Ask Lemmy

I can answer that.....for money.

If Pearl Jam couldn’t fix it in the 90s and Taylor swift couldn’t fix it in the 2020s that tells you just how much money is behind them.

We were warned in the 90's.

There are currently lawsuits against them, but it takes time. This is from NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson's newsletter earlier this year:

"The People vs. Ticketmaster/Live Nation

I’m forcing myself to only pick one case to go into detail about - but it’s a great one.

Let’s say you want to make a bunch of money by supplying live entertainment, primarily the music industry.

Well, the three big pieces in that business are:

The venue

The right to promote the event

The right to sell the tickets

Now imagine you control each of those. You own venues, and you promote the events, and you sell the tickets.

Congratulations - you’re a monopoly.

You’ve achieved vertical integration within your business, which means the sum of those parts has unlocked the ability to gouge customers with the confidence that they won’t be able to find a competitor to offer them a better deal. And using your monopoly to further entrench your power to charge customers higher prices is against the law.

This is exactly what I, along with a bipartisan group of AGs, allege that Ticketmaster/Live Nation has done.

They've turned concert ticket fees into something fans call the “Ticketmaster Tax.” These are the “convenience fees,” “processing fees,” and “handling fees” that add up quickly, inflating ticket prices by huge margins.

Why can they get away with it? Because they've locked venues into exclusive contracts, squeezing out any chance of competition.

But it gets worse. If venues try to resist and explore other options, Live Nation retaliates by threatening to strip venues of popular acts. The internal emails from Live Nation executives detailed in our lawsuit are explicit and awful.

Which means, if you’re an independent venue that doesn't use Ticketmaster, good luck booking artists. Ticketmaster controls ticket sales and Live Nation controls promotion, so artists who are promoted by Live Nation typically won't be allowed to perform at venues that refuse to use Ticketmaster for ticketing.

This is textbook unlawful monopoly behavior. Consumers are paying higher prices and artists and venues are suffering from reduced competition and income.

The good news is that Live Nation just tried - but failed - to get our lawsuit dismissed. That’s a big step toward accountability, including our ultimate request that Live Nation be required to divest Ticketmaster, which it acquired in 2011 and which became the linchpin for much of their monopolistic behavior."

And congratulations, the current US administration now considers you a terrorist. Complaining about being abused and exploited is anti-capitalist.

Something happened in the last 20 years where billionaires were able to buy the government and monopolies are now no longer illegal or controlled.

I have a rare one, i've NEVER purchased a ticket through ticketmaster, so i'm glad they never got my money. Too much free/cheap live music local to me anyway.

Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives

Ticketmaster is a perfect example of how much politicians are full of shit, all of them.

You know those Congressional Dog & Pony Shows, where they drag out the CEOs of some industry, holler at them all day, and then go back to their office and do absolutely nothing about what they just hollered about?

They did that with Ticketmaster in 1994, again in 2009, and again in 2023. Every 15 years or so, they get outraged in public, and do nothing. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Ticketmaster making enormous campaign contributions to everyone in office.

Got to smaller shows at local clubs

Basically, through mergers and acquisitions they're dominating the venue market. It used to be that there were many actors, but now everything is everything under the Ticketmaster umbrella.

It's convenient for artists, as they only have one point if contact needed per location in terms of booking, ticket sales, merch, and everything else around the concert/event.

It's convenient for venues, as Ticketmaster brings in business. However, it's a double edged sword: Do something Ticketmaster doesn't approve of, such as use a competitor, and you're not getting the big headliners.

It's awful for the rest of us, as we then have to deal with a monopoly pushing up the prices.

I am cautiously optimistic about the long term outlook, though: The Ticketmaster hate is widespread to the point where some artists refuse to work with them, as they feel their fans are getting robbed with the band getting the blame. And they are the ones with the leverage to turn things around - artists with integrity will put their fans first, and that is what will hopefully bring long term change for the better.

Unregulated capitalism. Specifically, unenforced monopoly laws, which the U.S. has been terrible at.

I simply won't go. I won't stream their live shows either, because charging for that is also very lame.

There is still plenty of live music to be had, by decent performers at a local scale. Although even then, lots of small venues use AXS to sell tickets which is the second largest global ticket company so it is not much better.

It is harder and harder to find $10 at the door in cash, but they are out there.

1. A competent government would see Ticketmaster and LiveNation as the effective trust/monopoly that they are, and break them up into multiple smaller, competing companies.
2. To his credit, Biden passed executive action to ban bullshit "junk fees" that get tacked on to ticket prices (among other things). I'm honestly not sure what became of that rule once Trump got into power, but it is absolutely a rule that we need.
3. We need like 50x more scrutiny on corporate mergers and collusion of corporate entities to jack up prices.

It's a symbiotic relationship. Ticketmaster takes the heat for adding cost, the venues get some kickback and don't have to have an expense on their books. Everyone is complicit.

Here's why you're getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they've amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about "fighting for the user." Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

You can take care to avoid enshittification, you can even make a fetish out of it, but without addressing these systemic failings, your individual actions will only get you so far. Sure, use privacy-enhancing tools like Signal to communicate with other people, but if the only way to get your kid to their little league game is to join the carpool group on Facebook, you're going to hemorrhage data about everything you do to Meta.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems

Consumers could fix it by boycotting them until they cease to exist, meanwhile buy merch from the artists you like.

But this requires people to temporarily sacrifice their desires and experience some FOMO, so it's unlikely to ever happen.

Deregulation and regulatory capture

They are extremely litigious. I work in software security and they are notorious for basically having an ocean of lawyers.

Was my dream to catch Rush on this tour. 1000 cad per ticket. I can go to a European metal festival for the same price and see 120 bands.

Blame the artists too. Neil young capped tickets this year's tour at 120 with no ability to resell.

There are laws and they’re probably in violation of them, but if you expect Trump’s DOJ to go after monopolies, you’ll die waiting.

Because politicians stopped working for us since a long time ago