Only You Can Bring Down Ticketmaster
Or, why will your favorite pop star always disappoint you and democracy?
This Ticketmaster nonsense is a gorgeous and horrifying display of how impotent Generation Rock is, and how that suits the class of the Pop One Percent just fine.
Few things better display how the musicians we idolize, idealize and bankroll are utterly unwilling to change the money generating, fan-degrading status quo; and few things better reveal how completely ignorant, impotent, or cowardly the general public are when it comes to compelling change. See, fixing the Ticketmaster nonsense is actually very, very simple: You stop buying tickets, and Ticketmaster must change the onerous, usury system. Period. The victim – that is, you and I, the consumer – complete the arc of exploitation, and without us, the system collapses.
And you and I are the only one who are going to fix it. Do you honestly think your favorite billionaire artist is going to do something about Ticketmaster? Really? Do you think their manager, their promoter, their accountant, their booking agent, their car dealer, their jet dealer, their cousin Mike who, uh, does something for them (they’re not entirely sure), their concierge yoga coach, or their ex-wives and/or husbands are going to let them alter a system that makes them (literally) millions of dollars a night just because you, pal, use a few exclamation points on social media? Because however angry you are, obviously you’re not angry enough to stop buying the goddamn tickets, and that’s the only thing that’s going to bring about change.
True: The Cure, for one, have made some small yet genuine effort to address the Ticketmaster horror. But please note all the artists NOT following in their wake. This is because, well, artists in the Pop One Percent, are amazingly, profoundly, stupendously terrified. You cannot imagine how frightened they are, all the bloody time. There’s nothing as terrified as a multi-millionaire rock star. Seriously. They are way more frightened, more scared of upsetting the status quo and more panicked about it all disappearing then they were decades ago, when they were sealed into in a foul-smelling van and driving eight hours to make 175 bucks playing the Milestone in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Back then they were fearless. At least you had a way out of that 1989 Ford Econoline Cargo Van, and there was nowhere to go but up (and who knows, you might change your mind and take the LSATS). But from inside that Gulfstream G650 jet, the one you just paid 52 million for, there’s no way to go but down, and your managers, friends, and hangers-on make sure you know that. All those people taking pieces of you aren’t going to let you change the way you do business just because a couple of fans tweeted about the ticket fees.
The Ticketmaster thing is a prime example of how we, the paper tigermen and paper tigerwomen of Generation Rock, love to take shelter beneath the cooling umbrella of outrage; and having done so, we pat each other on the back and congratulate each other on having this shared outrage. But we have no functional plan to change it, especially if it inconveniences us and prevents us from sharing the pictures we took of Ed Sheeran from the 28th row.
In an era of useless outrage (that is, outrage without instruction or any action that could possibly lead to remediation), in an era where our republic totters on the edge of authoritarianism because those most invested in combatting authoritarianism have utterly confused tweets with action, the Ticketmaster bullshit seems to be a beautiful and horrible personification of our belief in the magic of wished-for justice. “It is so obviously wrong that our favorite performers charge us a month’s rent or more to see them,” we cluck, “why, something will have to change! After all,” you think, “my thumb has grown muscles due to the exercise it has gotten from my tweets of protest and alarm!”
But your indignation is just noise. To quote Tristan Tzara (disputed), “Do you know the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Republicans storm the Capitol. Democrats write strongly worded social media posts.”
Ticket prices – and therefore, Ticketmaster’s greed – will be as high as the market can bear. Period. When people stop paying the exorbitant prices for tickets, the system will change. Period. This thing can’t stop until the essential link in the chain – the ticket buyer – demands change; not via social media post, but by the simple act of refusing to pay. Simple. You – yes you – have a lot of power in this scenario. Not only does the system collapse without your ticket purchase, but when the artist looks up and sees empty seats, they become far more invested in fixing a system they have relatively little need, at the moment, to alter.
It’s important to note that in any meaningful or accurate way, in the present entertainment economy artists, managers and promoters are essentially synonymous – that is, we must see them as a united front. The artist on stage is the front for a machine, and that machine has zero interest in any of this changing. But this is also true: These people worked hard to get where they are. They really did.
