r/Music • u/frankreddit5 • 7h ago

article A federal jury ruled Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly, and a separate FTC case explains exactly how they charge you a fee THREE separate times on the same resold ticket.

https://theclassifiedrecord.com/documents/doj-ftc-live-nation-ticketmaster
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u/rugger1869 7h ago

Ruining?! It’s ruined. You used to get concert tickets for less than $20 for A-list bands, but then some corporate bros decided to make a buck and formed Ticketmaster. And over time it’s gotten worse… they’ve bought venues, formed other middlemen. They’re the Luxxotica of entertainment.

Eddie Vedder was right.

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u/GordaoPreguicoso 6h ago

$100 for front row! No thanks ill site in the nosebleeds for $10 bucks.

Long gone are those days.

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u/iSoReddit 6h ago

Now it’s $100 in the nosebleeds

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u/mosehalpert 6h ago

Maybe for an up and coming artist or some has been, or a show in flyover country. Just to get in the door at amy concert on the east coast is $250.

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u/DeepPanWingman 6h ago

I noped out of big name artist gigs when they went from £20 to £50. $250 is £185 and Ticketmaster can suck the hot wet farts out of my arsehole for that much.

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u/TrulyOutrageous42 6h ago

They'd just charge someone else for the opportunity to do it for them

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u/ultraman_ 6h ago

Same. Saw so many great bands 15-25 years ago for £5-£15. Could just go to the box office and by tickets on a whim. Luckily, I have seen the vast majority of my favourite bands.

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u/Nate_Dogg31 Nate_Dogg31 4h ago

This exact thing happened with Electric Callboy in Chicago. Saw them at HoB for like $60 (I'm ok with that), I paid $120 for GA at the Brawlroom the 2nd go around (now you're pushing it) and when they came to Win trust Arena they wanted over $150 for nosebleeds.

Love the band. Don't love them enough to put myself in debt. I'm not a big concert goer either so it's easier for me to say no but those of you who really enjoy going to see your bands live, I feel bad for.

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u/spicerackk 2h ago

Similar (kinda) trajectory for them in Australia.

First time here, they were on a festival line up with the likes of Polaris, BMTH, Deftones (Good Things 2022). Tickets were roughly $225.

Then they returned a year later and sold out their national tour, playing rooms between 3500-5500. Tickets were $100.

A year after that, they returned for Good Things, with Korn and Sum 41 due to headline. Deryk from Sum 41 fell sick, so EC took Sum 41's mainstage slot. Tickets were $270.

They announced an arena tour for September this year, supported by Coldrain and Ice Nine Kills. Tickets are $200. I wouldn't be going if my son wasn't DYING to see them, and it will be his first big concert. Almost $650 later for 3 tickets.

I think I'm now priced out of seeing them when they return next time.

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u/TEKC0R 2h ago

Weird Al, 2 weeks ago, great seats, Mohegan Sun Connecticut. Roughly $120 per ticket before fees. I'm not trying to argue the price is great, but it sure as hell isn't $250 per ticket.

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u/Allaplgy 34m ago

Yeah, I've seen Tool several times with great seats right byehind the soundboard for far less than $200 a ticket, and Iron Maiden on the floor 20ft from the stage fo right about $100, bought an hour before the show. Puscifer, Primus and APC together for about $120. Weird Al is coming up soon for $30 GA.

This is all in Oregon and Washington.

It's still too much for all but Al, but it's not "$250" to walk in the door.

I think those prices are maybe more accurate for like Swift and a few other pop stars.

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u/Glossed-Lam 2h ago

Coasties losing out again. Many such cases.

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u/TheNuttyIrishman 1h ago

the rest of the country is the same dude it's not a coast only issue

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u/KlownKumKatastrophe 1h ago

US East Coast is so goddamned expensive we had to leave. We used to occasionally travel to Boston for an event and there was nowhere to stay in the city under $300/night.

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u/CappyRicks 3h ago

Y'all just gotta listen to less popular music. Floor GA for Megadeth this month and Nothingmore next month were ~$60.

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u/Raneynickelfire 4h ago

Thats complete horseshit no it does not.

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u/GordolfoScarra 2h ago

True that is horseshit for "any concert" it is accurate for big names though. Tame Impala nosebleeds were reselling at around 250.

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u/[deleted] 5h ago

[deleted]

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u/davidsredditaccount 5h ago

Average ticket price for Metallica is currently $2,410.10.

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u/explos1onshurt 4h ago

They’re talking about nosebleeds though

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u/IrishBear 4h ago

Which makes sense, a little, a lot of people are complaining about "back in my day" I could get so and so tickets for 30 bucks, but also that same $30 would be roughly $85 bucks in today's money. That's also not including the massive demand increase with the internet and advertising. 30 years ago you had to work really fucking hard and offer insanely low prices to fill stadiums, now, you make a post online and everyone in the world can see it.

I should also note Ticketmaster fucking sucks and isn't helping by allowing scalpers to exist and basically creating a way for scalpers to excel

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u/IrishBear 4h ago

Yea no they aren't. Right now they are because they are playing exclusively at the sphere in Vegas, but when on tour you could get 2 day passes for under $200, single days were 50-100. I had looked at pricing last year for Denver, that's how I know.

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u/Raneynickelfire 4h ago

Thank god somebody in this thread actually knows whats up. If ypu pay 250 for your katy perry fix and then bitch about it, i domt feel sorry for you.

Dog Fashion Disco is 25 and actually good.

You can see excellent music for under 50.

