 years ago.
AlexandrB 4y ago
I think some artists would prefer to have an audience of teenagers and megafans (usually people without a lot of money) to a bunch of MBAs and professionals who can actually afford the tickets at market rates. Pure supply and demand is great if you don't care about who is your clientele but audiences are not undifferentiated.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Yeah, it seems to be a good strategy to build a following by offering tickets to kids for cheaper. It also makes sense that as a band gets older, they might not be as incentivized to do so. How many new Blink-182 fans are there in 2022? I assume these guys are primarily worried about making sure they have enough cash in their kids' college funds and and making sure their retirement accounts are in really good shape (no shade intended, these are important concerns).
  - jonas21 4y ago
    And as the band gets older, their fanbase gets older too. I wouldn't be surprised if many more Blink-182 fans are MBAs/professionals than teenagers these days.
throw827474737 4y ago
Not understanding how everything has to follow ultra-capitalism-free-market capitalism rules.. especially if the original artist/seller doesn't want it. Fixed fair prices for such a thing and just first-come first-serve is imo the right thing. E.g. my soccer club has much more demand than places, you can sell your ticket, but selling for higher prices is forbidden. That's good, because it is for the people and not the riches. Please just not shrug every problem off with "what's bad here, only riches now can have that"..
- bombcar 4y ago
  But how do they prevent selling for higher prices? Thing like "I'll give you $50 tomorrow if you sell me your ticket today for the sticker price"?
  - throw827474737 4y ago
    Over half of them is season tickets where reselling when you cannot go is well supported via their platform. Either way you buy ticket as a registered buyer and it is so frowned upon that anyone going into anywhere public for profit resale would risk to loose their season or right to buy. Sure, nothing is 100% and also no solution for one time concerts - but just wanted to say regulation and fair prices sometimes make sense.. tickets for $1000 is nuts I'm glad this hasn't materializd here (yet?)
michaelt 4y ago
> Now the extra money that used to go to scalpers goes to TM instead, [...] Isnt this...not a bad thing? The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase, leading to your fanbase ageing. This is what happens to opera houses and similar institutions - they 'market price' the tickets to $150 then find all their customers are in their 60s. Of course, for a band it might be less of a problem than for an institution - the band ages at the same rate the fans do, after all. And merely offering $50 tickets that get brought by scalpers and resold for $150 doesn't solve the problem.
- petercooper 4y ago
  The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase, leading to your fanbase ageing Totally a tangent, but I've noticed this with sports cars in recent years. The companies like to portray an image of glamorous professionals driving their cars and most times I see a Ferrari or a Porsche nowadays a more typical, older person is behind the wheel. I'm not judging if that's a good or bad thing, but I find it amusing versus the branding image. Could, too, all the fans at a highly priced Taylor Swift concert end up being 50+? :-)
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Not all of them, but certainly a good amount. Fans often age with the artist, and the same with cars somewhat. Younger people (teenagers) will get to the concerts on their parent's dime, and many will go toward newer artists.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
I've seen Muse at least 25 times and have paid face value for tickets when buying them direct through TM for almost all of those times. I saw them first in 2006 for about $25-$35 at Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC for the Black Holes tour. Since then, they've become more and more popular, causing ticket prices to go up. Totally fair. With their 2023 Will of the People tour, dynamic pricing essentially sets the floor of ticket prices much, much higher. I'm seeing 200-level seats starting at $150 per ticket at some venues. Apparently that was the point where I'm fine with just completely missing the tour. I suppose the system works in that regard. The specific implementation of it is also not great. TM has you wait in a queue to select seats; the position in which is randomly assigned. This is to protect the servers from the thundering herd. (Lousy but fair.) When you finally make it in, you need to choose your seats and book as fast as possible, because dynamic pricing can cause the seats you selected to move up in price while you are selecting them, and the implementation doesn't let you OK it and move on, you have to essentially hope you choose and confirm before the price you locked in goes up. If you don't, it says, "sorry, the prices have gone up since you started, please choose new seats." This is both a super crappy UX and it ensures that they milk every last cent from people, as you can't lock in a price by moving quickly. The thing is, I'm not sure if the dynamic pricing floor ever gets dropped. Are they fine with not selling out venues because the people get priced out? Or do we wait on the secondary market to try to push prices back as demand recedes? The previous system sucked quite a bit with scalpers. However, the new system seems like it brings a whole new set of problems with it and it has made me question whether I even like going to concerts at all. Maybe I just don't care much anymore and this is a bridge too far. I don't know.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The "fair" method would be to reliably slice tickets into ticket classes (location, etc) and then let people select the tickets from the slice they want, and then basically do a reverse auction and set all the prices for that slice to whatever would sell them out exactly. However, this leaves money on the table (if there are five seats, and ten people, and the fifth highest amount paid would be $10, then they get $50, even if one person would pay $500 for a ticket).
bryans 4y ago
Performers don't actually want to be bleeding dry their fans' bank accounts. They are forced to participate in that system if they want to play at any venue over a particular capacity, all of whom have strict partnerships with TM. In that system, the performers have virtually zero input or control over the ticket price, and often have tight restrictions on where and how often they can perform at these venues. So, it's not a matter of scarcity, but a matter of one company hyper-maximizing profits based on an illusion of scarcity that they create. And the only intention is to con middle and low-income families into spending exorbitant sums to see their favorite performers, while the labels and marketing agencies spend millions to convince them the shows shouldn't be missed. It's all by design. Seeing a concert should not be a once in a decade event, and for many families, it currently is. And the only people preventing them from seeing those shows are a handful of executives at a couple of companies, for the sake of absolutely absurd profit margins.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  The other part is that the scale of large musicians has grown so big (the biggest 100+ artists in the US have selling-out-stadiums-anywhere-on-earth scale) that there is effectively unlimited demand for their shows at any price. If you want to see Blink-182, Pearl Jam or Taylor Swift, yes it's difficult and expensive. On the other hand, tier 2 artists have nowhere near that difficulty. You could see the Violent Femmes tomorrow night in Red Bank, NJ for $50/ticket [0]. You could see Illuminati Hotties for $30 in Brooklyn [1]. You can find local bands and see them probably for the cost of a few drinks at a bar. [0] https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1D005CCDD5B03A72 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1D005CCDD5B03A72 [1] https://www.axs.com/events/432872/illuminati-hotties-tickets https://www.axs.com/events/432872/illuminati-hotties-tickets