Not a single member of this class of the Pop One Percent didn’t sweat, sacrifice, grind out a hundred thousand miles and ten thousand nights of bad food and crappy motels and moldy dressing rooms in shitty saloons to get where they are (and I’m including the managers and promoters in this, too; they dreamed just as hard as the artist, and worked just as hard). And, really, they don’t owe us anything, they truly don’t. That’s why any change will have to come from you, us, the ticket buyer. No bloody artist is going to do this for you. Artists in the 2020s are the most terrified, gutless, mammon-centric, miserable bunch of scaredy cats that have existed in the entire span of the modern entertainment economy. The swollen, unbelievable amounts of money at stake create this fear.
For an artist to challenge Ticketmaster in any meaningful way, they would absolutely need to say, “I do not merely object, but I refuse to play this show/tour unless prices come down in a meaningful way.” In other words, they’d have to be willing to essentially withdraw from every major venue in the country for an extended – perhaps indefinite — period of time. They would have to be willing to sacrifice (literally) hundreds of millions of dollars. Honestly, if just two or three A-list arena artists agreed to step away from the touring circuit until this problem was addressed, it would very likely be fixed, and fixed fast. Now, there MAY be an artist here and there willing to do that – but I can guarantee you, there is not a single manager or booking agent who would let them do so. The machine will be united.
The only genuinely realistic solution to the Ticketmaster problem comes from you. You stop buying tickets, this whole thing collapses (as we have noted, repeatedly; but, ah, repetition is my spirit animal, as my nearly unhinged affection for Neu! attests). Next time, don’t take out your credit card, no matter how much you want to see Beyoncé, or Bruce, or Taylor, or Drimble Wedge & the Vegetations. That’s how this thing gets fixed. Because THE ARTISTS ARE NOT GOING TO FIX THIS.
And I HATE that. I hate that America has bred a Pop One Percent class who are so completely unwilling to upset the status quo and who, although already rich beyond anything you and I could imagine, still need to make more money, and therefore do nothing to meaningfully take on a system that victimizes their fans. And I think that’s what really pisses me off about this Ticketmaster thing: Not the price of tickets themselves – I mean, as horrifying as that is, none of us are going to have our lives truly changed because we did or didn’t go to some pop show; but the Ticketmaster thing is a deep and dark indicator of how completely and utterly unwilling our pop stars are to take a meaningful stand on anything that actually matters. A billionaire artist too utterly terrified to challenge Ticketmaster certainly isn’t going to do anything to stand up, in any meaningful way, for our democracy.
This year, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift – to name just three – are marching like a marauding, triumphant denim and bling army through states that are stripping women of their rights, advocating censorship, denying history, farting in the face of equality and gerrymandering democracy out of existence. And these Heroes of Pop are not saying a fucking word, are they? They are taking your money and zipping their big fat billionaire mouths shut when it comes to the painful truth of reminding you that the people running these states are trying to turn the clocks back to the 1950s (and rewriting the textbooks to dates even further back). And I hate them for this. They underline the fact that Generation Rock in America was a lie.
As long as gigantic sums of money keep rolling in, our biggest and most loved stars will not whisper a contrary word when confronted with the return to the America of Henry Ford, Strom Thurmond, Curtis LeMay and Joseph McCarthy. It was the dissolution of this bigoted, restrictive, gerrymandered and censored America that allowed their creativity to thrive, and they must be reminded of that! I know you may not see the connection, but trust me, it’s there: It’s all about the billionaire pop class WE built being so terrified of upsetting their money generating status quo that they won’t do anything to help their fans, much less their republic.
The Ticketmaster nonsense is a canary in a fucking coalmine, an indication of the complete lack of interest the Pop One Percent have in jeopardizing their status.
VIDEO: Ticketmaster — Why They’re Hated
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This article shows you have absolutely 0 idea how the concert environment works. You are completely clueless. good lord. Ticketmaster has nothing to do with setting ticket prices. And lowering prices of tickets would have 0 affect on their bottom line. It’s actually insane how many words you wrote having absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Truly amazing.
Much needed article, punctuating the facts as they are