7 ms·

A few thoughts on Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift

81 points by razin 4y ago

jupp0r 4y ago
Can somebody explain the power balance in that industry to me? What prevents Taylor Swift (or any other artist) from selling their own ticket via a shopify shop or similar? If they don't like TicketMaster, why are they using it?
- robot_no_421 4y ago
  Because most venues have a contractual agreement to only use ticketmaster to sell the tickets. So not only would they have to sell their own tickets, they'd also have to provide their own venues. Taylor Swift is powerful, but not "build my own stadium to perform" powerful.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Apparently the venues control ticket distribution and ticketmaster has bought them off.
- ianbutler 4y ago
  So I'm not an expert, but I did look into this area previously for an idea and I found that ticketmaster has a lot of exclusive contracts or outright ownership of venues. So if you don't play with them you don't have a place to play.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  The mega venues all have exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster, usually because they're owned by them. None of the mid sized venues in my city use Ticketmaster, they're all on AXS(not much better imo) or self host. But if you're putting on an arena show tour you're stuck with Ticketmaster.
- lovehashbrowns 4y ago
  Ticketmaster has exclusivity contracts with the major venues. I believe Pearl Jam ran into this issue where their concerts had to be held in out-of-the way venues. Quote from Rolling Stone article: The web of exclusive deals is what hurt Pearl Jam the most during its aborted ’95 tour. Locked out of mainstream venues, the group sold tickets through newcomer ETM Entertainment for shows at fairgrounds, soccer fields and state parks in such distant locales as Casper, Wyo., and Las Cruces, N.M.
- Terretta 4y ago
  We did this for Prince and the NPGMC after Ticketmaster was unable to stay online to sell small numbers of tickets to large numbers of fans. Maybe six weeks of code* and three dozen servers outperformed the behemoth. Seems to us that it takes a Prince, a Pearl Jam ... or a Taylor Swift ... with the seat filling power, the independent vision, and the interest + will to take on such problems themselves instead of have it all "handled" for them by the revolving door group of industry insider managers and label execs. To the sibling note, yes, it may also take alternative venues, or other cleverness. NPGMC for example created a "club" of "members" at scale, that allowed a variety of workarounds not available if albums or events are "public". * Note: We already specialized in handling landing pages and sales for live streaming events because we'd found while we could deliver the online video events, even mega brand sites couldn't handle the flash traffic for scheduled sales. So, we had know-how to rapidly apply similar concepts to this.
  - ttyprintk 4y ago
    Speaking of Prince… I wonder if a municipality could enact a one-day renaming of a venue. Arena with exclusivity contracts becomes Prince Arena ahead of time.
- maronato 4y ago
  I’m no expert, but last I heard Live Nation (TicketMaster’s parent company) owns the venues and the promoters. Essentially they make it near impossible to have a tour and play on large venues if you are not using their whole “stack” of services. Many artists tried and failed to operate without them. Pearl Jam being one of the most notorious examples.
- pxx 4y ago
  Ticketmaster is in the industry of taking the blame for high prices. Concert ticket demand vastly outstrips concert ticket supply at the prices that artists are happy with. The only real solution is to raise prices. But artists can't do that without fans being angry. So instead Ticketmaster does it for them and pays the venue a k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ "rebate". If the artist is popular enough, the venue pays money to the artist. Everybody is happy and Ticketmaster reaps the rewards of being the entity everybody is mad at.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  "The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that it is investigating whether Live Nation has been violating a consent decree that it has been required to follow since merging with Ticketmaster nearly a decade ago. The consent degree forbids Live Nation from keeping concerts and tours from venues that do not use Ticketmaster for ticket services. It also prevents the company from retaliating against venues that engage one of Ticketmaster’s competitors." ... "Live Nation indicated that those who were demanding an investigation misunderstood the consent degree as well as 'general ticketing industry dynamics.' On September 18th, Michael Rapino, who runs Live Nation, further addressed the issue at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, which took place in New York. Rapino insisted that, while the consent decree prevents Live Nation from threatening to block shows at venues that use a different ticketing platform than Ticketmaster, it does not prevent the company from making decisions that make economic sense. He further said that, if a venue wants to use a ticketing platform other than Ticketmaster, the venue may not make economic sense to his company." -- https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/09/19/live-nation-investigation-u-s-department-of-justice/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/09/19/live-nation-inve...
ratg13 4y ago
So they gave up on what they believed in for money? Not really the heartwarming david and goliath tale he is going for I think.
