Live Music Is A Scam
News of Iron Maiden’s 2022 North American tour was quickly followed by a flurry of emails from Ticketmaster, inviting recipients to apply for a type of pre-sale certification (“verified users” or something), that would allow a select few to purchase tickets to a show in advance of the general sale. Realising that this was little more than a ploy to gauge interest in the tour and to burnish their coffers with as much user data as possible, I nonetheless applied and on the day before the pre-sale, I received an email that advised that I had, in fact, been selected. Yay!
By 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning — the time when the pre-sale was to begin — I was in an online waiting room and at the appointed hour, a notification appeared that there were approximately 500 people ahead of me. Assuming worst case scenario, with four tickets allowed per person, two thousand prime seats would be gone by the time my turn arrived. In fact, when I was allowed to select seats, there remained a good number of decent options in the front three sections behind the pit. I clicked four seats and pressed the “Next” button to pay for them. This is where things got shitty. A pop-up “Fuck You” advised that another fan had already purchased those seats. You know - the ones that were available when I clicked on them - and had presumably reserved them for myself.
So I picked another four. Same result. With maddening consistency, this happened several more times, to the point where I simply grabbed four tickets at the back of one of the front sections, just so I could sit somewhere sort of near the front. Bingo! I was able to proceed. Presented with some overpriced parking options ($75 to park near the front), I selected one and went to pay. This is where things got shittier. I received an error message, stating that my transaction could not be processed. I hadn’t even reached the screen where I entered my name, address or credit card. Live Nation’s site kicked me back to the queue and I had to select four new seats. Of course the ones that were just in my cart were now gone, as were pretty. much any decent tickets in the first section.
As my blood pressure ascended, I lowered my standards and tried to get four in the second section back. This time, I received the error before getting to the parking options. I would receive this error every single time from then on, despite refreshing the page, logging out and in, etc. Consequently, in exchange for my time, my efforts and the personal information I gave to Ticketmaster to participate in the pre-sale, I got nothing back. No Maiden tickets for me. Fuck you, Live Nation and fuck you, Ticketmaster.
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On Friday, Heilung tickets went on sale for their show at the Greek Theater in September. This was an AXS deal, so I logged onto their site and once again, found myself in an online waiting room. The best seats were priced at $80.50, according to AXS. At 10 a.m., ticket sales opened and I clicked in the front middle section, only to be greeted with a message saying that no tickets were left. Were they shitting me? It wasn’t even 10:01 am. I tried the other two front sections - same result. Somehow, all tickets in the front three sections were sold out within ten seconds. Even for a band like Maiden, this would be an implausible situation; for Heilung, a relatively obscure act, I should have been greeted with an embarrassment of riches in the seat choice department at 10 am. With the only available seats being in the back sections - where my friend and I didn’t want to sit, hence me logging on at 10 a.m. - I gave up.
Curious, I logged onto StubHub and found where all of those seats were - right there in the scalper’s den. The $80 seats I wanted were now $420 each. After a grim, come-to-Jesus conversation with my friend, we opted to pay through the nose on StubHub or we’d never get the chance to see Heilung. Not only were the seats sold to us at a usurious rate, but each seat carried its own $99 fee, in addition to the inflated price of the ticket.
Music fans have been dealing with this bullshit for decades. Pearl Jam took up the fight in the 90s and it pushed them out of some of the biggest venues in the country. Their refusal to play ball with these corporations cost them untold sums and deprived fans of the opportunity to see the band at their peak. Of course they did play but you had to go out of your way to find the shows, flying or driving for hours while other bands, working with Ticketmaster, continued to play in the biggest venues.
It’s a scam. Luring fans into turning over their personal emails and phone numbers - which undoubtedly will be sold to other corporations for marketing campaigns and shitty promotional blather - all the while knowing you’re not going to give them any real chance of getting a decent ticket to the show, is an unconscionable practice that has gone on too long. I’m not so naive to think that anything will ever change. Where there’s money involved, the consumer/fan/citizen will never have a chance. And truthfully, when people like me are painted into the corner and faced with the option of either paying the scalpers or not seeing our favourite bands, we cave. I did. And it sucks.