Trent Reznor Explains Ticket Scalping
Live Nation, formally known as Clear Channel’s concert division, pretty much owns the music business. They’re also working on owning every aspect of every big artist’s live career (see deals with Madonna, U2, Jay-Z, etc.) and merging with the only other major concert ticket service, Ticketmaster. This means they will control the tours, the venues, the tickets, the merchandise, and the price that fans will pay for all of it; not to mention the re-seller sites, the promotion, the radio stations, etc. Essentially, you won’t be able to get near your favorite artist without getting past Live Nation. I’m just gonna stop myself because I could literally write a book about this stuff. No really, I have.
What was this post about? Oh yeah. Trent Rezner took to the NIN fan forum this weekend to try and explain the fishy ticket scalper business of late. He gets into why it seems that re-seller sites have tickets before they even go on sale, why the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger is bad, and why he has no choice but to be a part of it. Most interestingly, he warns to be suspect of artists who support the TM LV merger.
As we approach on-sale dates for the upcoming tour, I’ve noticed lots of you are curious / concerned / outraged at the plethora of tickets that somehow appear on all these reseller sites at inflated prices – even before the pre-sale dates. I’ll do my best to explain the situation as I see it, as well as clarify my organization’s stance in the matter.
NIN decides to tour this summer. We arrive at the conclusion outdoor amphitheaters are the right venue for this outing, for a variety of reasons we’ve throughly considered*. In the past, NIN would sell the shows in each market to local promoters, who then “buy” the show from us to sell to you. Live Nation happens to own all the amphitheaters and bought most of the local promoters – so if you want to play those venues, you’re being promoted by Live Nation. Live Nation has had an exclusive deal with TicketMaster that has just expired, so Live Nation launched their own ticketing service. Most of the dates on this tour are through Live Nation, some are through TicketMaster – this is determined by the promoter (Live Nation), not us.
Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this. So…
Posted: March 16th, 2009 under Random Poprok.
Tags: Live Nation, NIN, Nine Inch Nails, Ticketmaster, Trent Reznor
Comment from yoyoyo
Time March 17, 2009 at 4:05 am
i LOOOVe trent reznor!!!!!!