"beating" ticketmaster is pretty easy: play at venues that are not locked up by TM.
But TM really isn't that bad. There's always going to be a problem when demand far exceeds supply. If you went with pure supply/demand sales rich people would buy all.
TicketMaster has used their market dominance to be display incompetence in customer service with no consequences. Emailed me a "make sure to have your tickets at the show, we mailed them" the day of, sending me into a panic because I hadn't received them. Support was something like an hour-long queue to maybe chat with someone in the Philippines with no info, so I said fuck it and bought another ticket will-call in a nicer section--the show in question wasn't something I'd likely have the opportunity to see again for at least a decade.
Got to the venue to discover that I now had two will-call tickets, since that's how I'd originally purchased the first one, but TicketMaster somehow broke that record on their end.
Never encountered that level of bullshit from any of the smaller providers. TicketWeb was great when I lived in a market where they were the majority and Eventbrite is fine AFAIK. But now I live in a major market and TicketMaster is the only option for all but the smallest venues. What are you gonna do if you don't like them, anyway? Buy out the venue yourself?
But TM really isn't that bad. There's always going to be a problem when demand far exceeds supply. If you went with pure supply/demand sales rich people would buy all.