- avel 4y ago
  I think your perception is incorrect in both counts. They went bankrupt and saved the app by selling it to Warner and selling IP to Live Nation. And it doesn't seem like he was aiming for a heartwarming tale, the last message says "we gave it our best shot" and he is disappointed that there is no big, healthy competition.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  SV startups, founders, and investors don’t believe in anything except money. How many times do we hear about a company completely switching what they do (“pivoting”) because it will make them more money?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    A more charitable read is that people paying you money means that you're doing something they want or need. If nobody is paying you anything that means they don't need anything you're doing, so why are you even doing it? "Pivoting" then is just seeing that people have a need that is currently not being satisfied and building something to address that.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I think your view of VC-backed startups is skewed. They exist to make the VC investors money. If they happen to change the world while doing that, that’sa nice secondary effect.
woah 4y ago
Strange story… this guys startup filed an antitrust lawsuit against TicketMaster which ended up with TicketMaster… acquiring his company? Seems like something is being left out.
- brookst 4y ago
  What are you implying? Seems straightforward enough. Startup threatens to disrupt incumbent. Incumbent does shady things. Startup sues. Incumbent settles for money and IP that makes the threat go away.
- avel 4y ago
  Songkick was not doing well it seems: > Songkick shut down in October 2017 after earlier declaring bankruptcy. In January 2018, Live Nation reached a $110 million settlement with Songkick to resolve an antitrust lawsuit the startup had filed under which Live Nation agreed to acquire Songkick’s technology assets and patents. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/ticketmaster-10-million-fine-hack-songkick-competitor-1234877108/ https://variety.com/2020/music/news/ticketmaster-10-million-...
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  > In January 2018, shortly prior to a pending trial, Live Nation settled the lawsuit for $110 million, and also acquired the remaining intellectual property not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount. It sounds like after the sale of the part of the company not involved in the lawsuit to WMG, they basically had no reason to keep the IP so they sold it to whoever wanted it. Which happened to be Live Nation/Ticket Master
  - photoGrant 4y ago
    Which would personally tell me that the ethics and hatred towards Ticket Master was only skin deep. As soon as the money spoke.... Sigh.
    - sfink 4y ago
      That's not really how these things tend to go. More likely: you start out with a smallish company trying to compete with a behemoth. You do well for a while, but as soon as you become an active threat, you start hearing a lot of "we'd love to work with you, but we just signed an exclusive deal with the behemoth that gives us access to a lot of high value stuff they won't allow otherwise." Your company is starved of revenue and dwindles. Eventually you decide to sue. That gets real messy real fast, since no matter how strong your case is, you're going up against an entity with deep pockets to keep lots of lawyers tangling things up. You don't have the cash to fund both an expensive litigation and keep paying your employees to run the actual business that is being slowly starved of oxygen by the same monopolistic practices that you're suing for and can prove are happening. The behemoth's objective now is to make you go away with the least total cost to them. A large settlement alone would not result in you going away; if you manage to hang on for that long by borrowing against everything you own, then the cash infusion could revitalize your company enough to compete for real. But if the behemoth gets your IP, the threat to them is mostly neutralized (assuming you retain the rights to use your own IP, you'd be competing on a supposedly even playing field, but with a gorilla that can do everything you can do and set prices just low enough to finish starving you out.) So the behemoth offers you a sweet deal: a large lump of cash in exchange for handing over the IP and going away. You will try to stand on principle and refuse for as long as you can, but the writing is on the wall. And your employees' families are hungry. How willing are you to hurt them in order to hurt the behemoth? So sure, money is speaking, but it's not saying what you think it is: it's not whispering enticements. It is yelling threats. [I know nothing about this specific situation, but I have seen this play out in others.]
obblekk 4y ago
Ticketmaster is such an obvious monopoly in plain sight. The only reason I can see the FTC not more aggressively pursuing it (and instead wasting time on big-tech) is the people in power at the FTC don't go to enough concerts or care about a $10 markup on their tickets. For an American age 15 to 25 today, much more of their spending power, time, and opportunity is lost to Ticketmaster than FB/IG/Tiktok/Twitter monopolistic behavior combined. Hopefully the Taylor Swift ticket sale breaks into the Overton window and results in actual enforcement. Ticketmaster should have to divest Livenation and every other ticketing company it's acquired since 2010. I say this as the PM of the first attempt to sell tickets within Facebook Events in 2015. Even for Facebook, it was virtually impossible to get share because all the major venues and artists have exclusive lockups with Ticketmaster or a subsidiary of theirs.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  Monopolies like this are pretty strange. It's the same for Match.com buying every dating app to ever exist.
