Ticketmaster

~starbreaker

Barkeep, I could use a White Lady over here. And a saucer of fresh cream for Smudge.

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I'm low-key excited that Alice Cooper is touring again and will be doing a show near me in April, but of course getting to see him perform means giving money to Ticketmaster, and that probably won't get fixed before Cooper's entire catalog ends up in the public domain.

There's nothing wrong with Ticketmaster that isn't endemic to how we do capitalism in the USA, but for some reason this corp seems particularly egregious. If a band did a rock opera like Styx's "Kilroy Was Here" about how a monopolistic organization like Ticketmaster is killing music by pricing tickets out of most fans' reach the music press would relentlessly ridicule them, but life is stranger than art.

Back in the 1970s, my late father used to be get concert tickets in NYC and Long Island for $5-10 each, without having additional "convenience fees" added on. At least that's what he'd tell me.

Nowadays, good luck getting a seat at a popular musician's concert for less than $100. The seat might be nominally priced at $20-50, but Ticketmaster wants their cut as well, and those scumbags cut deep.

The sooner we get some real progressives in power, the kind that will go after corporations and put the fear of $DEITY into CEOs and investors, the better. There's really nothing wrong with Ticketmaster that can't be fixed by dissolving their charter, confiscating their assets under civil forfeiture, and prosecuting their senior management and Board of Directors under the RICO statutes.