taylor swift, one of the largest stars in the world: i’m sorry, but what can we do
robert smith, aging goth on his band’s last hurrah: TICKETMASTER ON BLAST ALL DAY EVERY DAY IN ALL CAPS UNTIL THEY REFUND OUR FANS AND APOLOGIZE TO THEM FOR THE TROUBLE
Taylor Swift: "I guess Ticketmaster is a disease of the industry."
Robert Smith, appearing in a door in a bolt of lightning wearing a long coat: "And my dear lady, I... am the cure."
Smith puts on sunglasses, dramatic explosions echo in the distance
.... "which is why these exorbitant fees that go directly to us are there, for the poor poor artist <3" yo this guy needs to be thrown off a bridge. preferably over a dry riverbed
Personally, the ukulele album and going toe to toe with Ticketmaster is what (almost) balances out Pearl Jam's discography.
Not trying to yuck anyone's yum; PJ is just one of those examples of a band whose music I loathe while admiring virtually everything they do offstage and outside the studio.
And I'll confess I haven't heard the entire ukulele album, but just a couple of days ago one of the streaming radio stations we listened to played his version of "Tonight You Belong To Me" with Cat Power, and I was like, "Wait, this is Eddie Vedder?! But I like this!"
I once read a review of a solo accordion album expecting to get a couple of jokes out of it. I ended up buying the thing and it's stunning. It's fun to act like a little jerk online but not as much fun as loving music.
[Mario Batkovic, self-titled album]
I'm sure it's not Eddie Vedder doing his trademark "OOHHHHH AHHHHHH OHHHHH" bellowing but honestly, if it's somehow still that, I'd give it a listen for the experience of it.
I haven't even heard the ukelele* album, I'm just being snarky. It might well be great!
* distracting autocorrect error changed this to "useless", I was tempted to leave it for the laugh but that's a bit harsh
Is there even a good reason for Ticketmaster to exist at this point?
Thirty to forty years ago makes sense because the technology was probably much more expensive.
But now venues can do their own ticketing quite easily. I purchased tickets for the last three shows I was at directly from the venue.
i think having a single seller probably makes it more convenient for venues, bookers and artists, particularly at the ballroom and up level, but not on the terms livenation/ticketmaster demand
Like Zellerbach Hall seats 2000 and UC Berkeley has no problem running a website ticketing for it.
Ticketmaster does seem like a relic of when you also needed a travel agent to book airfare. You'd go to Sears and buy a concert ticket.
A site and value proposition like Eventbrite makes sense ofc.
It's so weird now to think of the pre-online*ticket selling experience when I worked at a record store with a Ticketmaster partnership. People would physically line up outside the store at any of I assume thousands of locations and...
*more or less, obviously networking was in play here
... they were at the mercy of the skill and efficiency of the clerk working the dedicated TM console as to whether they were going to get tickets for any instant sellout event. We had a girl who wanted to personally hand as many tickets to our paying customers as the thing could print, so intense.
I suspect regional / mid-tier arenas and civic centers are prime territory for them, especially publicly-owned ones where the city will pay someone to work out of the box office for walk-ups but outsource the online ticketing.
The thing that gets me is I used Ticketmaster for an event in the Netherlands once and it was a simple and pleasant experience with literally no extra fees or "partner offers" and a one-page list of notifications I could opt into. The US government fails its citizens so badly in every way.
And not just notifications... relevant ones! That alone kinda made me want to move there, but then there's that whole fascist movement wants to hasten climate change and return the land to the sea and also Black Peter like come on really? thing