- brookst 4y ago
  Mostly agreed but I think the appropriate regulatory response is to split Ticketmaster into three businesses: a venue operator, a ticketing company, and a ticket resale company, and to forbid exclusive agreements between them. As separate companies they’d seek the best deals and wouldn’t collude to exclude new entrants in each others’ markets.
  - petilon 4y ago
    But each of those three businesses would be monopolies. Better to clone the company. Each clone inherits all IP then goes separate ways.
    - brookst 4y ago
      Each clone would be vertically integrated and would do the same abusive things. Clone A’s venues would use clone A’s ticketing service which would give most of the tickets to clone A’s ticket resale service. For a consumer who just wants reasonably priced tickets for a particular venue, there would be no change from today under that arrangement. But if you split the company vertically, the venue business needs to look after its own profits rather than maximizing the vertically integrated profits.
jmyeet 4y ago
Ticketmaster is a monopoly and they maintain this through monopolizing venues. The US has seen this kind of monpoly before and it led to antritrust action, notably in US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which led to the forced separation of studios, theaters and distrbituion. It should be a clear model that Ticketmaster should not be able to own or have exclusive deals with any venues. The dirty little secret of Ticketmaster is that most artists actually like that Ticketmaster exists. Why? Because they are sort of a reputational sacrificial anode. They are the token bad guys. Imagine if a band started selling tickets for $300. Fans might complain and the artists might look bad. They don't want that. But if they charge $150 and Ticketmaster charges $100 in "fees" then Ticketmaster are the bad guys. The artists take no heat from that. So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. It's the same as "fuel surcharges" on plane tickets. That too should be illegal. The ticket just costs more. That's it. The third leg of this are the ticket reselling sites that fuel demand. Another dirty little secret is that the artists themselves sell tickets directly on these sites too. On the principle of transparent pricing I'd like to see this outlawed too. But again artists like to just blame this on Ticketmaster and Stubhub. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Yea the real issue isn't ticketmaster or resellers, it's just supply and demand. If there are 3 million tickets and 15 million people want them you're gonna have a bad time, there's no way around it. Ticketmaster certainly isn't helping but Taylor really just needs to do more shows to solve this.
- cbsmith 4y ago
  > So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. Oh, it's not just artists who share in the fees. There's a bunch of different stakeholders, none of which trust each other. This is why, in a way, the fees do represent transparent pricing. Sure, it doesn't seem transparent for the consumer, but for all those different stakeholders, it makes it very transparent, right at the time of the ticket sale, how much their cut of the money is.
taeric 4y ago
Hard for me not to hear the name Pearl Jam whenever I see ticketmaster. Eddie Vedder's Audible that came out last year had a brief section on their encounter. The revolving door of regulators to big industry wasn't painted in a good light there.
ezl 4y ago
Years ago I saw a post on HN (or maybe reddit) about using reverse dutch auctions for these sort of situations and how it provided the fairest outcomes for all parties. It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate. Edit: oops - I can't find the original article I referenced, but someone else posted this on the same concept which is now on the front page of HN: https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/ https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  What is a reverse dutch auction?
  - blowski 4y ago
    The buyer says how much they're willing to pay, and the first seller to agree to sell at that price wins the auction.
  - eatingCake 4y ago
    The ticket prices start high and are gradually reduced at a set rate until they reach a pre-defined minimum. The idea being that scaplers can't profit off of purchasing early since the official clearinghouse is lowering the price all the time. People have to make a judgement call on the value of the tickets and purchase at an appropriate time.
  - falcor84 4y ago
    Apparently there is actually an approach called "Dutch reverse auction" [0], but that's not what the proposal is about - rather it's a about a regular Dutch auction [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction#Dutch_reverse_auctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction#Dutch_reverse_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction
- thrwy_918 4y ago
wly_cdgr 4y ago
Wish there was a downvote button. The last thing I want to see on HN (or anywhere else for that matter) is thoughts on Taylor Swift
- no-s 4y ago
