PreferredSeat.com Blog

As I look at the prices Coldplay are charging for the local show at Sleep Train Amphitheater and the price of the worst seat in the house, excluding the general admission lawn seating, are $124 with service charges and I can’t help but think back to Irving Azoff’s statement that Ticketmaster does not set the price of the ticket, and apparently not the service charge as well, the artist does.

Coldplay Jumping for $$

So it’s up to the fans to let the artist know if they will continue to accept such a steep price for concert tickets, especially when their own fans are in a severe recession and concert ticket prices are at an all time high.

Quit bitching at Ticketmaster, Live Nation and ticket brokers and start by letting your opinion known through the artist fan clubs, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and they will here it loud and clear. Maybe they can do away with one less mansion or a little less bling this year.

This generation of concert can organize more quickly and effectively than any before them with all the available methods of communication so I believe it’s time to exorcise that right and do something before only the rich can actually see the artist, without looking at them on a large video screen.

Several music promoters are coming out against the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger and speaking out at the Subcommittee on Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.

Jerry Mickelson of Jam Productions testified that although Live Nation does promote far fewer concerts in Chicago than Jam Productions, Live Nation owns the amphitheaters and arenas and they decide who plays where.

Some of those same artists who are under contract with Live Nation, Shakira and Van Halen, came out in support of the merger, but considering who pays the tour bills for them it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

The concerns from promoters are justified since Live Nation owns most of the outdoor venues and with the artist management and ticketing control they would exert, smaller promoters would not stand a chance of landing top artists. To believe they care at all about the customer is foolish, they are there for shareholder value only, and the customer is not a shareholder. This is all about money and control and the promoters, venues and customers are losing both by this deal.

More on the story at Rolling Stone Magazine

Ticket brokers have long taken the blame from Ticketmaster for taking most of the best seats available for all the concerts. And to some extent it may be true.

But as long as there is a quick way to make a buck someone will be doing it. And when the bot software came out there were no shortage of takers because if you didn’t have one, your competitor did, and he was getting the tickets.

But I would contend that maybe Ticketmaster doesn’t really want to deal with the problem at this point because they can eliminate it by not releasing the best seats directly to the general public and make more money by reselling them without the ticket broker as the middleman.

How would I solve the problem of bots, brokers and Ticketmaster?

First thing would be to limit the sale of tickets to the city and surrounding communities within a certain radius, say 100 miles, for the first day of the sale. This would cut down dramatically the thousands of tickets for shows that are purchased by brokers with offices in other states and put the tickets back in the hands of local fans.

Then when those extra tickets that magically show up and Ticketmaster releases them to the general public, they should only release them at the box office or local ticket outlets. This cuts down on the bots catching the ticket releases for brokers and puts them back in the hands of local fans.

This won’t solve the problem completely, you’ll still have local brokers getting tickets, but not in any way the numbers you see today from out of state brokers.

Do I believe this will ever get adopted? Never, because selling tickets is their business and they want to sell a lot of them as soon as possible, whether it be to a broker or a fan.