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Those of us "of a certain age," will remember when live performances were loss leaders, to drive record sales. I am not old enough to have attended, but I am told that Woodstock (1) tickets were about $15.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  and now record sales are loss leaders for live performances for many artists
- duderific 4y ago
  That $15 would be about $121 in today's dollars, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were even less than that.
- exhilaration 4y ago
  That's actually pretty expensive! This site https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ says $15 in 1969 is equivalent to $121 today.
throwaway49274 4y ago
And the REAL real problem is that the market will bare a lot. I once sold tickets for a Die Antwoord concert I couldn't attend due to illness. I advertised the tickets on Craigslist for $100 for both, the retail cost being $50 each. But when I arrived at the venue to sell the tickets, the buyer put $200 in front of my face assuming I had meant $100 EACH. My greed got to me and I took the money. My conclusion was, ticket buying is not rational, and the ticket market is extremely liquid, so without tying tickets to an identity like airline tickets there isn't a good solution.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. I don't understand why it wouldn't be. If a city has sufficient demand to sell out two or more concerts, aren't the later concerts still profitable? And it's less travel expense per concert. If there isn't enough demand to sell tickets for at least two concerts, then doesn't that mean most of the fans in that city have been satisfied by a single concert? It makes sense to me that you'd schedule as many consecutive concerts in one city as you can as long as demand is high enough to make each additional concert profitable. That might be 9 concerts, or 2, or even a thousand concerts if you're talking about a city like Los Vegas.
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  This was my thought as well. We keep hearing about how artists are struggling to make money on album sales thanks to the rise of spotify and the demise of CD sales. Wouldn't playing the same venue for a week+ means less inter-city travel, less work tearing up/down the stages, and a lot of income from steady ticket sales?
- mrWiz 4y ago
  How do you decide that demand is high enough? Do you book the next stop in the tour a few days later assuming that demand is high enough for more shows, and then end up paying the roadies to sit around when the demand isn't high enough?
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > How do you decide that demand is high enough? Same way they decide if visiting a city is worth it in the first place? I'm not an event coordinator or tour scheduler so I don't know, but it seems like it should be possible.
antihero 4y ago
It’s a bad thing because it makes music entirely unaffordable to poor people as opposed to having the initial offering as somewhat affordable and fair. Electronic events, especially the more independent ones, release tickets in ever more expensive batches, eventually hitting them market rate. Also systems that lock you to buying a fixed amount of tickets and then being only able to sell them for what you paid such as with RA Guide and STEP (for a burner event, Nowhere). Allowing those with financial privilege access at the expense of those without us fundamentally antithetical to music and art.
- seneca 4y ago
  > Allowing those with financial privilege access at the expense of those without us fundamentally antithetical to music and art. No, it's really not. There have never been many peasants going to the opera houses of the world. And it's not at the expense of the poor, it's quite literally at their own expense. All that is happening here is that technology has allowed the market to directly determine prices, rather than artists and venues guessing at what the market will bare. It only means poor people will be priced out so long as artists as a group don't react to the increased demand. Likely "elite" performers will be able to always demand these premium prices but a lesser tier, and those past their prime, will perform at prices poorer consumers will be able to afford. What we see now is the result of extremely high demand (there are a lot more people in the US than there used to be) meeting limited supply, and new technology allowing for more market efficiency. The poor people who used to be able to get lucky and buy tickets well under market value are certainly going to be less happy, but that has nothing to do with some moral requirement for music.
mariebks 4y ago
This is why I think concerts might be a killer app in the Metaverse. Imagine you could attend a super immersive and compelling concert experience with your headset and a special audio setup for $5, and for that price, millions upon millions of people could attend. The artists could still make tons of money since so many people can go at a low price. The only problem I think would be that concerts could be VR “videos” that could easily be pirated and shared, since a digital livestream may not matter as much as going in person.
- macNchz 4y ago
  Since the topic here is Blink-182... I grew up listening to them and managed to go to a special show of theirs in a very small (for them) venue in NYC about 10 years ago. I'm optimistic about the future of VR, but the only aspect of that show that I think would benefit from it was the experience of getting to see the band members up close with just a general admission ticket, since they usually play giant arenas. Everything else about it was a multi-sensory experience that I think would be totally flat in even the most advanced VR systems: the electric buzz running through the crowd at the opening notes to their biggest hit songs, the mass of people pressing together to get close to the stage, jumping up and down together to the beat, hundreds of others around you screaming along to the lyrics of their favorite songs, people crowd surfing, friends bringing over one too many rounds of beers, the band interacting with the crowd as a whole, feeding off the energy of the room... Overall I'm not even a huge fan of live music, but it's hard for me to imagine a VR experience that captures all of the energy and human revelry of a great concert.
jiscariot 4y ago
I was always under the impression the innovative part of TM's "service" is taking the bad wrap/reputation hit that comes along with extracting more money for venues, artists and (or course) themselves. So essentially being paid to be the "evil Ticketmaster" we all know. Artists, venues get to blame them while keeping the base cost of their tickets lower (for perception purposes), while still making money on the TM fees.
- exhilaration 4y ago
  Good point! The percentage of the ticket price that the artists are getting is - conveniently - never revealed so fans are left to assume that it's evil Ticketmaster gouging them. I see a comment above yours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33290468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33290468 that suggests the artists usually get 85% of the profits, and of course we have no way to know.
pbreit 4y ago
And primary sale concerts tickets for even semi-popular artists are still way under-priced.
technoooooost 4y ago
Solution: become a death metalhead. Top bands are 20$
markandrewj 4y ago
Just fyi tickets still get scalped. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-vegas-1.4828535 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-...
pbreit 4y ago
aka Supply & Demand
nagonago 4y ago
I don't know if it's "better", but one solution is to prevent resales. Here in Japan larger acts will sometimes try to prevent resales by tying tickets to a name and doing ID checks at the door (although they often don't bother checking in practice...) or by making the ticket tied to a smartphone app. Whether this is better or not is up for debate. Personally I think it's good to give everyone equal opportunity to participate in culture, regardless of their financial status.