  > The last thing I want to see on HN (or anywhere else for that matter) is thoughts on Taylor Swift You’re responding to the original submission. You can flag it if it’s that important to you. Or just skip it in your reading list and never respond at all. Of course if you’re interested in Swift programming topics there might be a little missing from your feed as a result...;) I feel the topic of online markets and nuances thereof have high hak-relevance to HN. As witnessed by the actual discussion. OTOH I don’t think you should be downvoted for grousing about it, as someone has obviously done for you...
  - wly_cdgr 4y ago
    It's fine, I'm not mad about being downvoted for making grouchy jokes. And, in more seriousness, I agree that, through the power of abstraction, value is gleanable even from Taylor-Swift-related content
falcor84 4y ago
So apparently this is the context I was missing - ticketmaster wasn't able to handle the load of selling tickets to Taylor Swift's new tour because it was bombarded with "3.5 billion ticket requests from fans, bots and scalpers"[0]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticketmaster-after-taylor-swift-sales-complaints-2022-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticket...
retskrad 4y ago
How did Taylor Swift gradually become one of the biggest, if not the biggest pop star, all of a sudden? She has gotten bigger and bigger ever since the Kanye West incident 13 years ago. She’s not a great performer like Beyoncé and she’s not a great singer like Adele. What’s going on here?
- dimmuborgir 4y ago
  I think her target audience is extremely broad. From teenagers to middle-aged people. Plus her latest album was marketed aggressively.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    This. It is a little bit like talking about politics. People will agree with sufficiently generic statements along the lines of 'there should be some accountability'; they will start arguing over what that means though. If you listen to her songs, it is an equivalent of that generic statements most people can relate to. I am aware of her and I am very detached from US pop culture. It is catchy.
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  She’s been brilliant at adapting her style to match current trends in ways that connect with people. Compare her most recent album to her early country music days. And she’s done a great job of controlling her public perception by limiting access, when no one would say the same about Kanye.
- taeric 4y ago
  All of a sudden? Her's has been a steady rise for over 13 years. She was already big at the "incident" you are referencing. Is kind of the point in why that was an incident, no?
thimantha 4y ago
How is everything in America a monopoly.
btown 4y ago
From the linked lawsuit https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.636257.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.63..., one of the major complaints is: > Defendants [LiveNation and Ticketmaster] have also recently begun using their unique multi-level leverage (which arose from their merger) to prevent artists from using Songkick’s competitive services, and to tie (1) Live Nation’s concert promotion services, Live Nation’s artist management services, Ticketmaster’s concert venue ticketing services, and/or use of the venues Defendants own, manage, and/or control; to (2) the artists’ use of Ticketmaster’s own artist presale ticketing services (recently rebranded as Ticketmaster’s “OnTour” division). > Michael Rapino, LiveNation’s CEO and Director, has admitted that artists today make 95% of their income from live music events and that Live Nation is now the “largest single financer” of artists worldwide (more than record companies). Armed as he is with this power over artists’ careers, Mr. Rapino has used this position to intimidate artists into using Ticketmaster over any other artist presale ticketing service. Indeed, Mr. Rapino made several threats to withhold Defendants’ services if artists insisted on using Songkick’s artist presale ticketing services. He also told several artists that they could not take a single ticket off of the Ticketmaster system, period. It's worth noting, in this context, that https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/victory-march-2018-110-million-antitrust-and-trade-secret-victory-against-ticketmaster-and-live-nation/ https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/... linked in the original thread states (though certainly from a self-promoting source) that: > Following fact and expert discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all of Songkick’s antitrust and non-trade secret claims. The Court denied that motion in its entirety on the papers. Before that decision, no antitrust plaintiff had ever withstood summary judgment against Ticketmaster, making Songkick the first. The decision also set up for trial (for the first time ever) what the defendants’ lead attorney acknowledged was a claim that put the legality of Ticketmaster’s exclusive dealing practices “squarely at issue.” Faced with Songkick’s claim and the prospect of a looming trial against Quinn Emanuel in late January 2018, the defendants resolved the dispute by paying Songkick $110 million in settlement (nearly 100% of its lost going concern value damages) and acquiring its assets for a confidential sum. (Note that Songkick announced it would shut down in October 2017. It's very possible that Songkick was likely to succeed on the merits but was forced to take a settlement to meet the needs of its team and investors.) IMO it's vital that this be taken seriously. An increasingly gloves-off anticompetitive Ticketmaster, in the midst of a global recession, could do irreparable damage to an entire generation of musical creators. Something has to change.

