Monday, March 16, 2009
Ticketmaster Collaborates With Artists And Promoters To Shove Scalpers Aside
Techdirt: "Ticketmaster is the sort of company that lots of people love to hate. It's long been dogged by complaints that it is anti-competitive -- complaints which have gathered pace with its recent move to merge with Live Nation. The company has done plenty of things to try to drive scalpers out of business before, in hopes of sucking up their profit margins, and its latest move will further endear itself to fans."
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6 comments:
This is the most ridiculous thing. If this dose not send a thousand more lawsuits to the for "anti-competition" laws than I have no idea what would. I can't believe they are directly setting up the web site to lie to their costumers. If they want to attack the scalper market they need to do with the law, not this very close to illegal activities. I am outraged.
I've always had a simple reaction to Ticketmaster, why don't you just make the tickets the price you want initially for them? While I don't totally buy into the idea that Ticketmaster is in fact the ticket distribution companies trying to make some extra money, I do think that there is some validity to it. That being said, it's really not much worse then scalping, and at least in this case the tickets are guaranteed to be valid. I don't buy into the "fair to artists" angel, if the tickets get sold, they get sold.If the distribution companies really cared about being fair to the artists, they'd give them a bigger cut of the sales.
I cannot believe this. The fact that this is even considered boggles my mind. While I believe the intent might be in the right place, the method of going about it is unethical... misleading the consumer. Hopefully, lawsuits will bring about change.
I too am surprised that they can have such a monopoly. But i am more surprised that the artists are in on it. IT seems, especially in this economy that raising prices towards what scalpers would sell them for is ridiculous and will lose business. The first time we heard about the TM/LN merger was when springsteen was appalled by what they were doing. Have all other artists lost their humanity and morals?
Wow, although, I cannot say I'm really surprised. With everyone teaming up more and more, pretty soon, there will only be corporations and no more individually owned businesses. What a shame.
I think they are attempting to bring down the scalpers market in an entirely immoral, see-through and frankly illegal fashion. Lawsuits will abound. I think the problem here, which leads to the scalping, is that the tickets aren't being prices fairly in the first place.
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