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It seems strange to me that on one hand, Taylor criticises TicketMaster's poor handling of her concert sales... but on the other hand, she might just be the onl

It seems strange to me that on one hand, Taylor criticises TicketMaster's poor handling of her concert sales... but on the other hand, she might just be the only person on the planet with the money and influence to fix this problem, yet she does nothing. Artists should en masse force ticket sellers to ban ticket resale -- refunds only. Kill the scalping market. Just like with GPUs, once the scalpers trying to get their greedy 10x disappear, the technical problem disappears as well. Maybe tech companies prefer to keep the scalpers around, since it drums up demand and makes people more willing to pay ticket seller fees "because it's not as bad as the scalpers"?

dont__panic 4y ago
This blog post claims that they're seeing only 10% the volume of postmarket sales they usually see, and Ticketmaster isn't running any resales for these tickets. Seems like this might be a genuinely difficult supply/demand issue, rather than a "Ticketmaster is evil" problem. That being said, scalpers disgust me. Anybody selling their tickets for a 500%+ markup on the aftermarket ought to lose their tickets and their money. I say this as a waitlister who genuinely wanted to attend one of the Eras concerts!
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  They solved that "problem." Now ticketmaster offers the best tickets in an auction starting at 500% markup and captures the excess profit. Say goodbye to ~$100 tickets in the front section.
latchkey 4y ago
Beyond not performing at all (and thus not making any money), there isn't much she can do. TM owns the whole supply chain. Venues, tickets, marketing, labels... every thing.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  I've seen it thrown around that one potential thing she could do is play stadium shows, since many (most?) stadiums aren't owned by TM. Not all stadiums work (or even work well) for this, though - but it's an interesting theory. (I unfortunately don't know enough to weigh in past repeating the theory, but maybe it drums up some interesting discussion here)
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Live Nation, TM's parent corporation, owns every thing. If they don't own the venue itself, then they likely own some portion of access to it. For example, you want to advertise the event? LN owns all the ads on the radio stations. Limiting her to just stadiums is pretty bad too.
themadturk 4y ago
We don't know she's doing nothing; perhaps she's just not talking about it? She certainly has a great deal of power here; there's nothing that says she has to be open about how she's using it.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Good point. She's proven an ability to take a stand when she deeply believes in something before, when she removed her albums from Spotify. Hopefully we see more in that vein in the ticket sales space. As other commenters here mentioned, this does seem to be an actual supply and demand issue, not just scalping, as I falsely claimed in my original post. Unfortunately a genuine supply and demand issue is a harder problem to solve, since it seems unlikely that Taylor will decide to host the 900 concerts Ticketmaster suggests would be required to satisfy demand.

dont__panic 4y ago

This blog post claims that they're seeing only 10% the volume of postmarket sales they usually see, and Ticketmaster isn't running any resales for these tickets. Seems like this might be a genuinely difficult supply/demand issue, rather than a "Ticketmaster is evil" problem. That being said, scalpers disgust me. Anybody selling their tickets for a 500%+ markup on the aftermarket ought to lose their tickets and their money. I say this as a waitlister who genuinely wanted to attend one of the Eras concerts!

mixmastamyk 4y ago
They solved that "problem." Now ticketmaster offers the best tickets in an auction starting at 500% markup and captures the excess profit. Say goodbye to ~$100 tickets in the front section.

latchkey 4y ago

Beyond not performing at all (and thus not making any money), there isn't much she can do. TM owns the whole supply chain. Venues, tickets, marketing, labels... every thing.

Klonoar 4y ago
I've seen it thrown around that one potential thing she could do is play stadium shows, since many (most?) stadiums aren't owned by TM. Not all stadiums work (or even work well) for this, though - but it's an interesting theory. (I unfortunately don't know enough to weigh in past repeating the theory, but maybe it drums up some interesting discussion here)
- latchkey 4y ago
  Live Nation, TM's parent corporation, owns every thing. If they don't own the venue itself, then they likely own some portion of access to it. For example, you want to advertise the event? LN owns all the ads on the radio stations. Limiting her to just stadiums is pretty bad too.

themadturk 4y ago

We don't know she's doing nothing; perhaps she's just not talking about it? She certainly has a great deal of power here; there's nothing that says she has to be open about how she's using it.

vanilla_nut 4y ago
Good point. She's proven an ability to take a stand when she deeply believes in something before, when she removed her albums from Spotify. Hopefully we see more in that vein in the ticket sales space. As other commenters here mentioned, this does seem to be an actual supply and demand issue, not just scalping, as I falsely claimed in my original post. Unfortunately a genuine supply and demand issue is a harder problem to solve, since it seems unlikely that Taylor will decide to host the 900 concerts Ticketmaster suggests would be required to satisfy demand.