Trent Reznor on Ticketing

Trent Reznor has added his own two cents to the ticketing issue in a post on Nine Inch Nails’ blog. Reznor lays most of the blame for inflated ticket prices on Live Nation and Ticketmaster, but accepts some blame on the part of artists. He says that the artist, when choosing to tour, first chooses the venues it would like to play. In the past, artists would contract with local promoters, who would then sell tickets to the shows, but Live Nation has now bought most of the venues and local promoters, so artists must now deal with Live Nation. Whether a show is sold through Ticketmaster or Live Nation is determined by the promoter, not the artist.

Reznor goes on describe his views of the ticket resale sites. He says that artists don’t want to look like jackasses for charging huge prices for the best seats and their shows, but still want to get paid the value those tickets would bring if they were sold to the highest bidder, so the ticket companies and artists often agree to take tickets from the available pool and send them directly to the scalper sites. He says not all artists do this, but many do. Reznor is angry about the ticket re-sale sites and believes that Ticketmaster could stop them easily:

Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

Nine Inch Nails’ deal with Live Nation gives the band 10% of the tickets to its shows to sell on its own. For their sale, it follows the rules that Reznor laid out in the passage above and even has its own people check the tickets, all for a smaller surcharge than Live Nation or Ticketmaster charge. He says that it was a hard decision for the band, but that they decided to do things that way instead of going for the big bucks. He fears that the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger will turn all ticketing into an auction, raising prices far higher than they are now. The only way to stop this happening, according to Reznor, is to refuse to buy from scalpers. He also says to be suspicious of any artists who support the merger, as they’re likely looking to gouge their fans.

It’s good to have another artist come out against the ticketing merger and to do so in an articulate way that really explains what the problems are with the merger. Sadly, it will probably do nothing to stop the merger, but people should follow Rezor’s advice and do what they can to stop things getting out of hand. It’s wrong that the people making the most money off concerts are parts of giant companies and not the artists, but it’s hard to say no to tickets for your favorite band at a price that is still within your means, which is of course the basis for all scalpers. The only chance may be for artists to do as Nine Inch Nails does and provide some tickets at reasonable prices for a few fans.

What do you think of what Reznor has to say?