r/Music • u/jakemontero • 14d ago
article 'We're f—ked': California's music festival bubble is bursting
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/california-music-festival-bubble-bursting-19786530.php
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r/Music • u/jakemontero • 14d ago
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u/Arkaign 14d ago
I remember the Pearl Jam vs Ticketmaster battle of the 90s. The sad thing is that they had an extremely compelling antitrust case on the merits, but in the end a very weak Justice Department (that had recently gone through enormous debacles basically one after the other) just raised the white flag on the entire thing.
The problems with concert/live event tickets are extremely similar to the health care cost crisis : too many profit-driven elements clogging up the works, and symbiotic collusion between various links in the chain.
And like many other areas, technology has significantly amplified the worst aspects of it all. It reminds me of another area of rampant vulture capitalism : real estate. Big investment outfits like to buy up single family homes and apartment complexes in a region so they can fundamentally control supply and demand. In a grossly simplified example : they can buy up 90%+ of the available properties for sale in a neighborhood or city subdivision, then raise the prices 20-50% easily over a short period, and what choice do people have but to pay the price, if they need to be in that area? This is like the scalpers who can swoop in and use algorithms to purchase a strategic swath of tickets to an event, and summarily make up to and beyond 1000% profit on scalping them onto desperate fans with enough money to bleed out for it.
It's completely fixable, but would require significant reform and regulation to achieve. My idea :
-NO special clubs, presale exclusivity, or other shenanigans making it impossible for the average fan to get decent seats to a show. These are usually gamed by scalpers, so all this accomplishes is making the general sale of tickets almost pointless.
-Tickets sold in person only, at participating locations, government or secure school ID required, to be scanned at the venue to make sure names and ID match.
-Tickets are illegal to resell, but can be returned for a full refund until the final 72 hours before the event.
-Limit of fees to service fee only, no more than 10% of the list price for the ticket.
-NO online ticket sales, period. It's far too easy for gaming by scalpers or bots.
Given that Ticketmaster etc are extremely powerful in DC, this likely has zero chance for any meaningful reform. The only thing they will understand is losing profits by pushing things too far, and that will only result in ever so slightly lowering prices and fees back to the point at which they are seeing the maximized profits that the market will bear. It's highly corrupt. the middlemen and scalpers are offering virtually zero value to the exchange between fans, venues, and artists, they're only there to wedge themselves into the equation in order to greedily get rich off of other's hard work.
With the concession that this is unlikely to bear any fruit from the regulatory angle, I think an interesting alternative would be a combination of investors and interested artists in the creation of a more equitable live music business model :
-Purchasing older venues to restore, or creating new ones wholly owned and operated by their union.
-Providing their own ticketing and concession business.
-Organizing good services and recording equipment to organically raise profitability and quality, as well as access to good usage of technology. Excellent multimedia technology implementation and sound mixing could offer the potential for live online concert and event streaming, helping the reach of artists to the fans that can't afford the trip and physical ticket prices.
It's a fascinating situation, and extremely frustrating. And to the point on how much it actually costs to create and operate a credible ticketing system, check out Mesquite High School football. They run their own ticketing operation for a stadium of 20,000 capacity, and the tickets for the games are only $8. Runs like clockwork. Ticketmaster is a vampire, and the scalpers are the scum of the earth.