Adam Conover just did a video on mega mergers and Ticketmaster was prominently featured. I thought it was pretty well done, but hope you like the guy because he takes his personality to 11 on this one.
Fuck these monopoly fucks.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
693 points (99.0% liked)
Privacy
31254 readers
624 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Adam was touring his comedy set recently, outside Ticketmaster, which is next to impossible to do.
I got mad respect for the guy, actually practices what he preaches.
When he goes back on tour; if you see a show in a town you know people, help spread the word for him, since he's doing it all homegrown.
Plenty of artists tour outside of Ticketmaster, just not big ones. The best thing to do is find a venue near you that isn't owned by LiveNation and follow them on social media/subscribe to their mailing list.
As I've always done, being an elder millennial. In the olden days yonder we had to bookmark individual webpages and create rss feeds, but even rss didn't emerge until like the mid aughties. AOL had been around 10 years and damn near died by then, sames as yahoo.
I miss the old Internet. Sigh
load more comments
(2 replies)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/ayrVYwoe-DY?si=IYs9uyx7y_NDrxRX
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Sounds like everyone should have listened to Pearl Jam thirty years ago when Tickermaster wasn't a complete monopoly.
Idk if it’s possible, but you could try saying you’re now a EU citizen and you want all you data and everything related to you deleted, according to GDPR laws.
I've been to a lot of events the past 2 years and ticket master are the only one to fuck up. They changed the event location and said in the app the tickets would update. They never did. Never got a refund as it was a bank holiday weekend and that's apparently my fault.
Absolute scum cunts.
Even putting the vertical monopoly aside, their app is straight up useless and doesn't work. I spent 3 hours trying to buy tickets for a show today and the app first wouldn't let me log in, then it wouldn't let me put in a pre-sale code to get discountes tickets, then it crashed multiple times on the payment page. So not only are they the only place to buy tickets to a lot of shows, they make it almost impossible to actually buy the tickets from their own freaking service.
But they will gladly resell you the tickets they sold themselves for 10X face value
Big bank bots are buying up the tickets for credit card points redemption, which is why the site gets ddos'ed, causing the site to not work for regular users. Credit card companies are listing the tickets for resale at the inflated rates their customer points are equated to.
Banks have found another avenue of profit in this.
I personally haven't gone to concerts anymore because of ticketmaster & ticket costs, no thanks, I'm good.
Everyone should do this, let the whale die, small venues and direct to customer sales only
I lol at ticket prices now
load more comments
(7 replies)
Sounds to me, like a report to the GDPR – Supervisory authority would be a great option.
You have other options thankfully. If you're in a large city, you can often find small independent retailers which sell tickets. When I lived in Toronto I used to go to a record shop to buy mine.
You can also go to the venue directly. Oftentimes if it's a smaller venue they'll have tickets available as well. Stadiums usually don't go this route, but it's worth a shot.
Lastly there are other online retailers for tickets like https://stubhub.com
Ticketmaster is a goddamn scam. The entire industry knows it, but it makes money for the labels so they tolerate it. There's a reason Taylor Swift and The Cure have been making a big stink about them lately. I personally won't go to a concert if Ticketmaster is the only retailer, but I'm fortunate that most bands I see play in smaller venues.
Stubhub, Seatgeek, etc. tack on their own fees as well. There’s really no escape especially for large venues (arenas, stadiums) where they have a monopoly on ticket selling. Thankfully the 2 local small venues in my city where most of the acts I follow go to still use a different ticketing vendor and you can also still buy at the box office.
EventBrite and eTix ftw
Ticketmaster is known for having clauses that prohibit venues from using any other service, so the joint is either a Ticketmaster venue or independent.
So saying there are other options it's optimistic at best. Every year those options dwindle.
Fuck Ticketmaster, that's bully pulpit shit. Market manipulation.
I stopped going to concerts years ago. What a peaceful life. Wish I knew it before.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Dude! I was on this rant a few months ago, too! May their business die, and their pockets (and bank accounts) empty for their shitty monopolistic behaviors.
By the way, the added 20$ is considered a bait and switch, since they don't tell you right away, and wait until checkout. That's illegal. But they're big enough that the laws don't apply, it seems.
I just noticed the other day that when I clicked on a seat I wanted, it took me to another page where it had a toggle to turn on "show ticket prices with fees included." I bet that's how they get around that. I even thought when I saw it how shady that is because it only shows up after you've already found a seat you're interested in, but you're not quite at the checkout yet. It somehow makes it worse because it's so fucking blatant.
Super shady move by them, for sure. I got tickets from them once. So long as I can, never again!
These days many websites outright block anyone using Tor from browsing them. They want their precious visitor data for resale to advertisers even if many of them block their ads anyway.
I noticed that VPN issue when I tried to buy event tickets a while back. Super scummy. They don't need to know my home IP to sell me tickets. On the app, even if you have location services on, it just refuses you a connection via VPN.
How do they know that you're on a VPN?
Usually they just check your IP against a list of known VPN IP ranges. But they could also be blocking all IPs from data centers and only allowing residential IPs.
Obstensibly it's to stop scammers
Absolutely rubbish company that has nearly cornered the market on venues artists and events and made the entire process of engaging with live entertainment worse and worse as time goes on.
The awful practices of Ticketmaster/Livenation are many, including many things others have already listed as well as an increasing phase-out out of cash and other anonymous payment methods throughout the entire process, including at the actual participating venues themselves.
So why exactly are venues forced to use ticketmaster? I don't understand. Does everyone involved in the show just get more money when ticketmaster is bleeding customers dry with fees? Are there not other simple payment processors that can be used instead?
Basically all major and non-major acts are exclusively signed with Livenation, because all venues are Livenation. And all venues are Livenation because all major and non-major artists are signed there exclusively.
load more comments
(2 replies)
The service ticketmaster offers is not selling you tickets, the service is to the producers, artists etc. They get a huge cut off the sales and even get to choose what bullshit fees ticketmaster can use when selling their tickets, but ticketmaster gets the hate for it and they are still in the clear with their fans.
Ticketmaster is the apron these people use to keep themselves clean of the hate while they squeeze every last dime out of their fans pockets.
No, Ticketmaster is most certainly to blame as their massive control over venues and ticket sales makes artists bend over to their demands as well
Remember when Fucking Pearl Jam tried to avoid Ticketmaster because of their scummy shit and even tried to sue them and failed.
Pepperidge farm remembers https://news.yahoo.com/1994-pearl-jam-took-ticketmaster-230031845.html
Ticketmaster isn't just a front for shitty artists because then artists trying to not be shitty wouldn't have a problem.
“Why not both.”
load more comments
(1 replies)
The real place to direct your anger is towards the venues and bands that choose to sell tickets through TM.
A lot of that is out of band's hands. Ticketmaster has, essentially, a monopoly on venues. It's already incredibly hard to even make net zero on playing shows, getting picky about venues makes that almost impossible and relegates your band to shitty dive bars.
Didn't they buy the firm that owns most of the venues in the US so bands don't really have a choice?
load more comments
(1 replies)
They are Satan incarnate.
The one guy that downvoted does not yet know the frustration of the master of tickets
load more comments
(2 replies)
not in Estonia
view more: next ›