cobl04
45:33
What the fuck?! How?
Springsteen VIII - 2014, tour, album, etc.
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
What the fuck?! How?
LiveNation is how
The fee is about 35% of the face value of the ticket, which is absurd
The fee is about 35% of the face value of the ticket, which is absurd
cobl04
45:33
I'm not understanding. Max fees here I've ever paid might have been like $15, for various fees. As in, Live Nation are just up front about saying how much of a cut they take from the sale of the ticket? Like if a ticket is $140, they say $49 is a fee?
cobl04
45:33
That is FUCKED! I haven't seen anything like that in Australia. (Also I get the impression that Live Nation is a ticket seller in the US? It isn't here, it's a promoter, Ticketmaster and Ticketek are our ticket-selling duopoly).
cobl04
45:33
I just pulled up tickets to Pink (which looks like is using dynamic pricing, so I guess it is here for really big gigs) and a $400 GA ticket has $10 in fees.
interesting note re Pink: On one tour, she sold out 18 shows at Rod Laver (our largest arena) and did 60 arena shows around the country.
interesting note re Pink: On one tour, she sold out 18 shows at Rod Laver (our largest arena) and did 60 arena shows around the country.
LiveNation owns Ticketmaster
i can hear Journey soundchecking from my office and it's got me crazy pumped up for Springsteen in a few weeks
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Are Schon and Cain fistfighting?
they got close to each other, but then cooler heads prevailed. they each went... Separate Ways.
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My U2 "gift" came from Ticketmaster this year... that was real depressing in itself. Maybe it always have as LIve Nation, yada yada...
My friend who is a huge Bruce fan didn't get verified and like backstreets is so pissed about everything Bruce is doing... it makes the Larry Lovers look tame in comparaison to how angry the Bruce crowd is.
To me it's just the last 10 years or so, this is how it goes. If you like anything close to popular, it's going to suck.
I mean did Taylor Swift ever resolve those issues?
The key is to find the next Bruce Springsteen...
Easy right????
My friend who is a huge Bruce fan didn't get verified and like backstreets is so pissed about everything Bruce is doing... it makes the Larry Lovers look tame in comparaison to how angry the Bruce crowd is.
To me it's just the last 10 years or so, this is how it goes. If you like anything close to popular, it's going to suck.
I mean did Taylor Swift ever resolve those issues?
The key is to find the next Bruce Springsteen...
Easy right????
The Hold Steady became a semi-retired “residency weekends for the working dads” band, Gaslight Anthem only just got back together and Sam Fender isn’t playing long enough shows yet…
cobl04
45:33
thanks for posting. they lay out the problems well - doing a good job at explaining how complex the problem actually is (and how nothing can be done without breaking up the live nation monopoly) .
the argument over reselling is also very telling - and is a big reason why a simple fix, even without the breakup of LiveNation, is so difficult to achieve.
also...
i did not know this.
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Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Should change the article headline to 5 Ways to...
Artists already have the choice on dynamic pricing. Bruce fully admitted to Rolling Stone he told his managers "do what everyone else has been doing this time".
Dynamic pricing doesn't happen without artist approval. Of course, just about everybody is doing it now, with former fan friendly stalwarts Springsteen and Pearl Jam giving in to the practice last year. But as I mentioned when we were having this discussion last year, there's still some holdouts like Garth Brooks who toured stadiums last summer and every ticket was a face value of something like $85.00 and fees were all capped at like 7 bucks and change. There were no Platinum's, no VIP meet and greets, no dynamic pricing and no huge blocks of resale tix that were obviously just Ticketmaster/Livenation selling them themselves above face.
If more major artists took that approach, there'd be less hue and cry, though that doesn't solve all issues obviously.
well - i think it's important to differentiate between Platinum (like Pearl Jam did) and straight dynamic pricing (like Springsteen did).
One covers a select number of tickets, one covers all the tickets.
One covers a select number of tickets, one covers all the tickets.
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Either way, neither happens without artist approval.
cobl04
45:33
We've got a ticket resale website here that is really, really good, so good in fact that it's become the standard, and is leading to more people buying/selling than I've ever known. It's called Tixel, and you can trust it completely because of the failsafes it has in place to ensure that you're buying a legitimate ticket. It also caps resale prices to 10% above face value, so if you do feel like making a little bit of cash for a super popular event you can, but you're never going to be ripped off. Before its existence when I was looking to buy tickets to an event that was sold out I'd have to scour Facebook event pages and ran into so many scammers, but I've never had an issue with Tixel. You can often snag a deal too, people sell right up to the show, I could have got a $200 seat to Bon Iver for $85 the other night.
