CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

You miss a big difference between cryptocurrency and PoW captchas: it's very hard to change hashing/PoW method in a blockchain (you need ack from 50% + 1 validators, and all the validators are by definition heavily invested into the current proofing method - they have natural reason to object), but it's very easy to change hashing in a PoW captcha. So here any cheating will start a whack-a-mole game, where the defenders have the upper hand (changing PoW method is cheap, using multiple PoW methods is cheap, investing into ASICs isn't).

If they really want to solve the problem, how about this - kind of like the ESTA for travel:

Individuals must register an account with government issued ID and the same level of KYC security as to open a bank account. This must be done a certain time in advance before the tickets for an event open.

You can only buy tickets for yourself or other already registered users whose username (or similar) you know - and only as long as you are buying a ticket for yourself too.

Some kind of exchange mechanism were a buyer can return a ticket to the pool and if someone else buys it, they get slightly less back than they paid in the first place, effectively allowing them to "resell" a ticket but at a slight loss (even if the platform takes a cut). Please don't use blockchain for this.

Maybe you can go full Chinese train tickets on this: you buy a ticket on an account backed by your government ID, and then your ID is what opens the platform gate for you. Your ID is your ticket.

The vast majority, hard to quantify, but I'd guess well over 99% of professional musicians (certainly outside the US) never play a ticketmaster venue. They're not operating at that scale. When they tour it's at smaller venues - there are orders of magnitude more small bars and dedicated venues not owned by ticket master.

> Artists want money as much as other people, specially the ones playing big venues.

This is exactly the kind of projection I'm referring to. What makes you believe that most humans want as much money as possible - to the exclusion of all other values? Again, difficult to quantify, but I'd suggest a majority of people would put pure wealth lower down on their priority list than health, family connection, social connection, travel, time to spend on interests etc. This goes double for people who've chosen professions rooted in their own creative expression. All else being equal we'll all choose wealth - but if the cost is exploitation, all else will not be equal for most people.

It seems clear that you're conflating the microscopic numbers of 'major label' artists playing to vast audiences - effectively as employees of 360 label / marketing companies like Live Nation with the supermajority of professional touring musicians.

I'm reminded of the chap I attended college with who sold a salacious story about one of our mutual friends to a tabloid. When we found out this was happening I had a another mutual friend approach him to intervene, but heard back that it was 'too much money to turn down'. Fifteen or so years later this guy is a multi-millionaire who just lost a civil suit (and is under criminal investigation) for fraud and sexual misconduct. Most people do not operate like this - empathy is dimensional.

I think of it in a different way:

> Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art.

It's worse. Creating seems to be an effective route to no income at all. Popular entertainment is a winners-take-all market; everyone who isn't one of the few popular artists or performers whose name alone brings in money, have to work hard to get anything at all from their work. The little I heard from various second-hand and third-hand reports from textbook authors, novelists, painters, musicians, etc. suggests that the royalties made from selling their output are laughably low. A big factor in that are the parties in between the artist and the buyers - publishers, labels. Those are some of the "faceless entities" you mention, and they're in a position of advantage over the artists, and they absolutely use it to capture all they can for themselves.

Because of that, to be able to dedicate yourself to your creativity, you have to either have a secondary stream of income (e.g. part-time artists with unrelated dayjob), give up most of control and autonomy (commission work, art-as-dayjob - think e.g. art for videogames), or seek any and all ways of indirectly monetizing your work further.

Focusing on that last part - for musicians, this is primarily live performances and merchandising (self-publishing is also easy today, but so is piracy). But per what I said above, most musicians are starved for money, and this - not greed - is forcing them to be less picky than they'd like. They can't afford to leave money on the table.

The paradox here is that most people - which includes the audience - think like you think, that artists are the opposite of corporate greed, that art is about humanity and not money, etc. Every artist knows that too, and that maintaining this reputation is critical to their income. Between two competing pressures, each artist has to find a point that's acceptable to them.

But this is where Ticketmaster comes in - they offer a way for artists to be more greedy without taking a reputational hit. Their Eternal War with Scalpers keeps the ticket prices up, while all the public outrage gets distributed between the Greedy Corporation and the Scalper Scoundrels.

Not all musicians engage in this on purpose, and for those who do, it's hard to prove. And of course it's just one slice through the complex relationship of artists, public, and countless commercial third parties in between them.

If you insist on only seeing Taylor Swift, this is what you get. There are way more talented artists than will ever play at these giant stadium shows. She isn't a better musician than all of those other artists, she is just more popular.