gregdoesit 4y ago

I was having the same question. Original situation: tickets are priced too low, and sell out almost immediately, with scrapers buying much of the tickets, then reselling them. Fans are furious! Plus: the band+seller is leaving money on the table, scrapers are making a killing. Current situation: tickets are priced at market value thanks to dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out instantly, and scrapers are discouraged from buying them. Fans are furious! Plus: the band+seller make more money than before, scrapers make close to none.

exq 4y ago
Do you have a source for the last sentence?
- kolbe 4y ago
  I think he's using logic.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  The secondary market is sometimes the primary market. John Oliver did a bit on this awhile ago on how artists will get large blocks of tickets that they immediately put onto the resale market. Has a nice benefit of the show being almost immediately sold out plus doesn't it has slightly better optics since its not as obvious the venue/artist is "reselling" the ticket for a multiple of the "original" cost. https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY?t=1023 https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY?t=1023
nicoburns 4y ago
You can ban resale (except at face value), and enforce this technologically. Some people are doing this already.
- notch656a 4y ago
  How will you prove whether it was resold at face value or not? I could see a 'refund' and then it replenishes on the website, and then ID verification to use it. Like refundable airline tickets with a fixed price.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Yah you just force ID and you can trade back your ticket. Only get refund if they resell it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - batty_alex 4y ago
    Names get associated with a ticket and they refuse entry if you bought a scalped ticket. You’re told to ask for a refund from the scalper
- daniel_reetz 4y ago
  Yep. I'm using a no-good horrible app called "DICE" to access smaller venues here in LA. One of the simple tricks is that they don't show you the ticket until just before the show. Can't be seen, can't be sold.
  - Tsiklon 4y ago
    Interesting - I actually like the experience of using DICE here in London, UK. The UX I thought is pretty neat, presenting me with the artists I’ve told them I like to listen to. I thought the ticket experience is pretty cool too.
akudha 4y ago
Life is too short and there are big problems to deal with - my grocery bill went up by 25% in the last couple of months, and my salary is still the same. My rent went up by more than 9% this year. I don’t feel bad for people dropping hundreds, thousands of dollars to watch a band or a comic. I don’t feel bad for TM either - they are a monopoly. The Whole situation is just terrible. Same for sports events Me - I’m happy watching my favorite artists on YouTube or buying their singles or MP3s wherever available.
- lancesells 4y ago
  I agree with you and food and shelter are way more important but culture is important. I live in NYC and it's very easy for me to see artists I listen to for ~$35 every other night of the week. I can easily skip big, expensive acts and not really be missing out on anything. But there are many people living in an area that don't have an opportunity to see smaller acts and only get access to stadium type shows in the closest major city. It's a shame people are missing out on culture due to monopolistic greed. You'll never remember the time watching an artist on YouTube but you would certainly remember going to their concert. The same as sports.
  - thunky 4y ago
    There aren't enough seats at these events to make it possible for everyone that wants the cultural experience to have it. If you accept this as true, how do you propose tickets are distributed, if not to the highest bidder?
    - akudha 4y ago
      I don’t have an answer to your question. That said, if every experience is sold to the highest bidders, only rich people can experience these events, isn’t it? Maybe I am just old - what is so special about these events anyway? Everything is expensive, it is super crowded, everyone around you is sweaty, many drunk/high…
      - thunky 4y ago
mschuster91 4y ago
> Current situation: tickets are priced at market value thanks to dynamic pricing, so they no longer sell out instantly And that means that ordinary working class people can't afford a lot of concerts any more. Entertainment only for the rich elites, bravo.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  They couldn't go anyway considering the only way to get a ticket was to pay a scalper the 2k now going to the artist. Economics would suggest making it affordable to average joes means staying in town for a while and doing 15 shows instead of 2.
- Karsteski 4y ago
  Well we can go to concerts. Just not the expensive ones.
- eropple 4y ago
  You're right, and this is the thing that's frustrating about the conversations here--I guess I'm not surprised that this is an audience that doesn't get it. A lot of music acts, even popular ones, were broke as hell for a long time. It is reasonable and, I think, actively laudable to want folks who are not of the Patagonia-jacket class to be able to see them live for a reasonable price. There is a point where decent people can go "y'know, I make enough money" and not seek to squeeze out every ounce of blood from that stone; those same decent people can find it objectionable that other people attempt to do so on top of it. Not everything must be profit-maximized. Sometimes things like "bringing joy" might actually be more valuable. And even if you are a meat-variant paperclip maximizer, there's obvious value into getting people who do not make onewheel-through-San-Francisco money into your music or your art. The people who currently make that money are usually older and will eventually age out. I still go see certain 90's bands every time they roll through in no small part because I saw them as a kid and I think they're fun.
  - benji-york 4y ago