81 points by razin 4y ago

Can somebody explain the power balance in that industry to me? What prevents Taylor Swift (or any other artist) from selling their own ticket via a shopify shop or similar? If they don't like TicketMaster, why are they using it?

robot_no_421 4y ago
Because most venues have a contractual agreement to only use ticketmaster to sell the tickets. So not only would they have to sell their own tickets, they'd also have to provide their own venues. Taylor Swift is powerful, but not "build my own stadium to perform" powerful.
dboreham 4y ago
Apparently the venues control ticket distribution and ticketmaster has bought them off.
ianbutler 4y ago
So I'm not an expert, but I did look into this area previously for an idea and I found that ticketmaster has a lot of exclusive contracts or outright ownership of venues. So if you don't play with them you don't have a place to play.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
The mega venues all have exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster, usually because they're owned by them. None of the mid sized venues in my city use Ticketmaster, they're all on AXS(not much better imo) or self host. But if you're putting on an arena show tour you're stuck with Ticketmaster.
lovehashbrowns 4y ago
Ticketmaster has exclusivity contracts with the major venues. I believe Pearl Jam ran into this issue where their concerts had to be held in out-of-the way venues. Quote from Rolling Stone article: The web of exclusive deals is what hurt Pearl Jam the most during its aborted ’95 tour. Locked out of mainstream venues, the group sold tickets through newcomer ETM Entertainment for shows at fairgrounds, soccer fields and state parks in such distant locales as Casper, Wyo., and Las Cruces, N.M.
Terretta 4y ago
We did this for Prince and the NPGMC after Ticketmaster was unable to stay online to sell small numbers of tickets to large numbers of fans. Maybe six weeks of code* and three dozen servers outperformed the behemoth. Seems to us that it takes a Prince, a Pearl Jam ... or a Taylor Swift ... with the seat filling power, the independent vision, and the interest + will to take on such problems themselves instead of have it all "handled" for them by the revolving door group of industry insider managers and label execs. To the sibling note, yes, it may also take alternative venues, or other cleverness. NPGMC for example created a "club" of "members" at scale, that allowed a variety of workarounds not available if albums or events are "public". * Note: We already specialized in handling landing pages and sales for live streaming events because we'd found while we could deliver the online video events, even mega brand sites couldn't handle the flash traffic for scheduled sales. So, we had know-how to rapidly apply similar concepts to this.
- ttyprintk 4y ago
  Speaking of Prince… I wonder if a municipality could enact a one-day renaming of a venue. Arena with exclusivity contracts becomes Prince Arena ahead of time.
maronato 4y ago
I’m no expert, but last I heard Live Nation (TicketMaster’s parent company) owns the venues and the promoters. Essentially they make it near impossible to have a tour and play on large venues if you are not using their whole “stack” of services. Many artists tried and failed to operate without them. Pearl Jam being one of the most notorious examples.
pxx 4y ago
Ticketmaster is in the industry of taking the blame for high prices. Concert ticket demand vastly outstrips concert ticket supply at the prices that artists are happy with. The only real solution is to raise prices. But artists can't do that without fans being angry. So instead Ticketmaster does it for them and pays the venue a k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ "rebate". If the artist is popular enough, the venue pays money to the artist. Everybody is happy and Ticketmaster reaps the rewards of being the entity everybody is mad at.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rufus_foreman 4y ago
"The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that it is investigating whether Live Nation has been violating a consent decree that it has been required to follow since merging with Ticketmaster nearly a decade ago. The consent degree forbids Live Nation from keeping concerts and tours from venues that do not use Ticketmaster for ticket services. It also prevents the company from retaliating against venues that engage one of Ticketmaster’s competitors." ... "Live Nation indicated that those who were demanding an investigation misunderstood the consent degree as well as 'general ticketing industry dynamics.' On September 18th, Michael Rapino, who runs Live Nation, further addressed the issue at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, which took place in New York. Rapino insisted that, while the consent decree prevents Live Nation from threatening to block shows at venues that use a different ticketing platform than Ticketmaster, it does not prevent the company from making decisions that make economic sense. He further said that, if a venue wants to use a ticketing platform other than Ticketmaster, the venue may not make economic sense to his company." -- https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/09/19/live-nation-investigation-u-s-department-of-justice/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/09/19/live-nation-inve...

ratg13 4y ago

So they gave up on what they believed in for money? Not really the heartwarming david and goliath tale he is going for I think.

