It's been a rough couple weeks for Ticketmaster-- and thank God for that. Just as the biggest ticketing company in the country tries to join forces with Live Nation, the biggest live promotion company in the country, the world-conquering twosome has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks that will hopefully cause the Justice Department to nix their proposed $2.5 billion merger sometime soon. Here's a round-up of their troubles:

 

-- On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights began a hearing that featured testimony from the heads of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, along with a vocal anti-TM/LN independent-promoter contingent, according to The Chicago Sun-Times. No decisions were made, but senators including Utah's Orrin Hatch and New York's Charles Schumer were clearly skeptical of the deal as they grilled the TM/LN bigwigs about increased prices and unfair business practices. Reuters reports that Schumer in particular took aim at Ticketmaster's ludicrous professional scalping site TicketsNow, saying, "Shouldn't Ticketmaster sell TicketsNow?"

 

-- Speaking of TicketsNow, The Wall Street Journal reports (via Wired) that the Ticketmaster-owned company settled with the state of New Jersey after screwing over thousands of Bruce Springsteen fans earlier this month by redirecting them to the mark-up site when normal-priced Bruce tickets were still available. The company will pay New Jersey $350,000 and compensate about 2,200 TicketsNow victims.

 

-- With a Senate Judiciary Committee breathing down their neck and a $350,000 penalty bill to contend with, you'd think Ticketmaster would be trying to distance themselves from their own inherently corrupt TicketsNow site. Not so! CBC News writes that another TicketsNow fuck up has occurred, this time regarding Canadian dates for Leonard Cohen's upcoming tour. Though tickets for the shows weren't supposed to go on sale until yesterday, many overpriced seats were already up for the taking via TicketsNow before that. The same thing happened with tickets for No Doubt's summer reunion tour, slated to go on sale March 7 but already available on TicketsNow, according to the L.A. Times. Shameless.

 

Simply: If Ticketmaster can't handle its current responsibilities properly, why give them even more control over the concert-going business? According to The New Jersey Star-Ledger,the Justice Department investigation of the merger could take months to complete.

Posted by Ryan Dombal on Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:00pm

 

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news

Well, Live Nation tickets sucks royally! They added ridiculous fees, including parking charge in regular ticket. Now, if you aren't driving, you still pay parking. And if you have a car full of goers, that is one hell of a parking fee total in that car. A $97 ticket totalled $131... the highest fees more than Ticketmaster. Unreal man!

Thats complete bullshit honestly. Companies should be promotoing things like taking public transit to concerts.

But when you get bands putting gigs on in the middle of an area without good transport links is when you get the problems.

Reznor Lashes Out at Live Nation Again

 

Trent is on a roll right now. Though Live Nation's veritable monopoly on America's outdoor amphitheaters means Reznor is forced to do business with them for the upcoming Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction summer tour, he's none too happy about it.

He already posted a thought-out missive decrying the potential Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger and now he's taking on Live Nation's lame marketing strategies to promote the tour. In a Twitter post, he assesses a slapped-together widget-sharing NIN/JA contest thusly: "Bad idea, bad execution and no input from the acts." Sure, it's possible that someone in the NIN camp signed off on the contest without Reznor's knowledge, so his anger might be misdirected. (Emails to representatives of NIN, Jane's Addiction, and Live Nation regarding the contest have not yet been returned.)

 

And if you're thinking, "Why go into business with Live Nation if you're just going to complain about it?", well, he addressed that issue in his earlier rant: "I fully realize by playing those venues we are getting into bed with all these guys. I've learned to choose my fights and at this point in time it would be logistically too difficult to attempt to circumvent the venues/promoter/ticketing infrastructure already in place for this type of tour. For those of you about to snipe 'it's your fault for playing there, etc.'-- I know it is." Rock, meet hard place.

 

The Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction tour starts May 8 and, if recent NIN outings are any indication, it will have you seeing stars. Good stars.

Posted by Ryan Dombal on April 2, 2009 at 3 p.m.

 

 

http://pitchfork.com/news/34990-reznor-lashes-out-at-live-nation-again/