Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation

1. I thought scalping was illegal? Maybe that has changed, or maybe there's a big loophole, but most of the big ticketing apps have essentially legalized scalping and they even have conventions for their "partners" (scalpers) where they entertain them and teach them how to buy and sell more tickets. Since the ticketing apps take massive fees on each ticket, more secondary sales benefits the ticketing company even more.

2. If scalping is still illegal, there needs to be a limit on the price hike for secondary sales. Clearly, someone who bought 50 tickets to a concert was not planning to use them all. This is a scalper. Since they could create many different accounts, it's hard to determine who is a scalper and who isn't. Either way, if you can't go to the concert and you want to resell them, then a max increase for your time to relist the tickets is fair for everyone.

3. There needs to be a limit on service fees. There's no reason why the service fee for selling an online ticket should be $50 PER TICKET. Sure, it's not always that high, but that's how high I've seen it in the past couple years. I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5 and it is profitable for the service provider. There's no reason the efforts to furnish a digital ticket should cost more than that. It's clearly a hidden fee that is there as an additional profit center.

4. Not only do the ticket primary ticketing companies own the primary sales, they also own the secondary sales. So, for example, they can take a $30 fee PER TICKET on the primary sales and then they also get that $50 PER TICKET fee on the secondary sale of each same ticket. Then if that ticket gets sold again, they can get another $50 PER TICKET. It's absolutely insane.

5. Most major venues have exclusive deals with the major ticketing companies. So, if a large band/artist wants to play at a large venue and they don't want to charge their fans huge fees or allow scalping, they have no choice -- that venue has signed a deal and the artist has to use the venue's ticketing partner.

6. Some tickets aren't sent until just days before the event. If I bought tickets today, and they're charging me a $50 digital ticket fee, those tickets should be available to me immediately. Again, I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5, there's no reason digital tickets should be withheld for months when a $50 fee was paid.

7. There's no transparency. Since it's so obscene, it's time for transparency. At a minimum, I should be able to see how many tickets for each event the person I'm buying the tickets from has sold in the past year.

I know there are more issues, these are just the ones off the top of my head.

I fundamentally disagree with your characterization of a consumer's options. Is your argument that I should have the fortitude and knowledge to opt out of coercive economic relationships? Why should I, as the consumer, bare the brunt of the responsibility for holding a corporation responsible for their misdeeds when they utilize their scale and volume to nullified my actions? Do I, as an individual, have any sway over corporate decision making when my fellow consumers do not have that fortitude or knowledge?

I do not agree that every scenario of corporate abuse should fall on the consumer to hold the corporation accountable because we are on unequal footing. This is regardless of the product being offered. These particular companies are taking advantage of shell games to keep customers in the dark on how they are being abused. I, as a simple consumer, withdrawing my dollars have no weight on the scale.

You really should read up on how Pearl Jam tried to fight Ticket Master in the 90s and lost popularity because they were effectively unable to host a show for years.

If Pearl Jam wasn't able to defeat Ticket Master, I find it laughable that you think individual consumers have any more weight in this matter.