I've tried to get tickets to some concerts recently, but have had to give up in frustration because of the stratospheric price required to get a decent seat. Nancy and I are both fans of John Mellencamp (we saw him at the late Maple Leaf Gardens not long after we started dating), and were excited to see that he was coming to Massey Hall next June. But the only seats we could even consider were in the Gallery (top level, steep, and with obstructed leg room) which ruled them out for us. Better seats were well out of our price range, more than $300. For that amount of money, I could buy his entire CD catalog.
And don't get me started about Elton John tickets.
Ticket prices have been escalating for years. I can understand that big concerts can be expensive stage, but it seems to have gotten much worse since the merger of Ticketmaster and LiveNation in 2010.
In a new video, Cory Doctorow looks at the current state of the concert industry and why it's as bad as it is. It's pretty damning. It's on the More Perfect Union web site, and I can't see a way of embedding the video here, so you'll have to click the link. There is a transcript too, thankfully.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which is the same company, but we’ll get to that later, can basically do whatever they want because they’ve seized control over every aspect of the live music industry by creating a monopoly.
This ticketing cartel has the power to destroy venues and artists who refuse to work with them, and even have their own resale platform where they encourage and incentivize ticket resellers to gouge fans.
All of these exploitative practices make Ticketmaster executives very, very rich. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made $70.6 Million in 2017. That’s one of the largest CEO pay packages ever. But here’s the twist: this entire monopoly was helped along and enabled by our elected leaders.
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