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jordanrosenburg · 2 years ago

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How much is a loaf of bread?

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think concert tickets, or any sort of ticket to see someone perform, should cost the same, if not more, than a month’s worth of rent. In the last several years, we’ve seen ticket prices skyrocket. Why? Because when you add Ticketmaster to an artist who doesn’t know how much a loaf of bread costs, you’re going to get outrageous prices. Is it entirely the company’s fault? Probably not. The artists that use Ticketmaster are also to blame. But we’ll dive into that aspect shortly.

Alright, so let’s just talk about Ticketmaster for a bit, and my arch nemesis Official Platinum (OP). According to Ticketmaster, Official Platinum Seats are premium tickets made available by artists and Event Organizers. They also go on to say that these seats in particular give fans access to “some of the best seats in the house”. FALSE! All of the seats that are open for OP are all over the place, spanning from the pit all the way up to the nosebleeds. And if you want a ticket at all, you have to use the OP function because the standard tickets sell out in a matter of seconds.

Ticketmaster’s OP option apparently enables “market-based pricing”, which is basically as more people buy seats, the prices go up. They’re saying this is similar to how hotel and airline prices are sold. Okay, but this isn’t a hotel or an airline. It’s for a fucking ticket to an event that’s less than three hours long, and you’re not being provided the same service you would get at a hotel or on a plain.

“Enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their market value.” ENABLING ARTISTS! This is a function artists and their teams choose to use. They do this so they can get paid more because the artists don’t get any of the resale money when tickets are resold on other sites. Okay???? They’re still getting paid for the original ticket that was bought, right? So what does it matter?

Sites like StubHub and the like used to be where you could find tickets for cheaper prices. Now the prices are just as high, if not more, than what people bought them for off Ticketmaster because they know, for certain artists, someone out there is willing to pay over $1000. We’ve seen this time and time again with other companies. Air BnB used to be a way to have a more affordable vacation. Uber and Lyft used to be more affordable than getting a cab. Etc, etc. The real kicker for me is that this only happens in the U.S. I have friends around the globe, and they don’t have to deal with prices inflating. So why is like that here? Answer me that Live Nation! Oh, wait, LIVE NATION IS OWNED BY TICKETMASTER, SO IT’S NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ARTISTS TO USE OTHER TICKETING SITES TO SELL THEIR TICKETS FOR REASONABLE PRICES!

People like to blame the venue itself, but it’s not necessarily the venue’s fault. They’re being told how things are done. They have to follow Ticketmaster’s rules. Now, at smaller venues where maybe an artist is slightly less known, but still popular, most of the time it’s about $45 for a general admission (GA) ticket. For example, venues like The House of Blues in Boston typically sell their tickets for $45, that’s with fees included. Smaller venue means less crew that need to be paid. The stage doesn’t need to be made up or broken down. So obviously the price of the ticket is going to be less.

And I understand that people need to be paid, I’m not saying that these people who work incredibly hard behind the scenes don’t deserve to be paid, I just think it shouldn’t be at the expense of the fans. There has to be another, more feasible way to make sure the crew and all the other folks are getting their money. And I know some artists have to wait a while to be paid because the label has to get paid, the record company has to get paid, the managers have to get paid, and so on. But isn’t that what selling merch is for? I thought things like that helped to offset the cost. Or, you know, the hundreds of dollars worth of taxes and fees.

OP has been around for a long time, but with less and less venues selling tickets through their physical box offices, we’re basically forced to buy tickets online, and pretty much only through Ticketmaster. I’m sure there were some good intentions in the early days of OP, but it’s become the bane of many peoples’ existence.

Many artists use the OP function to make more money. Okay, that’s fine if face value is between $50-$150, I guess? There’s nothing more infuriating than clicking on tickets and getting them in your cart, only for the price to have doubled in the two seconds the page was refreshing. Then you either have to buy them, or go back in and try again. The whole process is exhausting! What’s always mind boggling to me is when I’m trying to get GA tickets, and I get the pop up from Ticketmaster saying, “another fan has already purchased these”. THEY’RE GENERAL ADMISSION, WHAT DOES IT MATTER????

I didn’t know things were this crazy up until a couple of years ago when I became a fan of Harry Styles. Signing up for presale, clicking into waiting rooms (if you were lucky enough to get a presale code), waiting in queues only to be told there’s 2000+ people ahead of you in line. What I’ve noticed more and more is that there’s a presale for everything, so by the time general sale happens, there’s no good seats left. How is that fair? There also is rarely ever a limit to how many tickets you can buy, so scalpers and bots buy up entire rows of seats, and go onto resale sites to sell them for double or triple the original price.

There are presales for Spotify users, but you have to make sure you’re following that artist and listening to them enough for Spotify to even send you a code. And now some credit cards are giving out presale codes! AMEX is the one I see most often. You have to your AMEX card on file in your payment options for Ticketmaster to be considered for their presale. And when you get to the event itself, AMEX users sometimes get access to merch that no one else has access to, and more. Then you have “verified fan” (VF) presale.