avel 4y ago
I think your perception is incorrect in both counts. They went bankrupt and saved the app by selling it to Warner and selling IP to Live Nation. And it doesn't seem like he was aiming for a heartwarming tale, the last message says "we gave it our best shot" and he is disappointed that there is no big, healthy competition.
wilsonnb3 4y ago
SV startups, founders, and investors don’t believe in anything except money. How many times do we hear about a company completely switching what they do (“pivoting”) because it will make them more money?
- luckylion 4y ago
  A more charitable read is that people paying you money means that you're doing something they want or need. If nobody is paying you anything that means they don't need anything you're doing, so why are you even doing it? "Pivoting" then is just seeing that people have a need that is currently not being satisfied and building something to address that.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
I think your view of VC-backed startups is skewed. They exist to make the VC investors money. If they happen to change the world while doing that, that’sa nice secondary effect.

woah 4y ago

Strange story… this guys startup filed an antitrust lawsuit against TicketMaster which ended up with TicketMaster… acquiring his company? Seems like something is being left out.

brookst 4y ago
What are you implying? Seems straightforward enough. Startup threatens to disrupt incumbent. Incumbent does shady things. Startup sues. Incumbent settles for money and IP that makes the threat go away.
avel 4y ago
Songkick was not doing well it seems: > Songkick shut down in October 2017 after earlier declaring bankruptcy. In January 2018, Live Nation reached a $110 million settlement with Songkick to resolve an antitrust lawsuit the startup had filed under which Live Nation agreed to acquire Songkick’s technology assets and patents. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/ticketmaster-10-million-fine-hack-songkick-competitor-1234877108/ https://variety.com/2020/music/news/ticketmaster-10-million-...
wilsonnb3 4y ago
> In January 2018, shortly prior to a pending trial, Live Nation settled the lawsuit for $110 million, and also acquired the remaining intellectual property not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount. It sounds like after the sale of the part of the company not involved in the lawsuit to WMG, they basically had no reason to keep the IP so they sold it to whoever wanted it. Which happened to be Live Nation/Ticket Master
- photoGrant 4y ago
  Which would personally tell me that the ethics and hatred towards Ticket Master was only skin deep. As soon as the money spoke.... Sigh.
  - sfink 4y ago
    That's not really how these things tend to go. More likely: you start out with a smallish company trying to compete with a behemoth. You do well for a while, but as soon as you become an active threat, you start hearing a lot of "we'd love to work with you, but we just signed an exclusive deal with the behemoth that gives us access to a lot of high value stuff they won't allow otherwise." Your company is starved of revenue and dwindles. Eventually you decide to sue. That gets real messy real fast, since no matter how strong your case is, you're going up against an entity with deep pockets to keep lots of lawyers tangling things up. You don't have the cash to fund both an expensive litigation and keep paying your employees to run the actual business that is being slowly starved of oxygen by the same monopolistic practices that you're suing for and can prove are happening. The behemoth's objective now is to make you go away with the least total cost to them. A large settlement alone would not result in you going away; if you manage to hang on for that long by borrowing against everything you own, then the cash infusion could revitalize your company enough to compete for real. But if the behemoth gets your IP, the threat to them is mostly neutralized (assuming you retain the rights to use your own IP, you'd be competing on a supposedly even playing field, but with a gorilla that can do everything you can do and set prices just low enough to finish starving you out.) So the behemoth offers you a sweet deal: a large lump of cash in exchange for handing over the IP and going away. You will try to stand on principle and refuse for as long as you can, but the writing is on the wall. And your employees' families are hungry. How willing are you to hurt them in order to hurt the behemoth? So sure, money is speaking, but it's not saying what you think it is: it's not whispering enticements. It is yelling threats. [I know nothing about this specific situation, but I have seen this play out in others.]

obblekk 4y ago

Ticketmaster is such an obvious monopoly in plain sight. The only reason I can see the FTC not more aggressively pursuing it (and instead wasting time on big-tech) is the people in power at the FTC don't go to enough concerts or care about a $10 markup on their tickets. For an American age 15 to 25 today, much more of their spending power, time, and opportunity is lost to Ticketmaster than FB/IG/Tiktok/Twitter monopolistic behavior combined. Hopefully the Taylor Swift ticket sale breaks into the Overton window and results in actual enforcement. Ticketmaster should have to divest Livenation and every other ticketing company it's acquired since 2010. I say this as the PM of the first attempt to sell tickets within Facebook Events in 2015. Even for Facebook, it was virtually impossible to get share because all the major venues and artists have exclusive lockups with Ticketmaster or a subsidiary of theirs.