    I think I am in total agreement with your comment and I have another angle to add for your consideration: Assume someone wanted to sell highly sought-after tickets for less than the market clearing (profit maximizing) price—as you suggest. Lowering the price will increase demand (because more people can afford them). We now have more demand for the tickets; how will that demand be expressed? Will some people stand in line for days to get the tickets? Is that a form of payment that some people can "pay" more easily that others because they are "richer" in disposable time? Will some people write software to shave milliseconds off of their ticket-buying reaction time? Is that a form of payment that some people can "pay" more easily than others because they have the requisite skills? Will some people pay others to do the above (or something similar)? It seems to me that these are all forms of payment and that the total payment (in currency or otherwise) will approximate the market-clearing price in pure currency from the other scenario. What do you think?
pedrogpimenta 4y ago
I think the premise is wrong because: - "tickets are prices too low": What do you mean by "too low"? Is the price that's set by the people involved low? Or is it what they think the value of the ticket is? - Can you imagine if bananas were now $50 per banana? I mean, if there was only ONE company selling them, it would actually probably have already happened. So that would ultimately be the "market value".
- anoonmoose 4y ago
  What's the price of a GPU- the MSRP or the current bid for the only one available on eBay? In my opinion, it's the value I can actually buy the thing for.
  - pedrogpimenta 4y ago
    Key difference: > the only one available vs > all the tickets since day one
    - anoonmoose 4y ago
      I don't think there's a difference there. If there are no GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or hundreds available for 2-3x MSRP, the price is 2-3x MSRP. Whether it's day one or day N, the price is what you can buy it for that day.
      - matwood 4y ago
        Exactly. And people forget that market prices do not always go up. I've been to quite a few sporting events where I bought scalped tickets day of for less than face value. Tickets have expirations like options do. No seller wants to be still holding tickets when the event starts.
      - pedrogpimenta 4y ago
        That's not what we're comparing. > If there are no GPUs available for MSRP and dozens or hundreds available for 2-3x MSRP. If you want to extrapolate, it should be > Last year's $100 model has been selling for $500 on ebay. The new one would cost $110 but because of that, we'll now price it $550, because people pay for that. But hey, if you agree with that, you agree with that. I don't.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
The crux of it is this change was implemented at a time when people are already being squeezed five ways from Sunday by everything else. It may feel more fair that the fastest clickers win and ticket prices don't change (and many people don't get them) versus the fastest clickers get the cheapest tickets and other people have to pay 2-5x as much.
MrPatan 4y ago
Everybody understands economics. Everybody pretends not to when it's in their benefit.
trynewideas 4y ago
> Fans are furious! Fans who remember when Ticketmaster didn't have a vertical monopoly on arena tours are furious at how everything they warned other fans or the industry about 20 years ago came boringly true. Fans who had a slim chance of affording a $60 ticket that they had a slim chance of actually buying under the old model are furious because now they have a zero chance of affording any ticket to any in-demand show. Fans who could always afford and always bought $250 tickets, whether through resellers under the old model or first parties under the new model, are less angry but still have complaints about how Ticketmaster is still as bad 20 years into selling tickets online at the actual ticket sales motion - carts getting dumped out before the end of the transaction, timeouts due to overloaded infrastructure, bad venue experiences. (Resellers could actually exchange money for goods and services about as well as or better than TM, and when the tickets were legit they actually got you into the venue 100% of the time.) All three face the same core problem - Ticketmaster's monopoly makes their lives worse. Artists _who are big enough for TM to pay attention to_ are about the only typically shorted party who like how this played out. The rest of the industry is basically locked out with few or no alternatives depending on the market.
unethical_ban 4y ago
Some bands don't want to maximize their profits. Shocker: Some artists want people of all incomes to enjoy their work. But allowing scalpers/TM to do pure market pricing can fuck over the ability for a lower-middle income person to see these kinds of shows that to them might be the equivalent cost of a weeklong vacation. Therefore, the idea (which should be at the discretion of the artist and only the artist, to hell with TM) is "charge an affordable price and ban scalping". Scalping can be controlled by technology; making sure any resales/transfers of ticket ownership go through the ticketing agency and only for the original price.
polio 4y ago
I think it's worth mentioning that price is only one way to allocate the scarce resource. What strikes me as better socially and for the liveliness of the audience is to offer discounts to the top 25% of fans, as determined by Spotify or Apple Music, and then let the free market fill in the rest. Some balance of this would let regular fans get a shot while also maximizing revenue for the other block of tickets.

jypepin 4y ago

Yeah, high prices suck but I do agree and fail to see what, exactly, is wrong here? Don't get me wrong, I don't like TM, I don't like monopolies and I don't like high prices, but... price = equilibrium between offer and demand, it's the basics of our capitalist society, and all this look like to me is that TM is doing a good job at figuring out the equilibrium price for their tickets?

