Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

The record store I worked at in college (this was the 1989-ish timeframe) had a TicketMaster machine. This was a CRT computer terminal, modem, leased-line, and a custom ticket printer. The surcharge was $2 per ticket, and presumably TicketMaster was making a profit on that, even after paying our cut.

These days, they have fees that can easily exceed $20 per ticket, and they don't have any of that custom hardware or phone line overhead anymore (I think they even charge you to print your own ticket) - how do they justify that except via monopoly power?

View on HN

Ticketmaster doesn't get 100% of the fee. One of the services that Ticketmaster offers is to charge a large fee, which is then split between everybody (i.e. the artist, the promoter, the venue). They act as the bad guy so that the event can be more appropriately priced while providing the artist with plausible deniability.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

Okay, so let's just slash prices in half and give all the money to the artists ;)

EDIT to add: I'm being glib, but only a little - I think the artists, compared with venues and promoters, ought to hold much more power than they currently do. Of course venues should get paid - but are fees the best way?

Well, the venue has to pay its bills too.

Doesn't the venue also make a small fortune selling overpriced drinks/snacks?

Depends on the target audience age and proclivity for buying concessions / alcohol.

(Also, LiveNation owns the House of Blues locations and often takes a cut of merchandise sales in their venues)

The artists themselves would have to be on-board with that, and they're not.

Like it or not, many artists believe they need TicketMaster to promote their shows. I think they're wrong, but there needs to be a large culture change for TM to actually get the quick death it deserves.

Part of the reason why it's so expensive is because the artists are getting a percentage of profits on top of a fixed fee per performance. They're absorbing a much lower amount of risk than the promoters are.

Add to that the cultural aspect that artists have a stake in making tickets look artificially inexpensive -- no one wants to see Bruce Springsteen "take advantage" of his fans, but if TM does it, then they take the blow even if a cut goes back to the artist/promoter.

A big problem with that is the history of the musical acts themselves. People have come to expect massive productions with fireworks and laser lights and literally tons of equipment and the people to set it up and everything to go off without a hitch... and not only that, it has to be priced so everyone who has ever listened to that artist's music can afford to go. Like you mentioned, the price of a ticket isn't anywhere near the cost of the production, so they tack on fees to make the ticket price look more reasonable (until you've already committed to buying it). Same thing cut-rate airlines do. It's not cheaper, it just looks like it is. They have to lie to you in order to get you to buy it.

I know music is a personal choice and I can't decide for anyone else, but over the years I've come to prefer smaller venues or more local acts because every big artist in a big venue is a big production and it stresses me out just thinking about it. The bands playing at my local brewery are just as good and I can get a front-row seat for the price of the beer I'm drinking. I actually saw a big-name star do a pop-up show at a local pub and there were only about 100 people there and it was just such a real experience. It's hard to justify the price for bigger venues.

I've sworn off big arena shows as well, basically anything with capacity for more than 500 people.

I find smaller shows to be much more enjoyable, especially from the perspective of a fan, who actually wants to hear the music and have a reasonable chance of actually seeing the artists.

I run a local blog in my small town, and we have a C-list Nashville singer that grew up here. Occasionally they come back to town to do smaller shows at the local brewery. Of course I talked about this on my blog and mentioned them on my Insta/Twitter/Facebook, and during an intermission in the show the singer came and sat down next to me and said "hey you're the guy from [blog name] right?" and we had an actual conversation about what they miss about living in this small town compared to Nashville.

You'd be hard pressed to have that experience at a Taylor Swift concert. And this was a no-cover-charge show.

Unless you are these lucky folks http://variety.com/2018/music/news/taylor-swift-gives-surpri...

I still think one of the best concerts I ever saw was STP / Megadeath at the old Fargo Civic Center in the 90’s. Small venue with great sound.

The sound in big arenas is horrible also unless you're in front of the stage. I saw Red Hot Chilli Peppers on their last tour and sat in the upper level. It was just a loud fuzzy noise. You could barely recognize what songs they were playing, and the vocals were totally illegible.

I only come expecting wine and loud music, I think I've only been to one concert with lasers and it was mostly run by the college I go to.

250 dollar ticket to a UFC fight had 60 fees on Ticketmaster. got it for $3 at thr venue. Ticketmaster is ripping consumers off but the event organizers including artists are on it too, just hiding behind Ticketmaster

> These days, they have fees that can easily exceed $20 per ticket

As an anecdote, I attempted to find the most expensive ticket for an extremely popular concert near my city later this year. Ticketmaster required me to create an account (or log in) before showing me the final price (which includes service fees).

The two tickets were $2,556 each, and the service fees were an additional $383.40, each! I also looked at purchasing the cheapest ticket, for $61. The $9.15 service fee works out to exactly 15% of the price of the ticket.

Wow, that's something! What show is it?

I picked a Taylor Swift concert tour show.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com