Originally published at: LiveNation masterfully spins monopolistic merch cut greed into a PR win | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
5 Likes
Ticketmaster could do something like this every day for a decade and still wouldn’t be able to emerge from the brand goodwill deficit they’ve dug themselves. But sure, have a cookie.
5 Likes
Man, I fucking hate them so much.
Even the smaller venues have wound up under their purview. Theres a 1200 head place near me in San Diego that gets a lot of great shows. Lettuce is going to be there next week (great funk band) and the tix are 35 bucks. Except what they really are after fees - 48 bucks. JFC.
We really only have one spot in the area that does their own online tickets and they don’t gouge you with fees - The Belly Up - but they still charge 7 or 8 bucks over the face value.
6 Likes
Countdown to a new “artist gas and merch” fee added to each ticket sold.
Perhaps they’ll even code the page so that it shows up on the total between the mouse down and mouse up events on the Purchase Tickets button.
8 Likes
LiveNation and Ticketmaster can both DIAF.
4 Likes
This is a win for touring artists (which isn’t to say they don’t deserve more), and I’m glad they’re doing it.
Still doesn’t make a dent in my overall hatred for LN/TM, though. I’m also confident that someone’s job is to figure out how to make up for this by f*cking the artists in some other less visible way.
4 Likes
A $1500 stipend is kind of ridiculous. When I used to put on shows in NYC in small less than 100 person venues, I would pay headliners from 500-1000. If I could shell out 1k for a tiny show, Ticketmaster should be doing much more.
2 Likes
I unlovingly refer to them as Ticketbastards
2 Likes
Only a $13 upcharge on a $35 ticket? You should count yourself lucky!
1 Like
Yeah that $1500 is basically a per diem from the venue. Which … I mean, cool, thanks. Y’all should’ve been covering basic room/board/travel expenses to begin with. So I’m glad that, after decades of unearned vallue extraction, you can finally afford to give up that .001% of your nightly profit!
1 Like
From what I remember my band touring friends telling me back in the early 00s, these merch grabs from venues started happening as a direct response from the ticket venders cutting them out from the ticket sales profits. Venues couldn’t fight up, so they punched down to make up their losses.
2 Likes
For realz… they are a monopoly that are well past needing taking down.
But they won’t, because unlike you, who I’m sure got into running a venue because you loved music, and cared about fostering it, all they see is a paycheck to line their greedy little pockets… They are a monopoly for both mid and large sized venues at this point, and will keep doing this until congress takes them down. The only alternative are the small sized venues like the one you used to run… But of course, that leaves out a lot of bands who are far too large for said venues…
1 Like
Hey, we’re saints! We briefly stopped throwing kittens into the wood chipper! Also please don’t pay attention to that shipment of more kittens on the loading dock over there, or all these new… uh… wood… recycling machines we’ve installed!
Oh look! It’s Willie Nelson!
2 Likes
I also love that the blame from “artists” (likely also LiveNation/Ticketmaster or some other middleman) is so often on “scalpers” for basically everything. Yes there’s some bad actors only buying for resale but a huge part of that business… isn’t that. Hell, even the guys hawking tickets out front aren’t even most of that industry and never were.
A lot of it’s also helping people who initially bought and can’t make it, tickets venues couldn’t sell easily in the first place, etc. For every Taylor Swift show there’s dozens of things that don’t sell out and the venue/artist take a loss. Resellers help dump those tickets for something that isn’t 0. And we always hear about how some sold out show is going for $1000 a seat on Craigslist… but is anyone paying that? No idea because it doesn’t make for good headlines.
I’m pretty much at the point where I almost don’t want to bother with live anything ever again because total prices are out of control and I’m not sure how much money the artists or venue make from my tickets, merch sales, etc. when these assholes are involved.
The new $25.37 merchandise ticket fee allows us to provide the artists that you love with the facilities* to enable merchandise sales at our venues.
The new $10.51 transportation ticket fee is charged as a part of the costs** involved in bringing the artists that you love to our venues.
- Artists are required to supply their own table cloths. These are uniquely sized and can only be purchased from our A&E supply subsidiary.
** We reserve the right to factor in other imagined costs under the banner of transportation as appropriate.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