conradfr 4y ago
You have priced out part of your fanbase which can create resentment, and concerts where only the rich people attend are not the best, ambiance wise, especially if you want to play other songs than the radio hits.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Do you think rich people listen to more hits radio than others? Doesn’t seem likely to me.
  - conradfr 4y ago
    There is a lot of people who go see established artists without really listening to the albums so they mostly know the hits and that's what they want to be played at the concert.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  People have been claiming "you'll price out your fan base" as long as I can remember, meanwhile Blink 182 is a 25-year old band with demand for tickets seemingly higher than ever.
pfortuny 4y ago
With the consequence that “only rich people get to see Beyoncé live”. Which may be good or not, I have not an opinion.
- Filligree 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bena 4y ago

Yeah. The problem is really scarcity. A venue can only hold so many people. And one of the easier ways to filter out people is to price the item so that only so many would buy a ticket. That's essentially what scalpers are taking advantage of. They're betting that the ticket will sell for more than the cost to someone, they just have to find that person. If tickets were $5 or whatever is deemed reasonable, that doesn't mean more people can go, it means a slightly different group of people will go.

xeromal 4y ago

This is just my shower thoughts, but I think it's because getting tickets for the past century has been getting in line early / getting lucky, but now it's just whoever is the richest wins.

Nextgrid 4y ago
In practice, can't rich people just pay people to stand in queues on their behalf and acquire tickets the same way?
- svachalek 4y ago
  More or less what scalpers are.
  - m000 4y ago
    No, it's not. If there's a cap for how many tickets you can buy, you need 100 persons to buy (100 * cap) tickets. This doesn't scale the way electronic scalping does.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      In the era before electronic scalping, they'd do exactly that (get a bunch of people together, you could often buy two or five tickets) and/or cycle through multiple times.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Yeah, we're on hackernews so I assume most people on here are making a healthy dev salary so hopefully my comment isn't in bad taste, but I've done that with TaskRabbit.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Feeling bad about paying for this kind of thing is one of the differences between the upper-middle class and higher, and the middle and lower. Me, my upbringing was at least as much Fussell's "Prole" as his "Middle", so I don't even feel right having contractors do stuff on my house. Feels weird to pay people to do shit I could do, while I'm working or just fucking around or playing with my kids or whatever. I always feel like I ought to be helping. Took me a long time to stop feeling really uncomfortable having a cleaner come in every couple weeks. Still not totally OK with it, even years in. I think some of this plays into success in business. Probably easier to climb the ladder (or just start higher on it) or start a business when you find it totally natural and ordinary to pay people to do stuff for you. TaskRabbit and such are just... I guess, "democratizing" (seems especially wrong in this case) the same shit rich people have always done. Making it accessible a rung or two lower than it used to be. It makes me feel gross, but so does the other stuff that's not some new tech-enabled thing.

nicoburns 4y ago

> Is there a better solution? The other option is to prevent ticket resales (except through the original ticketing website at face value). This arguably leads to a more equitable distribution of tickets as your ability to buy tickets isn't dependent on how wealthy you are. > Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert tickets, wouldn't they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for the same reason? Not necessarily. It would presumably depend on the preference of the artists (who would choose which ticketing company they use). I see two models being popular: one with dynamic pricing where the extra money in paid to the artists. One with fixes pricing. I can't see any artists freely choosing a model with dynamic pricing where the ticketing company pockets the difference.

colinmhayes 4y ago
This isn't better for the artists or venues because they're leaving money on the table. Dynamic pricing means artist and production share the money scalpers used to make.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I’d argue it’s better for artists, because more people get a chance to see their shows.
tylermenezes 4y ago
Ticketmaster has exclusive agreements with most large music venues, artists have no real choice. (I have booked large venues before.)
patmorgan23 4y ago
Tickets are usually sold by the venue through a vendor (ie Ticketmaster, seat geek,etc) not by the artist. This way the venue's box office/event staff only have to learn one ticketing system.(and they easily can sell venue specific add-ons like parking)

nordsieck 4y ago

> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. I think a big part of the problem is: it's challenging to estimate the demand for events. It's just less risky to consistently underestimate than over estimate. A sold out venue is annoying to fans who can't attend or who have to play a lot. But an under-attended event can be financially bad for the performer (depending on how deals are structured). Combine that with the limited number of venues that can accommodate large audiences, and I think it's generally not surprising that this is a persistent problem. I think there is a good solution; it just takes more work on the part of the performer: ticket pre-pre-sales. If the performer can "sell" all/most of their tickets before they even start talking to Ticketmaster, that should give better control over pricing since they can "rightsize" the number of performances they do in each place.

Kon-Peki 4y ago
You’re right. The strategy Brooks is taking (based on what the linked article in the linked article says) is that he announces a set of shows. If they sell out and the secondary market prices are very high, he adds another set of shows. And then keeps doing that over and over again. The problem for his fanbase is that there is no reliable way of knowing whether another set of shows is going to be added. So you have to gamble on whether to wait for another show to be announced or to buy the tickets on the resale site. Some factors affecting the situation include the fact that the band is scheduled to be in another city on some near-future date, as well as the fact that the venue is scheduled to host a different band/event on a near-future date. The Garth Brooks solution isn’t really a solution but it does make things a little better. Pre-pre sales are also something that will help, as you mention. But ultimately, without some sort of legislation, there is almost certainly no solution to the “problem” of a band choosing not to maximize revenue.
bombcar 4y ago
The absolute amount of logistics required for a show is tremendous, and if you look at a tour schedule you'll often see that it's absolutely packed - no time to add in extra shows if others sell out. This is why the artists will have fan clubs and such, it can greatly help them determine what they could sell and how many shows. Sometimes you can switch to another venue in the same city, but that only works when they're both owned by the same company, usually. And it other cases you can open up more "seating" but that really only works when playing to stadiums.

