At present, you’d be hard-pressed to search out a music fan with any positive thoughts about Ticketmaster. While from two very different musical camps, The Cure’s Robert Smith and his goth army seem ready to hitch the Swifties in a battle against the ticketing giant as one other fan base burned by pricing.

As tickets went on sale for the band’s US tour, prices were nearly doubled because of hefty service fees, facility charges and a processing fee. Despite purposefully setting their prices at an accessible limit with tickets as little as $20 and opting out of dynamic prices during apparent conversations with the platform, Cure fans still got shafted. In a series of tweets to fans, Smith has said he’s “as sickened as you all are” and has actually convinced Ticketmaster to refund fans their fees. But the actual fact this happened in any respect when The Cure supposedly did all the pieces ‘right’, following recent horror stories from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s ticket sales, begs the query: what will be done concerning the Ticketmaster problem?

The carnage of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour pre-sale remains to be within the news, where Ticketmaster claimed bots hacked the verified fan presale, causing ticket prices to hike into the tens of hundreds from the unique price range of $49 to $499 for tickets. Despite the insane prices, the platform someway managed to sell every ticket to the tour, causing the final pre-sale to be cancelled after 2.4 million tickets were sold. This was all a results of ‘dynamic pricing’, but what does that even mean?

Not too dissimilar from the way in which hotels or airlines work, dynamic pricing puts the associated fee of a gig ticket in step with the quantity of demand, meaning that the more people within the queue to grab a Beyoncé ticket, the costlier that ticket goes to get. Living proof: Beyoncé’s ‘Golden Circle’ tickets were originally priced at £140, but have now surged to over £400.

To Ticketmaster, that is all a part of a protective policy, apparently designed to guard tickets from falling into the hands of scalpers, or being snapped up for affordable during pre-sale hacks and sold on for heavily inflated prices. But it surely’s ironic that their solution is to essentially do this price climbing themselves and punish the fans. Surely all of this only comes right down to one thing – greed. Laid out clearly in The Cure’s situation, as Robert Smith pushed for answers as to how these added fees were justified, it felt malicious, just like the ticketing giant couldn’t resist getting their slice while musicians make lively steps to maintain their shows accessible.

A key piece to the puzzle as to why and the way Ticketmaster keep getting away with that is the incontrovertible fact that Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation. The corporate behind the Astroworld tragedy, Live Nation dominate the live music industry – they placed on shows, own venues, and even manage some artists. In consequence, a number of venues owned by the corporate work exclusively with Ticketmaster, with their current list of properties within the UK including 51 per cent of the Academy Music Group. Beating their competitors in every way from higher worker numbers to billions in yearly profit, the result’s that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are unattainable to beat and near unattainable for artists to avoid. As they proceed to dominate the industry, they create tighter ticket verifying systems to avoid fakes and grow their operating size to run huge projects like global stadium tours that other platforms like Eventbrite or Dice just couldn’t handle. At present, there really is not any viable ticket-selling alternative for major artists to show to.

1 OF 2: AFTER FURTHER CONVERSATION, TICKETMASTER HAVE AGREED WITH US THAT MANY OF THE FEES BEING CHARGED ARE UNDULY HIGH, AND AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL HAVE OFFERED A $10 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR LOWEST TICKET PRICE (‘LTP’) TRANSACTIONS…

— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023

This is just not a surprise. Even back in 2009 when Live Nation and Ticketmaster first merged, major artists like Bruce Springsteen condemned the deal saying, “the one thing that might make the present ticket situation even worse for the fan than it’s now can be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing.” Initially, the UK’s Competition Commission even ruled against the merger because the body that protects against a single body monopolising an industry, stating the move would harm competitors and “limit the event of competition available in the market for live music ticket retailing”.

For so long as we live under a capitalist system, we’d like competition. It keeps prices down and holds corporations accountable, as we consumers can just go off and shop elsewhere if we feel we’re being treated unfairly. At present, with no other ticketing site to essentially rival them in any legitimate way when it comes right down to big concert events, Ticketmaster can and can do what they need. Sure, Robert Smith can kick off they usually might pay back $10 to every customer this time, but they’ll do all of it again the following time round. Similarly, Taylor Swift fans can try to take down the enormous with a lawsuit, nevertheless it’ll just go on the pile with the 15 other lawsuits which have been filed within the last five years – and besides, the conglomerate can often shake these off by claiming fans “repeatedly agreed” to arbitrate any disputes with the positioning. In other words, as they technically don’t force fans to purchase expensive tickets, they’ll wash their hands of responsibility.

But possibly there’s hope for change. It’s undoubtedly welcome news to listen to that The Cure are standing as much as the enormous, and there’s been no word on The Eras Tour coming to the UK or any whisper of tickets for the worldwide legs. The last we heard from Taylor was: “I’m attempting to work out how this example will be improved moving forward.” Previously taking over Spotify and Apple Music, if any artist can stand her ground, perhaps it’s Taylor – many fans are wondering if the star might launch her own ticketing platform and produce the method in-house. Without delay, there doesn’t appear to be another escape from the nightmare, unless major stars like Smith and Swift step up to assist save us.

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