Music, musings and miscellanea

There’s been a lot of talk about the potential of a Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger. And while I certainly have no love for either company (what the fuck is up with the service charges – if I buy a $20 ticket how does it end up costing me $30 when all is said and done. If I go down to Soundscapes or Rotate This they charge me a $1 service fee for the same ticket), I feel as if the response in the blogosphere has been particularly knee-jerk and maybe a bit one sided.

I speaking particularly about the accusations that Ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets without ever offering them to the public at face value – there has been no equivocal proof that this is an actual company policy, and therefore, it really shouldn’t be printed as being so. That said, am I skeptical of their handling of the Springsteen tickets – absolutely. And I’m happy that now governments stepping in to investigate.  I also believe that there is an inherent conflict of interest in the company hosting it’s own ticket-scalping site; if these sites, like ebay, craig’slist and Livestub remained in the hands of third parties we wouldn’t be having this debate. Ticketmaster claims TicketsNow allows customers to resell “unwanted” tickets in a safe environment, but I truly believe that it’s really just TM wanting a piece of the pie.

Of course then there is the essential (but not actual) monopoly a merged TM-LN would have over the live music industry. In the cases of artists like Madonna, Jay-Z and U2, one company would control the artist, the venue ticket distribution. The argument is that with everything centralized cost will be cut and passed on to the consumer. Of course every time there is an election governments say the same thing about the tax payer and that never happens – and the tax payer is who government is beholden to. I highly doubt some monolithic company who really only answers to its shareholders is going to give a shit about the little guy.

Anyway, this clip from BNN does a good job of balancing the various interests involved in the potential merger. The guest Michael Hershfield obviously has a vested interest in seeing the merger blocked, but I think he argues the point of view of the average fan quite well. Wait 30 seconds for the ad to finish. They talk about the Muzak company going under before diving into the merger issue. And excuse the ass-hat from Dragon’s Den, cause, well he’s an ass-hat