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Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

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Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#51
We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour.

Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble.

Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmaster for his tickets, for what he wanted to do. Over the course of a few weeks, working for his incredibly talented and creative webmaster Sam Jennings, we built and hosted a system that could handle the flash traffic and sell the correct number of NPGMusicClub tickets for these small venues in the milliseconds the event started.

Musicology Live 2004ever went on to do $87.4 million from 77 shows in 52 cities across the United States, selling more than 1.4 million tickets.

It didn't occur to us we should make a business out of having been able to do that. But being 6 feet from his guitar playing in Webster Hall NYC is quite the memory, so no regrets.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#53

We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble. Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmas…

Nice story. Prince really did things his own way, sad we lost him

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#56
post #20

The question should really be why the FTC tolerates this, letting them after all this time enjoy the blatantly monopolistic anti-consumer stance they've enjoyed since the 80's (at least). It isn't difficult to see how nasty of a business this is by how hated they are by artists and consumers alike, and if nothing else they should be broken up the same way Ma Bell as a telecom monopoly. At least it might come with som…

Truly. Of all of the various big companies that are being accused of monopoly, I can't think of a clearer, more supportable case (one where the monopoly position is obviously being abused) than Ticketmaster. And yet, the feds don't seem to mind.

In a world free from the corruption of billionaires and corporations outright buying influence in DC, https://economicliberties.us , a nonpartisan, nonprofit think-tank and lobbies for improving and enforcing antitrust regulations would be the best place to take this.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#57

We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble. Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmas…

There ought to be (separately):

- A talent-owned, co-op live music ticket and venue platform

- A talent-owned, co-op music streaming service on all the devices (Spotify as the benchmark, Tidal is better quality but less convenient)

- A talent-owned, co-op label

Pick any or all 3. The only way to get money back to the creators is for them to own it because the megacorps never will give more than pennies without a fight. The major are only have the perception of a lock on distribution by the inertia of popularity that celebrity influencers can readily overcome.

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#58

Ticketmaster has exclusive deals with artists and venues. Artists not signing deals with Ticketmaster lose access to venues, and venues not signing exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster lose access to artists. There are enough of these on both sides that neither wants to lose the other so they sign. Side note: I worked at a small ticketing software shop circa the Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger. The CEO got a call from…

^ This. ~15 years ago, I was working with venues to see how we could handle ticketing, etc. They ALL had exclusive deals where the venue could ONLY sell online through TicketMaster and then TM would handle ~100% of the back office reporting, tracking, etc and even the onsite credit card processing for walk up sales. It was one end to end system/suite and to replace any of it, you had to replace ALL of it once the con…

If this were the 1920s, antitrust enforcement would come down with an iron fist. The consolidation and control of the market is insane. I hope we can see some government movement about this at some point..

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#59

We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble. Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmas…

Erm except AEG promoted that whole tour (and the too few beyond it – RIP Prince) and is a replica of, and/or, the only direct competitor of Live Nation.

That's a weird example to pick out, as if Prince was 'fighting the system', and yet I'm sure you know he exclusively signed & got paid up-front from the 2nd positioned monopoly in the game.

Cool story that you got to sit side stage and wrote code behind his fan club ticketing (which I'm sure you and AMEX shared for Edit: Google says fans also know. https://prince.org/msg/7/247733

Re: Ask HN: Why has no one replaced Ticketmaster?

#60

Ticketmaster is a company which is so hated, people ascribe their success to malice and illegal activity rather than any compelling economic arguments. It's unfortunate because their business model is, imo, quite interesting. The first thing to point out is that the question itself is flawed. Ticketmaster has a number of competitors (StubHub, Eventbrite, AXS, Seatgeek). Nevertheless, artists do seem to always gravita…

> Ticketmaster has a number of competitors (StubHub, Eventbrite, AXS, Seatgeek).

Those are reseller platforms (StubHub, Seatgeek) and independent entities (Eventbrite & AXS) that aren't associated with the venues/rooms they're playing in.

So your examples either:

1) Resell tickets from Ticketmaster + the list you mentioned + all other providers, or

2) They don't have the ability to flex on people because they don't own & operate the rooms across the entire planet, and in turn can't hit them with exclusivity clauses in their contracts the second they step foot into one of XXXXX rooms they'd like to play.

> Nevertheless, artists do seem to always gravitate to companies like Ticketmaster, even when neither they nor their venue have any affiliation.

Are you sure those non-affiliated venues don't have 10+ year exclusive ticketing contract that came with a fat lump sum when the ink dried in order to modernize & sustain their business?

I'd also question which rooms are slanging TM tickets without being owned by the overarching entity? I don't think I've ever seen that and I'd appreciate you presenting some examples of this.

> What we should ask is what problems a naive artist would face selling their tickets like any other commodity:

So anyone outside the TM system is naive? Wow... 0k... proceed...

> - They overprice it: No one shows up, people are angry at the artist, the artist is in debt to the venue for overbooking.

Please explain to me how the artist is in debt to the venue? There isn't a promoter in between the two? The artist is signing loan agreements and going into debt to the venue? Tell me you have zero clue what you're talking about without telling me you don't know a single thing about this industry...

> - They underprice it: The tickets are hoovered up by scalpers who capture most of the ticket's true value, fans are disappointed they can't attend because finding a ticket is much harder.

Again, no idea what you're talking about.

1) TM is GASSED UP when scalpers hoover up. They have multiple reselling platforms for exactly this scenario, including one that's TM branded. They _love_ this.

2) In reality, the promoter/venue is totally fine with this. They build offers against the proposed ticket price & sellable capacity, and a sell out is a sell out. Sure, hindsight is 20/20 and they'll reference historicals and adjust accordingly when the agent hits them up for the next play, but nobody is mad at a sell out.

> and package the event wholesale for the venue and artist. Both parties are can be guaranteed of some portion of the event before tickets even go on sale and the risk for them both is diminished.

They own & operate the venues. The artists are paid cash up front to sign the exclusive tour contract. They're not working for _anyone_ other than Ticketmaster... you're tripping my guy...

> Obviously I'm not trying to say Ticketmaster is all sunshine and lollipops

Ayyyyy no worries anyone with any exposure to this industry and half of a brain has already determined you have no idea what you're talking about, you're wrong & confused & way out of pocket, and we already know TM isn't sunshine & lollipops... back into your text editor you go (please)...

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