datadata 4y ago

Dynamic pricing isn't the issue here, the issue is that the extra profits generated by dynamic pricing are going to ticketmaster rather than to artists. If artists took home the extra profits, there would be more incentive for the market to provide more quality artists, more concerts, and cheaper prices, supply would meet demand. But since the profits go to ticketmaster, ticketmaster might not even have higher total earnings if it increased supply, as prices might decrease faster. Higher supply of concerts would also give opportunities for competitors to ticketmaster to emerge, as it would have to control a bigger market.

ethagknight 4y ago
Can you provide a source that Ticketmaster keeps extra money? I would find that unlikely.
- adastra22 4y ago
  Knowing Ticketmaster’s past actions, I find it highly likely. But I would appreciate a source too.
- boringg 4y ago
  Is this a serious comment? I can't believe that this is a serious comment.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    No artist is going to price their tickets at $50 face value, then shrug when TM sells them for $500 and keeps the additional $450 for themselves. Of course Ticketmaster isn't just keeping all the extra money. They're probably splitting that with the performer as well.
    - boringg 4y ago
      You do understand that Ticketmaster has an effective monopoly and has a past history of sketchy business practices. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they pocketed it themselves or a large majority of it. It would be completely congruent with their business practices.

duxup 4y ago

Yeah the whole monopoly aside. If $600 is the market / people will pay, that's the market. Lets say the same band plays the same venue, but no ticket monopoly. Everyone knows folks will pay $600, so they're going to charge it, fees or not.

raldi 4y ago

If an artist wanted to allocate tickets by lottery at lower than market price, they would need a solution that would prevent ticket brokers from vacuuming them up and reselling them at market rate. For instance, at time of sale (or signing up for a lottery ticket) they could ask for your name and then check everyone's ID at the door to make sure it's a match — just like airlines do. But this would introduce long delays. Another option would be an app that used FaceID at time of lottery signup and then again to pull up a barcode to display at the gate, to make sure it's the same face.

redthrow 4y ago
> allocate tickets by lottery at lower than market price I think that's what Kid Rock does for the best seats in the first row, while selling the rest at market rate Kid Rock Vs. The Scalpers https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/20/475023002/episode-468-kid-rock-vs-the-scalpers https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/20/475023002/epis...

chimeracoder 4y ago

> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. Is there a better solution? Even if there were 5 different companies selling concert tickets, wouldnt they inevitably move to dynamic pricing for the same reason? It's a little more complicated when you realize that Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, a conglomerate which has bought out most of the major performance venues over the years. Many bands (including Blink 182, I believe) get contracted to Live Nation for the entirety of a tour, which means that they will only be performing in venues that Live Nation owns and operates, using Live Nation's ticketing system (Ticketmaster) and accepting all of the terms and issues that come along with that. As a condition of the 2010 merger, Live Nation promised the US Justice Department not to retaliate against venues that partnered with other ticketing providers until 2020. Because they violated that agreement, it was extended until 2025. You can look at that as "Live Nation is legally prohibited from retaliating against other venues", or you can look at it as "Live Nation has already demonstrated that they will leverage monopoly power in flagrant violation of the law, and in 2 years they will be permitted to with no recourse". Both are true. You can refuse to use Ticketmaster, but that means likely getting locked out of most of the venues you'd want to perform at - both the ones owned by Ticketmaster/Live Nation and the ones that have an exclusive contract with them (ie, de facto owned by Ticketmaster/Live Nation). Look at how things went for Pearl Jam, and realize that Ticketmaster/Live Nation has even more of a vertically integrated monopoly now than they did 30 years ago.

AlexandrB 4y ago

I think some artists would prefer to have an audience of teenagers and megafans (usually people without a lot of money) to a bunch of MBAs and professionals who can actually afford the tickets at market rates. Pure supply and demand is great if you don't care about who is your clientele but audiences are not undifferentiated.

bee_rider 4y ago
Yeah, it seems to be a good strategy to build a following by offering tickets to kids for cheaper. It also makes sense that as a band gets older, they might not be as incentivized to do so. How many new Blink-182 fans are there in 2022? I assume these guys are primarily worried about making sure they have enough cash in their kids' college funds and and making sure their retirement accounts are in really good shape (no shade intended, these are important concerns).
- jonas21 4y ago
  And as the band gets older, their fanbase gets older too. I wouldn't be surprised if many more Blink-182 fans are MBAs/professionals than teenagers these days.

throw827474737 4y ago

Not understanding how everything has to follow ultra-capitalism-free-market capitalism rules.. especially if the original artist/seller doesn't want it. Fixed fair prices for such a thing and just first-come first-serve is imo the right thing. E.g. my soccer club has much more demand than places, you can sell your ticket, but selling for higher prices is forbidden. That's good, because it is for the people and not the riches. Please just not shrug every problem off with "what's bad here, only riches now can have that"..

bombcar 4y ago
But how do they prevent selling for higher prices? Thing like "I'll give you $50 tomorrow if you sell me your ticket today for the sticker price"?
- throw827474737 4y ago
  Over half of them is season tickets where reselling when you cannot go is well supported via their platform. Either way you buy ticket as a registered buyer and it is so frowned upon that anyone going into anywhere public for profit resale would risk to loose their season or right to buy. Sure, nothing is 100% and also no solution for one time concerts - but just wanted to say regulation and fair prices sometimes make sense.. tickets for $1000 is nuts I'm glad this hasn't materializd here (yet?)