Yeah, right? Some are just better than others, and it's really disappointing Springsteen, Pearl Jam etc went that way. Good on Garth Brooks, that's awesome.
I also took issue with the comments made in point six about consumers just not going to concerts until they get rid of dynamic pricing. Very easy thing to say. There are few instances I can think of where consumer protest like that changed something for the better. Firstly, it would take the vast, vast majority of concert-goers doing that to have any impact, which will just never happen. And secondly, why do consumers have to cop the blame for corporate greed? I’m not as knowledgable as Headache, but for me, LN/TM should just fucking get rid of it. We existed for years without it, and if artists are able to say no to it, then there’s no argument for it being necessary, it’s just corporate greed.
We have a few platforms that sound similar to Midwest, like Eventbrite, Humanitix, Oztix and Moshtix, and they’re all fucking fantastic, very low fees and no greedy pricing models. Sadly they’re only used for smaller venues, as soon as you want to see a show that’s in a large theatre or small arena and above, it’s Ticketmaster or Ticketek.
Yeah, right? Some are just better than others, and it's really disappointing Springsteen, Pearl Jam etc went that way. Good on Garth Brooks, that's awesome.
I also took issue with the comments made in point six about consumers just not going to concerts until they get rid of dynamic pricing. Very easy thing to say. There are few instances I can think of where consumer protest like that changed something for the better. Firstly, it would take the vast, vast majority of concert-goers doing that to have any impact, which will just never happen. And secondly, why do consumers have to cop the blame for corporate greed? I’m not as knowledgable as Headache, but for me, LN/TM should just fucking get rid of it. We existed for years without it, and if artists are able to say no to it, then there’s no argument for it being necessary, it’s just corporate greed.
We have a few platforms that sound similar to Midwest, like Eventbrite, Humanitix, Oztix and Moshtix, and they’re all fucking fantastic, very low fees and no greedy pricing models. Sadly they’re only used for smaller venues, as soon as you want to see a show that’s in a large theatre or small arena and above, it’s Ticketmaster or Ticketek.
These are two entirely different situations. Bruce took the money he believed the secondary market was going to get anyway. PJ permitted Platinum Tix *in exchange for* a larger fanclub allotment. No one’s complaining about the latter.
cobl04
45:33
Oh ok I see. Is platinum dynamic pricing? Or is it just a higher set price range?
The latter, though I have seen platinum tix DROP in price and even get thrown back into the “standard admission” tier when they aren’t moving.
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Plenty of complaining about it last year on the PJ message board.
Also PJ were stupid in allowing those tix to be labeled as "PJ Premium" instead of "platinum". Made the band look greedier than other bands come across with the platinum label.
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Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
When Platinum was first introduced (quite a few years ago and before dynamic pricing), it was what it sounds like it should be, a small allotment of the very best seats were priced higher. Now you will find seats in balconies and all over arenas and stadiums listed as platinum. It's now just a way to disguise price gouging. I've seen some shows in smaller venues (the new MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston specifically) where almost every ticket is listed as platinum. It's gotten way out of hand.
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Inaccurate on my part, I meant the general public not the hardcore wackadoo fanbase who posts on band forums.
:raises hand: Platinum is part of the typical arena/stadium landscape and doesn’t really raise an eyebrow anymore. Agree they could’ve just called it platinum but they DID explain exactly what it was in the email before the presales:
“PJ PREMIUM TICKETS
In order to maintain low ticket prices and fan club accessibility, we will be
releasing a limited number of premium tickets to the public at market rate price at a later date.”
I’d be incredibly surprised, albeit rather pleasantly, if we had this level of transparency from U2 ahead of the onsales. It’s a low lift thing to do, so perhaps Bono’s not a fan. My spark of hope comes from how they used TM for ticket requests to the additional Bono Beacon dates, which was very similar to the PJ system of listing your priority of shows/seating areas. It’d be perfect for this.
it's not always quite that simple.
pearl jam, for example, agreed to the select platinum seats in order to keep their allotment of ten club seats, and keep the seats as some of the best tickets in the house.
when there's no competition, it's hard to negotiate without giving up something.
garth brooks does not have a 30+ year old fan club that expects good tickets to worry about, so he has a stronger footing in negotiations.
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
Another note on that. Fan club tickets (reserved seats not GA) definitely took a step back in quality in 2022 for the Ten Club as part of this arrangement. People with very low numbers got some mediocre seats and the "PJ Premium" were better in most cases. The band's statement about that not being the case proved erroneous in practice.
I don’t have a super low number and got seats on par or better than I’ve received before… at MSG. YMMV.
Hewson
Blue Crack Supplier
MSG was a make up show from 2020, 10 club seats had been allotted already. The new dates were where the fan club got shafted location wise.
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