sureglymop 4y ago
Monopolies like this are pretty strange. It's the same for Match.com buying every dating app to ever exist.
brookst 4y ago
Mostly agreed but I think the appropriate regulatory response is to split Ticketmaster into three businesses: a venue operator, a ticketing company, and a ticket resale company, and to forbid exclusive agreements between them. As separate companies they’d seek the best deals and wouldn’t collude to exclude new entrants in each others’ markets.
- petilon 4y ago
  But each of those three businesses would be monopolies. Better to clone the company. Each clone inherits all IP then goes separate ways.
  - brookst 4y ago
    Each clone would be vertically integrated and would do the same abusive things. Clone A’s venues would use clone A’s ticketing service which would give most of the tickets to clone A’s ticket resale service. For a consumer who just wants reasonably priced tickets for a particular venue, there would be no change from today under that arrangement. But if you split the company vertically, the venue business needs to look after its own profits rather than maximizing the vertically integrated profits.

jmyeet 4y ago

Ticketmaster is a monopoly and they maintain this through monopolizing venues. The US has seen this kind of monpoly before and it led to antritrust action, notably in US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which led to the forced separation of studios, theaters and distrbituion. It should be a clear model that Ticketmaster should not be able to own or have exclusive deals with any venues. The dirty little secret of Ticketmaster is that most artists actually like that Ticketmaster exists. Why? Because they are sort of a reputational sacrificial anode. They are the token bad guys. Imagine if a band started selling tickets for $300. Fans might complain and the artists might look bad. They don't want that. But if they charge $150 and Ticketmaster charges $100 in "fees" then Ticketmaster are the bad guys. The artists take no heat from that. So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. It's the same as "fuel surcharges" on plane tickets. That too should be illegal. The ticket just costs more. That's it. The third leg of this are the ticket reselling sites that fuel demand. Another dirty little secret is that the artists themselves sell tickets directly on these sites too. On the principle of transparent pricing I'd like to see this outlawed too. But again artists like to just blame this on Ticketmaster and Stubhub. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

HDThoreaun 4y ago
Yea the real issue isn't ticketmaster or resellers, it's just supply and demand. If there are 3 million tickets and 15 million people want them you're gonna have a bad time, there's no way around it. Ticketmaster certainly isn't helping but Taylor really just needs to do more shows to solve this.
cbsmith 4y ago
> So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. Oh, it's not just artists who share in the fees. There's a bunch of different stakeholders, none of which trust each other. This is why, in a way, the fees do represent transparent pricing. Sure, it doesn't seem transparent for the consumer, but for all those different stakeholders, it makes it very transparent, right at the time of the ticket sale, how much their cut of the money is.

taeric 4y ago

Hard for me not to hear the name Pearl Jam whenever I see ticketmaster. Eddie Vedder's Audible that came out last year had a brief section on their encounter. The revolving door of regulators to big industry wasn't painted in a good light there.

ezl 4y ago

Years ago I saw a post on HN (or maybe reddit) about using reverse dutch auctions for these sort of situations and how it provided the fairest outcomes for all parties. It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate. Edit: oops - I can't find the original article I referenced, but someone else posted this on the same concept which is now on the front page of HN: https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/ https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/

purplerabbit 4y ago
What is a reverse dutch auction?
- blowski 4y ago
  The buyer says how much they're willing to pay, and the first seller to agree to sell at that price wins the auction.
- eatingCake 4y ago
  The ticket prices start high and are gradually reduced at a set rate until they reach a pre-defined minimum. The idea being that scaplers can't profit off of purchasing early since the official clearinghouse is lowering the price all the time. People have to make a judgement call on the value of the tickets and purchase at an appropriate time.
- falcor84 4y ago
  Apparently there is actually an approach called "Dutch reverse auction" [0], but that's not what the proposal is about - rather it's a about a regular Dutch auction [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction#Dutch_reverse_auctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction#Dutch_reverse_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction
thrwy_918 4y ago

wly_cdgr 4y ago

Wish there was a downvote button. The last thing I want to see on HN (or anywhere else for that matter) is thoughts on Taylor Swift