According to Ticketmaster, VF is another way to help artists to get more of their tickets into the hands of the fans, not just to resellers. Wasn’t that the intention of OP? Awesome, another hoop to jump through. Only this time, you’re signing up to be registered for a chance to obtain this presale that is automatically linked with your Ticketmaser account. So you can’t even share your code with your friend. They would have to sign into your account to get the tickets, and then transfer them. AMEX does this as well for their presales.

A lot of these presales happen on different days and times. I’ve had to literally put them on my calendar so I’d remember which day and time I could try for specific show dates. The most annoying thing about VF is that it’s a lottery system. You’re not guaranteed VF just from registering for it. I’ve only been lucky enough to have VF one time, but even still you’re not guaranteed tickets because you still have to wait your turn in the queue, and then it’s a race to select and buy your tickets.

What happens if you don’t get selected for VF? Ticketmaster sends you a bullshit email telling you that you’ve been added to a waitlist, and if all the tickets they’ve set aside for VF don’t sell, then you’ll be taken off and given access. This literally never happens. No one ever gets taken off the waitlist. Just be blunt and say I didn’t get VF and let me know what my other options are, if there even are any.

Let’s get back to Harry Styles. I love him to death, and I love going to his shows because they’re always a unique experience. He interacts with his fans way more than other artists do. He makes your night together very special. So for that, sometimes it’s worth the price. I won’t lie, I’ve paid over $500 for one ticket to see Harry. There are other artists I would not do that for. And nine times out of ten, I’ve had to buy tickets to his shows through resale sites. Normally, I don’t think I would care, but for the final leg of his North American portion of Love on Tour, he decided to have residencies in large cities. Fifteen nights in New York, a couple of nights in Canada and Texas, a week in Chicago, and another 15 nights in LA. He did this so it would be easier for him to work on writing and recording. He loves touring and performing, but this time around he had us come to him. This is where I started to really lose my mind.

Okay, so say my GA Pit ticket (and trust me, you want to be in the pit for a Harry show at least once if you can) is around $450 with taxes and fees included. Not great, but not horrible enough to send me into excruciating debt. But now I have to factor in more travel than usual. I live in central NH, so normally I just go down to Boston and stay with my friends. A simple drive that costs next to nothing. But now I have to travel all the way to Midtown. So not only do I need to travel down to Boston, but now I have to go from Boston to New York. And on top of that, now I need a hotel room. Then you have to factor in food. That’s well over a thousand dollars at that point.

I went to two of Harry’s residency shows at MSG. The first show I had pit for the first time, and I honestly blacked out, so I couldn’t even really enjoy it. I took a bus from NH to Boston, then flew to New York. The flights were cheap. Then I took an Uber to my hotel where I was paying for two nights at. It was a good hotel, and only half a mile from MSG. I’m usually willing to pay a little extra for a good hotel. My safety is very important to me. After the show, I flew back to Boston, took my bus back to NH and called it a day. Fine. But I wanted to go again. So, the second time, I took a bus from NH to Boston, then took an express bus from Boston to New York. This time, I had no hotel. This trip was 24 hours. After the show, I met up with my friends who I knew were also headed back to Boston, and we waited for our 2AM Amtrak together.

I’m lucky that I have the means to travel like this. Many others aren’t. And I understand that it’s easier for the artist and their crew to stay in the same place for longer periods of time, but if you really cared about your fans, wouldn’t you want to make things easier for them? Even if the ticket is reasonably priced, now I have to pay for all these extra things? And I’m not saying I didn’t have fun in New York, because I did. I made the most out of my time there, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Harry Styles is a very humble person, at least, that’s the side of himself he lets us in on, but I truly don’t think he knows how much a loaf of bread costs.

I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift, so I won’t dive too deep into what happened with her ticket sales, but I have many friends that love her and I felt terrible that they had such a tough time getting tickets. There was another lottery system, and Ticketmaster really thought that most people wouldn’t be jumping in at the same time. Taylor hasn’t toured in years, of course everyone who got VF was going to login at the same time and try for tickets! One of my friends sat in the queue for THREE HOURS and she was able to get tickets in a decent part of the arena. Then the general sale was sold out because all the tickets were sold during VF, which is so fucking stupid because VF usually only releases a certain amount of tickets. But again, bots and scalpers go in and buy as many tickets as they can.

One event that was done right was Harry’s One Night Only for Harry’s House. I was fortunate enough to go because a friend couldn’t and she gave me her ticket. This lottery system was insane, and trying to get tickets was even more insane. However, the tickets were only $25. At first, they were non-transferable, so you had to be with the person who bought the tickets, or log into their account at the time of the show. That obviously wasn’t feasible, so they made the tickets transferable, and that’s when the craziness happened again because those tickets were being resold for over $500, and a lot of those were in the nosebleeds! I had front row in the second level behind the stage. It wasn’t the most ideal spot, but for $25 and a weekend away with my friends? Totally worth it. If tickets can be sold for that price, without OP getting in the way, why can’t artists do that all the time? Or maybe just turn off OP in general for all shows.