michaelt 4y ago

> Now the extra money that used to go to scalpers goes to TM instead, [...] Isnt this...not a bad thing? The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase, leading to your fanbase ageing. This is what happens to opera houses and similar institutions - they 'market price' the tickets to $150 then find all their customers are in their 60s. Of course, for a band it might be less of a problem than for an institution - the band ages at the same rate the fans do, after all. And merely offering $50 tickets that get brought by scalpers and resold for $150 doesn't solve the problem.

petercooper 4y ago
The problem with setting your ticket prices too high is it stops young people joining your concert-attending fanbase, leading to your fanbase ageing Totally a tangent, but I've noticed this with sports cars in recent years. The companies like to portray an image of glamorous professionals driving their cars and most times I see a Ferrari or a Porsche nowadays a more typical, older person is behind the wheel. I'm not judging if that's a good or bad thing, but I find it amusing versus the branding image. Could, too, all the fans at a highly priced Taylor Swift concert end up being 50+? :-)
- bombcar 4y ago
  Not all of them, but certainly a good amount. Fans often age with the artist, and the same with cars somewhat. Younger people (teenagers) will get to the concerts on their parent's dime, and many will go toward newer artists.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

I've seen Muse at least 25 times and have paid face value for tickets when buying them direct through TM for almost all of those times. I saw them first in 2006 for about $25-$35 at Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC for the Black Holes tour. Since then, they've become more and more popular, causing ticket prices to go up. Totally fair. With their 2023 Will of the People tour, dynamic pricing essentially sets the floor of ticket prices much, much higher. I'm seeing 200-level seats starting at $150 per ticket at some venues. Apparently that was the point where I'm fine with just completely missing the tour. I suppose the system works in that regard. The specific implementation of it is also not great. TM has you wait in a queue to select seats; the position in which is randomly assigned. This is to protect the servers from the thundering herd. (Lousy but fair.) When you finally make it in, you need to choose your seats and book as fast as possible, because dynamic pricing can cause the seats you selected to move up in price while you are selecting them, and the implementation doesn't let you OK it and move on, you have to essentially hope you choose and confirm before the price you locked in goes up. If you don't, it says, "sorry, the prices have gone up since you started, please choose new seats." This is both a super crappy UX and it ensures that they milk every last cent from people, as you can't lock in a price by moving quickly. The thing is, I'm not sure if the dynamic pricing floor ever gets dropped. Are they fine with not selling out venues because the people get priced out? Or do we wait on the secondary market to try to push prices back as demand recedes? The previous system sucked quite a bit with scalpers. However, the new system seems like it brings a whole new set of problems with it and it has made me question whether I even like going to concerts at all. Maybe I just don't care much anymore and this is a bridge too far. I don't know.

bombcar 4y ago
The "fair" method would be to reliably slice tickets into ticket classes (location, etc) and then let people select the tickets from the slice they want, and then basically do a reverse auction and set all the prices for that slice to whatever would sell them out exactly. However, this leaves money on the table (if there are five seats, and ten people, and the fifth highest amount paid would be $10, then they get $50, even if one person would pay $500 for a ticket).

bryans 4y ago

Performers don't actually want to be bleeding dry their fans' bank accounts. They are forced to participate in that system if they want to play at any venue over a particular capacity, all of whom have strict partnerships with TM. In that system, the performers have virtually zero input or control over the ticket price, and often have tight restrictions on where and how often they can perform at these venues. So, it's not a matter of scarcity, but a matter of one company hyper-maximizing profits based on an illusion of scarcity that they create. And the only intention is to con middle and low-income families into spending exorbitant sums to see their favorite performers, while the labels and marketing agencies spend millions to convince them the shows shouldn't be missed. It's all by design. Seeing a concert should not be a once in a decade event, and for many families, it currently is. And the only people preventing them from seeing those shows are a handful of executives at a couple of companies, for the sake of absolutely absurd profit margins.

InitialLastName 4y ago
The other part is that the scale of large musicians has grown so big (the biggest 100+ artists in the US have selling-out-stadiums-anywhere-on-earth scale) that there is effectively unlimited demand for their shows at any price. If you want to see Blink-182, Pearl Jam or Taylor Swift, yes it's difficult and expensive. On the other hand, tier 2 artists have nowhere near that difficulty. You could see the Violent Femmes tomorrow night in Red Bank, NJ for $50/ticket [0]. You could see Illuminati Hotties for $30 in Brooklyn [1]. You can find local bands and see them probably for the cost of a few drinks at a bar. [0] https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1D005CCDD5B03A72 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1D005CCDD5B03A72 [1] https://www.axs.com/events/432872/illuminati-hotties-tickets https://www.axs.com/events/432872/illuminati-hotties-tickets

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Those of us "of a certain age," will remember when live performances were loss leaders, to drive record sales. I am not old enough to have attended, but I am told that Woodstock (1) tickets were about $15.

colinmhayes 4y ago
and now record sales are loss leaders for live performances for many artists
duderific 4y ago
That $15 would be about $121 in today's dollars, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were even less than that.
exhilaration 4y ago
That's actually pretty expensive! This site https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ says $15 in 1969 is equivalent to $121 today.

