From what I can see, absurdly inflated scalping prices is only an issue for a handful of bands out there: the bands whose fanbase has outstripped the capacity o

From what I can see, absurdly inflated scalping prices is only an issue for a handful of bands out there: the bands whose fanbase has outstripped the capacity of where they are booked at. This is only a small percentage of bands out there. Your chocolate comparison in other words only works if the weird guy bought up only the most popular brand. The generally crappy experience of Ticketmaster / Livenation and the high ticket prices of certain artists certainly have deterred me from supporting this "greed" very much. Instead, I've tended over the years to go for local scale up to medium-high sized concert events. I've rarely run into these sort of scalper issues as a result. Judging by the continued high prices of certain tickets, I'm atypical. But this isn't life or death type items like food or healthcare, where capitalism runs into morality issues. This is music. If you aren't happy about certain portions of the music industry, the best way to express that is to not support this side with your dollars -- not as an absolute rule perhaps, but definitely as a factor in your decision. Because I'm probably not the only one deterred by very high prices and the general crappy experience of Ticketmaster, I do believe that these things do indeed damage the brands of certain artists. If artists want to implement solutions to help those that can't afford market rates (like the many-times mentioned lotteries) to broaden appeal, that's fine. In fact, I'd suggest that would be a good idea: brands are often more important than chasing the short-term dollar. Creating fan clubs, and have ticket clubs allocated by lottery (perhaps adding a bonus of rewarding loyalty, such as increasing your lottery chances based on your membership length): that's probably good for your image, and thus your business. But IMHO this type of initiative has to be artist driven.