A lawsuit filed in California by concert giant AXS has revealed a legal and technological battle between ticket scalpers and platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS, in which scalpers have figured out how to extract “untransferable” tickets from their accounts by generating entry barcodes on parallel infrastructure that the scalpers control and which can then be sold and transferred to customers.
By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS.
So Ticketmaster and AXS are suing to maintain their monopoly on scalping?
deleted by creator
A lot of venues require events to use ticketmaster so the artists often have no choice
deleted by creator
The artist does have a choice in that they can play at a live nation venue and work through Ticketmaster, or they can find a new career because live nation has a monopoly on venues as well as ticketing. So in reality the only artists that have a choice are the Taylor Swifts that are essentially market makers, and the nobodies that aren’t selling tickets anywhere but at the door anyway.
That’s the nature of monopolies. Yes, if all artists banded (no pun intended) together and told live nation to fuck off, it would work, but getting everyone to do it won’t ever happen. So unfortunately, you have to play the game or get out. Ideally, existing laws would prevent this from happening, but our law makers and enforcers are a bunch of money hungry, corporate sluts, so we end up with this broken system.
they. could. choose. not. to. play. the. venues.
And how will they earn a living? Record, radio, and streaming pays almost nothing. Live performance is how most make their living.
Going ticketmaster-less for a tour has been tried before by a huge name at the time Pearl Jam. This was almost 30 years ago now. It just wasn’t viable playing the few venues that could accept ticketmaster-less shows.
Here’s part of that history:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/
You must starve for your ethics obviously \s
at this point in life I think I already saw all the bands I wanted in concert. I think I can afford to boycot these mfs and stick to local concerts that dont use that garbage company.
Every year we have a local indie music festival run by our city. It’s free, and bands have their albums available for sale there. That’s where I go for live music, it’s way better than those mega bands anyway.
This is one of those fights where you just hope everyone involved loses. Beyond losing, I’d prefer they all fall into a bottomless pit, but I’m not sure that’s attainable.
Nah, I want Ticketmaster specifically to loose. Fuck them.
I’d
buyscalp tickets to watch that.
Jesus, is there any way both sides can lose? Because fuck ticket scalpers, but fuck Ticketmaster too.
I’d rather deal with scalpers than this monopolistic bullshit
You’d rather have 2 middle men for your ticket purchase?
I’d rather be able to sell my ticket if I can’t go for at least face value. Ticketmaster sometime won’t let you sell the ticket to another person, or only allows you to sell back to them at 1/10th the face value…just so they can resell it again. Didnt even mention all the convenience fees for all those trades too.
If I had a paper ticket, I could just sell it no problem
Going through a scalper means that the ticket supply is artificially decreased, which pumps up the price. Then you run the risk of your ticket not working when you turn up to the venue.
Not too different from ticketmaster at that point lol
Scalping increases the liquidity of tickets. This establishes a “market price” that can be higher or lower than the face value.