throwaway49274 4y ago

And the REAL real problem is that the market will bare a lot. I once sold tickets for a Die Antwoord concert I couldn't attend due to illness. I advertised the tickets on Craigslist for $100 for both, the retail cost being $50 each. But when I arrived at the venue to sell the tickets, the buyer put $200 in front of my face assuming I had meant $100 EACH. My greed got to me and I took the money. My conclusion was, ticket buying is not rational, and the ticket market is extremely liquid, so without tying tickets to an identity like airline tickets there isn't a good solution.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> The article mentions that Garth brooks solved this by doing more concerts (e.g. 9 in a row in the same city!), but that's obviously not viable for everyone. I don't understand why it wouldn't be. If a city has sufficient demand to sell out two or more concerts, aren't the later concerts still profitable? And it's less travel expense per concert. If there isn't enough demand to sell tickets for at least two concerts, then doesn't that mean most of the fans in that city have been satisfied by a single concert? It makes sense to me that you'd schedule as many consecutive concerts in one city as you can as long as demand is high enough to make each additional concert profitable. That might be 9 concerts, or 2, or even a thousand concerts if you're talking about a city like Los Vegas.

ninth_ant 4y ago
This was my thought as well. We keep hearing about how artists are struggling to make money on album sales thanks to the rise of spotify and the demise of CD sales. Wouldn't playing the same venue for a week+ means less inter-city travel, less work tearing up/down the stages, and a lot of income from steady ticket sales?
mrWiz 4y ago
How do you decide that demand is high enough? Do you book the next stop in the tour a few days later assuming that demand is high enough for more shows, and then end up paying the roadies to sit around when the demand isn't high enough?
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > How do you decide that demand is high enough? Same way they decide if visiting a city is worth it in the first place? I'm not an event coordinator or tour scheduler so I don't know, but it seems like it should be possible.

antihero 4y ago

It’s a bad thing because it makes music entirely unaffordable to poor people as opposed to having the initial offering as somewhat affordable and fair. Electronic events, especially the more independent ones, release tickets in ever more expensive batches, eventually hitting them market rate. Also systems that lock you to buying a fixed amount of tickets and then being only able to sell them for what you paid such as with RA Guide and STEP (for a burner event, Nowhere). Allowing those with financial privilege access at the expense of those without us fundamentally antithetical to music and art.

seneca 4y ago
> Allowing those with financial privilege access at the expense of those without us fundamentally antithetical to music and art. No, it's really not. There have never been many peasants going to the opera houses of the world. And it's not at the expense of the poor, it's quite literally at their own expense. All that is happening here is that technology has allowed the market to directly determine prices, rather than artists and venues guessing at what the market will bare. It only means poor people will be priced out so long as artists as a group don't react to the increased demand. Likely "elite" performers will be able to always demand these premium prices but a lesser tier, and those past their prime, will perform at prices poorer consumers will be able to afford. What we see now is the result of extremely high demand (there are a lot more people in the US than there used to be) meeting limited supply, and new technology allowing for more market efficiency. The poor people who used to be able to get lucky and buy tickets well under market value are certainly going to be less happy, but that has nothing to do with some moral requirement for music.

mariebks 4y ago

This is why I think concerts might be a killer app in the Metaverse. Imagine you could attend a super immersive and compelling concert experience with your headset and a special audio setup for $5, and for that price, millions upon millions of people could attend. The artists could still make tons of money since so many people can go at a low price. The only problem I think would be that concerts could be VR “videos” that could easily be pirated and shared, since a digital livestream may not matter as much as going in person.

macNchz 4y ago
Since the topic here is Blink-182... I grew up listening to them and managed to go to a special show of theirs in a very small (for them) venue in NYC about 10 years ago. I'm optimistic about the future of VR, but the only aspect of that show that I think would benefit from it was the experience of getting to see the band members up close with just a general admission ticket, since they usually play giant arenas. Everything else about it was a multi-sensory experience that I think would be totally flat in even the most advanced VR systems: the electric buzz running through the crowd at the opening notes to their biggest hit songs, the mass of people pressing together to get close to the stage, jumping up and down together to the beat, hundreds of others around you screaming along to the lyrics of their favorite songs, people crowd surfing, friends bringing over one too many rounds of beers, the band interacting with the crowd as a whole, feeding off the energy of the room... Overall I'm not even a huge fan of live music, but it's hard for me to imagine a VR experience that captures all of the energy and human revelry of a great concert.

jiscariot 4y ago

I was always under the impression the innovative part of TM's "service" is taking the bad wrap/reputation hit that comes along with extracting more money for venues, artists and (or course) themselves. So essentially being paid to be the "evil Ticketmaster" we all know. Artists, venues get to blame them while keeping the base cost of their tickets lower (for perception purposes), while still making money on the TM fees.

exhilaration 4y ago
Good point! The percentage of the ticket price that the artists are getting is - conveniently - never revealed so fans are left to assume that it's evil Ticketmaster gouging them. I see a comment above yours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33290468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33290468 that suggests the artists usually get 85% of the profits, and of course we have no way to know.

pbreit 4y ago

And primary sale concerts tickets for even semi-popular artists are still way under-priced.

technoooooost 4y ago

Solution: become a death metalhead. Top bands are 20$

markandrewj 4y ago

Just fyi tickets still get scalped. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-vegas-1.4828535 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-...

pbreit 4y ago

aka Supply & Demand

nagonago 4y ago

I don't know if it's "better", but one solution is to prevent resales. Here in Japan larger acts will sometimes try to prevent resales by tying tickets to a name and doing ID checks at the door (although they often don't bother checking in practice...) or by making the ticket tied to a smartphone app. Whether this is better or not is up for debate. Personally I think it's good to give everyone equal opportunity to participate in culture, regardless of their financial status.