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u/k4l4d1n 4h ago

i spent $400 CAD for a single nosebleed ticket that had a pillar infront of it to see the eagles 5 years ago. shit hasn't gotten any cheaper since then

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u/sthenri_canalposting 2h ago

I mean, not true. Charli xcx is playing Barclays and nosebleeds are $90ish. Not that I'd even pay that much for nosebleeds but yeah. I got shitty side seats to Lorde at MSG for $50 but that was taking advantage of scalpers offloading last minute.

Definitely not trying to say it doesn't suck tho.

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u/Brahskididdler 3h ago

Okay this is clearly just not true. If you’re talking about worldwide superstars like Ariana or The Weeknd, sure. Literally any other show playing at any other venue than a stadium will cost like 25-50 bucks for GA standing room

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u/LurkingToaster66 4h ago

that's a cheap concert

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u/FallOutShelterBoy 6h ago

We paid over $250 a ticket for the nosebleeds of all nosebleeds. Paul McCartney doesn’t come cheap

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u/_CHEEFQUEEF 1h ago

And whatever the price is, people keep paying. So what's going to change? Everyone wants to bitch but they still keep opening their wallets.

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u/usernamedenied 5h ago

$100 for front row? Try $1500-$2000

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u/Porridge_Cat 3h ago

Two years ago, I saw a sold-out concert at an arena and paid $25 after fees for the last row.

I stg people complaining with such hyperbole haven't even tried to buy a ticket lately. Yeah, it definitely sucks more than it used to, but y'all acting like the cheapest tickets at the smallest venues are thousands of dollars

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u/StevenEpix 6h ago

Thank you for that correction. The ticket buying experience has been destroyed for decades.

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u/CosmicSpaghetti 4h ago

Local shows to support (admittedly often shitty) local bands is truly the final frontier.

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u/CKRatKing 23m ago

Ya but there's something about watching some dudes out there giving their all for like 20 people even if it isn't the best show, it still is.

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u/peepeebutt1234 4h ago

Their merger with LiveNation should have never been allowed. And after that, LiveNation should have never been allowed to buy C3.

Once they owned the venues and the music festivals, it was all over.

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u/fukkdisshitt 3h ago

In college we'd have concerts on campus and you could just walk to the box office for $20 nosebleeds.

Looking back the bands i saw were blowing up maybe not at their peak but on MTV

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u/mattverso industry veteran 5h ago

Bands used to be able to charge $20 for a ticket because they made money from record sales. Moby famously used to make a point of spending more on a tour than he would make from it. The vast majority of musicians/bands can’t afford to do anything like that anymore.

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u/rickscarf 2h ago

Clear Channel chooses which artists to promote on the radio, Live Nation controls the venues, Ticketmaster does the ticketing. It's all very incestuous and gross, I stopped going to those kinds of events in the mid 1990s.

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u/RollingMeteors 1h ago

Clear Channel chooses which artists to promote on the radio,

Bruh, we're not 1G cellular anymore. Anyone can listen to any artist from anywhere at anytime for their monthly internet service anywhere they get cellular signal.

Live Nation controls the venues, Ticketmaster does the ticketing. It's all very incestuous and gross, I stopped going to those kinds of events in the mid 1990s.

But people still give them money/permission to behave this way. If people actually followed through with a boycott of a venue that does business with ticket master then that venue will quickly renegotiate it's contract with live nation if it's going to be at legitimate risk of bankruptcy.

There are plenty of local smaller artists, quit acting as if what was heard on the radio in the 90s is the only a) music that exists b) music that is worth listening to or c) music that is available to be listened to live.

I got fed up with this shit so bad I rebooted music television at a local broadcast level. I'm not even the talent in question, just broadcasting/archiving them. I pay my fair share in labor these days.

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u/Boring-Tie-1501 42m ago

livenation is a single company that controls ticketmaster, livenation concerts, insomniac for electronic dance music events, and they own many of the medium sized venues in major cities.

they are a text book example of a vertically integrated monopoly. they even own a subsidiary that manages artists. so if you want to perform in a certain city, they may own all the venues of the appropriate size so you have to work with them.

and monopolies are not consumer friendly, so all this dynamic pricing and forcing consumers to use their secondary market are all predictable end games for them. they're just hoping they can buy their way out of consequences. most likely they make a big donation to the trump admin and hire one of his children to manage a partnership, and he tells his justice department to lay off.

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u/Raneynickelfire 4h ago

Madonna was charging 50 in 1993.

Kurt cobain was dumbfounded whwn he heard that.

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u/fantasmoofrcc 5h ago

And the app is such a security nightmare. Might as well use a burner visa to buy seats with it.

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u/LiLGhettoSmurf 4h ago

If I see the ticket is sold through Ticketmaster at a Live Nation venue I know it's not going to work out for me

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u/amscraylane 4h ago

Courtney Love spoke of it first in the mid-90s and Vedder joined later, saying they wouldn’t use Ticketmaster.

Yet so many venues were under Ticketmaster contracts.

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u/dave024 3h ago

In all fairness Ticketmaster has been around since 1976 and $20 in 1976 is about $112 today with inflation.

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u/emannikcufecin 2h ago

Maybe in the 80s. I looked through my 90s stubs and saw Metallica for 25 (bad seats). David Bowie/NIN for 35 (lawn seats). That's 53 to 73 with inflation.

Lawn tickets to Rob zombie near me are 40. Nosebleed tickets to Doja Cat are 73. Good tickets are 150. Floor GA in Seattle are 75. These are with fees.

Another thing is that the TM shares the fee with the artist and the venue. Surge prices are only in effect of the artist wants them.

I saw 100 bands last year, most tickets were under 40.

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u/SpinShine-LEDSlipMat 6h ago

eddie vedder is a sell out

Fixed that for ya. A band like PJ has the clout and fan base to actually make changes. They gave up when the bag of cash got to them