no-s 4y ago
> The last thing I want to see on HN (or anywhere else for that matter) is thoughts on Taylor Swift You’re responding to the original submission. You can flag it if it’s that important to you. Or just skip it in your reading list and never respond at all. Of course if you’re interested in Swift programming topics there might be a little missing from your feed as a result...;) I feel the topic of online markets and nuances thereof have high hak-relevance to HN. As witnessed by the actual discussion. OTOH I don’t think you should be downvoted for grousing about it, as someone has obviously done for you...
- wly_cdgr 4y ago
  It's fine, I'm not mad about being downvoted for making grouchy jokes. And, in more seriousness, I agree that, through the power of abstraction, value is gleanable even from Taylor-Swift-related content

falcor84 4y ago

So apparently this is the context I was missing - ticketmaster wasn't able to handle the load of selling tickets to Taylor Swift's new tour because it was bombarded with "3.5 billion ticket requests from fans, bots and scalpers"[0]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticketmaster-after-taylor-swift-sales-complaints-2022-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-questions-ticket...

retskrad 4y ago

How did Taylor Swift gradually become one of the biggest, if not the biggest pop star, all of a sudden? She has gotten bigger and bigger ever since the Kanye West incident 13 years ago. She’s not a great performer like Beyoncé and she’s not a great singer like Adele. What’s going on here?

dimmuborgir 4y ago
I think her target audience is extremely broad. From teenagers to middle-aged people. Plus her latest album was marketed aggressively.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  This. It is a little bit like talking about politics. People will agree with sufficiently generic statements along the lines of 'there should be some accountability'; they will start arguing over what that means though. If you listen to her songs, it is an equivalent of that generic statements most people can relate to. I am aware of her and I am very detached from US pop culture. It is catchy.
camjohnson26 4y ago
She’s been brilliant at adapting her style to match current trends in ways that connect with people. Compare her most recent album to her early country music days. And she’s done a great job of controlling her public perception by limiting access, when no one would say the same about Kanye.
taeric 4y ago
All of a sudden? Her's has been a steady rise for over 13 years. She was already big at the "incident" you are referencing. Is kind of the point in why that was an incident, no?

thimantha 4y ago

How is everything in America a monopoly.

btown 4y ago

From the linked lawsuit https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.636257.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.63..., one of the major complaints is: > Defendants [LiveNation and Ticketmaster] have also recently begun using their unique multi-level leverage (which arose from their merger) to prevent artists from using Songkick’s competitive services, and to tie (1) Live Nation’s concert promotion services, Live Nation’s artist management services, Ticketmaster’s concert venue ticketing services, and/or use of the venues Defendants own, manage, and/or control; to (2) the artists’ use of Ticketmaster’s own artist presale ticketing services (recently rebranded as Ticketmaster’s “OnTour” division). > Michael Rapino, LiveNation’s CEO and Director, has admitted that artists today make 95% of their income from live music events and that Live Nation is now the “largest single financer” of artists worldwide (more than record companies). Armed as he is with this power over artists’ careers, Mr. Rapino has used this position to intimidate artists into using Ticketmaster over any other artist presale ticketing service. Indeed, Mr. Rapino made several threats to withhold Defendants’ services if artists insisted on using Songkick’s artist presale ticketing services. He also told several artists that they could not take a single ticket off of the Ticketmaster system, period. It's worth noting, in this context, that https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/victory-march-2018-110-million-antitrust-and-trade-secret-victory-against-ticketmaster-and-live-nation/ https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/... linked in the original thread states (though certainly from a self-promoting source) that: > Following fact and expert discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all of Songkick’s antitrust and non-trade secret claims. The Court denied that motion in its entirety on the papers. Before that decision, no antitrust plaintiff had ever withstood summary judgment against Ticketmaster, making Songkick the first. The decision also set up for trial (for the first time ever) what the defendants’ lead attorney acknowledged was a claim that put the legality of Ticketmaster’s exclusive dealing practices “squarely at issue.” Faced with Songkick’s claim and the prospect of a looming trial against Quinn Emanuel in late January 2018, the defendants resolved the dispute by paying Songkick $110 million in settlement (nearly 100% of its lost going concern value damages) and acquiring its assets for a confidential sum. (Note that Songkick announced it would shut down in October 2017. It's very possible that Songkick was likely to succeed on the merits but was forced to take a settlement to meet the needs of its team and investors.) IMO it's vital that this be taken seriously. An increasingly gloves-off anticompetitive Ticketmaster, in the midst of a global recession, could do irreparable damage to an entire generation of musical creators. Something has to change.