Ask HN: Why is it so hard to disrupt Ticketmaster?

I used to play in a Z-list bar band that booked gigs through an agency. The agency took a healthy cut off the top of our pay and that stung a bit when the time came to collect the money, but what really ground my gears was that playing any agency show at any agency bar was a three-way contract between the parties (band, agency, bar) with an agreement, renewed each show, that for the following 18 months the band and the bar agreed to only book shows through the agency. Sure, in theory you can wait it out while playing other bars, but does anyone? Nah.

If your band builds enough profile and sticks around long enough, you can always approach bars yourself that you have no history with, and we did actually do shows without the agency at a couple of places that we had never booked through them, it was fine, but involved a lot of hustle on the drummer's part as well. TANSTAAFL.

Now, I'm not actually comparing the above to Ticketmaster's shenanigans. For starters, there is a good argument for the role of the agency, in that every single gig we ever played, we got paid in full, on time, with zero hassle, and I boil that down to the implicit threat of losing access to the agency's bands. A similar dynamic guarantees to the venues that the bands they book will show up on time, play for the required amount of minutes, not be on bad drugs, etc.

Would I prefer that we had split up that extra two hun rather than hand it to those sharks? Sure, but I'm also a wimp and would not be able to do anything about it if some scumbag club owner told me, flanked by his bouncers, that it was a bad night and we can't get paid. It's far from perfect, but they're our sharks too.

But I bring up this very typical contract for a working band to say that it goes way way back through the centuries that the music business (not the industry - the business, as in the promoters, club owners, circus operators, Vaudeville stages, village Inns, etc) has spent literally centuries figuring out how to keep the talent from controlling anything. Opinions about this are fine, but it also means there's always been some reliable work for talented people who just want to provide a service for folks who want to do something involving music, rather than Be An Artist or whatever.

But Ticketmaster, and later the streaming platforms, really amped up that process of predatory contracts to levels previously unseen. I have always been a bit cynical when "artist" type musicians, people who exclusively play their own compositions I mean, complain about their lack of ability to make a living at that; I have a lot more concern about the ability of music teachers and wedding/event/bar bands to make a living with their craft, because they are the ones I consider to be "working" musicians, but even stipulating that, things have clearly turned into a free for all at this point.

We do actually need artists, as annoying as they can get.

Last couple times I went this year, it was a $5 fee at the box office, which was still considerably less than the $18 in fees online (for a $35 ticket). After I paid, they asked for my number and texted me a Ticketmaster link.

Eventbrite seems to be catching on for smaller events at venues that don't have deals with TicketMaster.

Also AEG/AXS owns or has deals with some 30 venues in the US (not to mention London's O2) and also owns some sports teams.

There are some ideas for how to disrupt Ticketmaster in Prince's Musicology Tour.

Granted, it was challenging to build and operate tech to sell exactly 300 tickets for a venue like Webster Hall at a scheduled time to all of greater New York City area and the half of USA fans willing to travel for such an intimate concert.

But it's possible. Pearl Jam did the same back in the day.

I worked at Ticketmaster as an Engineering Director for a few years. I'd be happy to share my perspective.

- Selling tickets is hard. I mean really hard. By coincidence, I just hit my 14 year mark at Google. I also spent 5 years at Yahoo! in the early 2000s. I'd like to think I've seen hard technical problems over my career. And again, ticketing is hard.

- There's not that much money it. Especially relative to the technical challenge.

- Most of the thoughts here are how to build a ticketing system that fans want. Ticketmater could already do that.

There's a few things about ticketing people don't realize:

(1) Ticketmaster doesn't own tickets. They don't see the prices. They don't set the fees. These are typically by the promoter or the artist.

(2) Ticketmaster doesn't keep much of the fees. Read LiveNation's financials. Last time I checked, I think Ticketmaster was keeping about $3 per ticket on average (i.e. revenues / tickets sold). Almost all the fees go to other parties in the value chain -- venues, promoters, artists.