I guess I see the entertainment industry in two tiers. There are the mega-stars like Taylor Swift, etc. that occupy one tier, and then the majority off smaller artists, up and coming artists that represent the lower, if you like, strata.

Perhaps you are describing, and perhaps the author are tackling the upper strata. For myself, I swore off big venues decades ago. If I am unable to set my beer behind the monitor speaker, I'm not going.

I wonder if the lower strata could use a kind of "artists coop" to manage ticket sales. All smaller venues (bars and the like) could participate, all smaller artists could as well.

I think more artists would handle selling their own tickets if it was easy to do. In that way the artists are served (of course) and presumably they will do what is best for their fanbase.

Connecting artists and venue owners with a web portal, allowing ticket sales to fans via the same site shouldn't be heavy lifting for a lot of the readers on HN.

> Connecting artists and venue owners with a web portal, allowing ticket sales to fans via the same site shouldn't be heavy lifting for a lot of the readers on HN.

The tricky part isn't making the website, it's persuading enough people on both sides of the equation that your business is a better option compared to alternatives.

And despite the situation with Ticketmaster it's not like they're literally the only tool available in a market waiting for a second option - there's already lots of much smaller ticket-selling options that you'd be competing with, ranging from single person PHP websites you can host yourself to companies with significant traction in their niches that are like Ticketmaster just much, much smaller.

That's not to say that an idea like yours couldn't succeed, but the fact that lots of people could do the coding doesn't make it a likely, or easy, business to make successful.

Yeah pretty much any big tech company could spin up a team to launch a ticket purchasing website in a year or so that could handle the traffic.

For example, Amazon always loves adding benefits to prime, if they thought they could break into the ticket market they would do it in a heartbeat. Same with Spotify or Apple. If these massive corps cannot break into the market then why would some startup be able to?

Ticketmaster if I recall correctly has even stated this in its shareholder meetings. Artists can even get a share of Ticketmaster’s fees.

The problem with Ticketmaster is the same as any consolidation play. If you let a middleman control the wholesale and retail side of the transaction, you’re gonna get a bad deal.

The solution is really simple, but the government no longer has the regulatory ability to do anything. You segment the distributor function from the retail, and end up with a bunch of retailers running volume driven low margin sales channels.

Ticketmaster brilliantly positioned itself as distributor, retailer and supplier for resale. So they have an exclusive on a venue, get a fee for the sale, get a seller commission for the resale, and a buyers fee for the resale. They “own” the customer and the venue.

In a transaction of the style of musical performances, I think it’s inevitable that an entity like Ticketmaster would begin to exist. The issue is that we have a many to many to many relationship between fans, artists, and venues.

In database design when you have such a pattern it is common that you’ll have a new table to maintain the complex relationship. It doesn’t make sense for venues to sell tickets because each artist has their own tour through many venues. Selling tickets for a tour becomes a hassle as many venues would have to coordinate. To complicate things, opening acts often switch during the course of a tour. Conversely, it doesn’t make sense for artists to sell tickets because the process of coming up with the ticket price and negotiating with the venue and handling transactions and returns , etc. is not their core competency.

This is why promoters like Live Nation exist—to bridge this gap and take on the capital risk necessary to put on a large tour. They aren’t necessary but their value to venues and artists (the business owners) is palpable. For Taylor Swift to go on a world tour, an amount of centralized coordination makes it much easier and much less likely to end in financial ruin.

They also, iirc, act a bit like a specialized bank for venues, by paying for contracts up front (and I think I read also loaning money directly?) in exchange for the fee upside in sales and resales later. Venues want as much revenue as they gdt to come in as close to on sale date as possible. So it's "every sufficiently large company sells financial services", too.

But it is all their fault. They’re an obviously illegal monopoly that was allowed to thrive during our multi-decade experiment with not enforcing antitrust laws.

If artists literally ALL wanted to hire a scapegoat that rips off fans then sure. But many don’t. The fact that there’s no other alternative is WHY it works.

Also there’s no such thing as “venues and artists” since they own the venues too. Which is another part of the overall problem.

Prices don't necessarily have to be high if artists know who they want to sell tickets to and who they don't.

Raising prices is a filter on who can buy to reduce demand, but it's not the only way

Seems like it’s not so simple to say that ticketmaster is getting artists/venues max profits. If you look at how much money could be made by scalping (before it became harder), that was money people would have potentially paid to the artist/venue instead.