What has finally pushed me over the edge with Ticketmaster is the week of Jonas Brothers shows at the Marquis in New York. I’m just as peeved at the boys because they announced this barely a week ago, and the shows are in two weeks. That’s not enough time to prepare travel plans for a reasonable price. Each night is a different album. Super fun idea, I love it. However, the Marquis only holds up to 1000 people. So, we all signed up for VF. There’s no presale, there’s no general sale. You had to get VF in order to purchase tickets. Everyone I know, including myself, was waitlisted. When I looked at Ticketmaster last night, it said there would be VF tickets sold and OP tickets sold. So, I was able to calm down and I told myself I’ll try my luck with OP and see what happens. But when I tried to join the waiting room earlier today, Ticketmaster wouldn’t let me because I didn’t have a VF code associated with my account. I took to Twitter to see if anyone else was confused, and they were. Many people were asking why Ticketmaster would even advertise OP tickets if they weren’t actually going to sell any. I took a deep breath and went to Vivid Seats. Surely the ticket prices won’t be astronomical. It’s just the Jonas Brothers. WRONG AGAIN! Tickets are being resold for over $400. All I wanted was to listen to Lines, Vines and Trying Times in its entirety!

I think because of what happened with Taylor and the backlash Ticketmaster got, they cracked down on not letting people in unless they had VF, which I can respect. However, they shouldn’t have also advertised a sale for OP tickets. They claim they want to keep the tickets in the hands of the fans...

Does this look like fans bought the tickets? And it’s infuriating because Ticketmaster doesn’t care. Because guess what? The higher ups at Ticketmaster also don’t know how much a loaf of bread costs!

What’s worse is that what used to be a fun and easy thing to do, is now a battlefield. It sucks all the fun out of getting tickets for an event you and your friends are excited for. How can you feel excited when you’re sitting in a waiting room that refreshes into a queue that no matter what number you are in line you’re still not guaranteed tickets? It’s stressful, anxiety inducing, and completely unnecessary.

I know there was a time where before you could buy tickets online, people camped out for certain artists. But that’s a clear line, you know how many people are actually in front of you, and you’re not paying an arm and a leg for your ticket! Even when I was in high school, I could go online and buy tickets for a show and get really good seats for under $200.

We can’t go on like this. Beyonce, the woman preaching for people to quit their jobs and to release their minds, is selling tickets to her shows for astronomical prices just because she can. I know management has more to do with it. They’re using their cash cows to make even more cash. I get it, I really do. But what’s going to happen when this all finally crashes and burns? What happens when we all decide, “You know what? This isn’t worth it”? Artists only get to perform if they have an audience to perform to.

Something else that’s come from all of this stressful ticket buying is hostility within fandoms. If you’re not selected for VF or presales, then you’re telling the people that are getting early access that they’re not real fans, that you deserve it more than them. It’s not another person’s fault a computer selected them. It sucks, and believe me I’m disappointed too, but there’s no reason for animosity to occur because of it. That’s how the corporations win. They want us to turn against each other because they know if we all banded together and said enough is enough, they wouldn’t be able to keep getting away with all this.

Then when all these fans do get together, there’s hostility at the shows! Because people had to fight for their tickets, they come into these venues hot. I was lucky enough to go to both Palm Springs shows for Harry’s birthday. It was at a smaller arena. Two tickets I got off Ticketmaster (front row seats), and two tickets for the next night off of Vivid Seats (GA Pit). Because my friend and I had never been to this arena before, we asked where our section was and the person working told us where to go. So we sat and waited for the show to start. These two girls came over to us and demanded we show them our tickets because apparently we were in their seats. We realized we were in one section over from where our seats actually were. Easy mistake, right? It’s not like we had upper bowl and we were trying our luck at taking other people’s seats. But these girls were being so nasty about it, I finally spoke up and said, “Calm down, we’re all going to get to see him.” And they looked at me like I had three heads. My friend and I walked away and found our actual seats, which were in an even better spot. But still. We’re all going to see a man that preaches treating people with kindness. Those girls were not kind at all.

And when the lights go out and the artist comes on stage, for that brief time we all forget what we put ourselves through to get there. We’re in the moment, having fun with friends and strangers, singing and dancing to the music we all love. It’s so powerful being in a space with people who have all gathered to watch this one person. I’ve made some amazing friends over the last few years because artists have brought us together. And I’ve gone on some amazing once in a lifetime trips because of these artists.

I’m lucky that I’m able to go do these shows. But what about people who aren’t? What about the fans who are living paycheck to paycheck that can’t afford not only a ticket, but other accommodations? Are they less deserving because they’re less affluent? Do the artists actually know who is making up their fanbases? Do the artists even care about how much a loaf of bread costs?

#how much is a loaf of bread?#mine #*#music #ticketmaster #concerts #taylor swift #harry styles #the jonas brothers #jonas brothers #nick jonas #kevin jonas #joe jonas #beyonce #live music #ticket prices #live nation

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