I usually purchase tickets through Ticketmaster online, but both Ticketmaster and Live Nation charge crazy surcharge and service fees for horrible seats, it’s ridiculous. Unless with the merger they plan to cut back on the fees, I probably will try to find cheaper tickets elsewhere (if that’s even possible).

I hate Ticketmaster. I haven’t had to use them for years as I pretty much don’t go to many concerts anymore, but I hated it every single time I had to use them. Their charges are completely outrageous their web site sucks (only giving you a couple of minutes to checkout before they let your tickets go) and I’ve just had nothing but problems every single time. And they are frequently the only option. It’s either Ticketmaster or buy tickets from a scalper.

I’m surprised the monopoly courts aren’t all over them like they were Microsoft. Ticketmaster is worse in my opinion.

Ticket Master might be more aptly named Rapist-Who-Also-Sells-Tickets-Along-With-The-Services-Implicated-By-The-Title-Rapist.

Seriously.

Some friends and are going to see Pendulum in Vancouver in March, the ticket price was twenty-five bucks but with the added – and I can’t believe they call it this – convenience charge the grand total came to around thirty-seven dollars.

I mean… fuck.

I avoid TicketBastard like the plague and have frequently not gone to shows that only have tickets through TM. I already thought Live Nation and TM were one- of-the-same, so it wouldn’t really affect me but yes, I would refuse to buy tickets through either.

Basically I approach concerts by deciding how much I want to see the show. Some shows are going to sell out and I really want to see them, and I have to bend over and take it. Some shows I really want to see but I’m not worried they’ll sell out, I go to the box office and circumvent Ticketbastard altogether. Some shows I wish I could see but won’t die if I don’t, so I keep my eyes open for opportunitied to buy them cheap or win them. Some shows I’d go to if I happened into tickets. Some shows I could win tickets and I’d sell them. So, I guess the answer is, at times it’s a necessary evil, I try to minimize those times, but I don’t deny myself the experience just to spite them (someone else would buy that ticket anyway, I’m only harming myself). My last show a $37 ticket cost me $55. I also went to one show a couple years ago, the ticket price was $20, it would have been $32 through TM, I went to the box office as I knew it wouldn’t sell out. I expect what will happen is just more of the same, maybe in prettier packaging with these two in cahoots, and they’ve got us by the short hairs if we want to go to concerts. So, no, it won’t affect what I do.

i hate ticketmaster with a passion, but for some shows it seems that it’s the only option i have. though i’d love to be a badass and boycott ticketmaster, i have to admit i care about my music too much to sacrifice it.
i mean, sure, i bitch to no end about their so-called convenience charges (really? they charge for you to print the ticket on your own paper using your own ink. remind me what they’re charging for??) but if i have to shell out an extra 10 bucks to see a band i love, i’ll kick myself later.

OMG! This is a horrible situation.
It used to be you could overcome ticket surcharges by buying direct from the venue. This is no longer a viable option for popular shows (the ones that sell out in minutes) as Ticketmaster contracts with the venues require a pre-sale option for all sales, exclusively at TM.
While working for Live Nation, I discovered that both TM and Live Nation were reselling their tickets online as ‘brokers’. So the only way you could buy the good seats was to pay double their value through these sites.
Is this merger a good thing? Let’s compare it to other similar mergers that could have taken place:

Satan and Hitler
Jeffrey Dalmer and Ted Bundy
Merril Lynch and Bank of America (crap, this really happened and now BoA is getting a bail out lol)

@Thegary i think the first of your three similar mergers took place as well.

Check this out

the new worry is that, upon merger, the site will become a giant auction (a la TicketsNow) and getting tickets to a show operated via this company will depend, not on first-come, first-serve, but how much you personally can pony up. This is retarded!

TicketsNow. A Ticketmaster company.

@Thegary exactly. and they got in trouble the other day with Springsteen, as they were shunting people to the TicketsNow site, forcing auctioning. As the article says, they were essentially scalping their own tickets.

Good for The Boss. Someone finally called them out on it. Of course, they have been doing it for better than 10 years. Maybe other performers will join this. They will be the ones who eventually get screwed by this merger. Live Nation has never been known as talent friendly. But in the end, it is us, the consumers, who get the KY Free ramrod.

@Thegary ha! well, i try to avoid ticketmaster/live nation whenever possible. most of the acts i see are small-time, so the tickets are cheap and released thru smaller ticket services (ticketweb, ducat king). Plus, too, for smaller venue-type acts, you can typically show up at the venue or venue office and buy without any fees whatsoever.

That is awesome. I am all about supporting small local talent in obscure venues. Unfortunately, this is becoming harder and harder to do. The days of the starving artist working hard and suffering for his art are slowly coming to an end in the instant gratification society we are becoming. Take a look at the grammy awards. How many artists actually worked to craft their art. I counted at least 3 American Idol contestants (the bane of today’s music industry IMO)

@Thegary aside from Radiohead, the whole thing sucked, as the Grammys usually do. I love the article in the current Time magazine about AutoTune. did you read it yet?

and now this: http://consumerist.com/5150795/ticketmaster-and-live-nation-agree-to-merge

holy crap. this is hilarious. I love “Ticketmaster Chairman Barry Diller says the merger will benefit customers, who are frequently “frustrated by their ticket buying experiences.” Oh! So by merging the two companies most responsible for those frustrations, we’ll cancel them out!” Thats great. And as if they read my earlier post,TM chairman blames the artists. I can tell you first hand that the artists have little or no say in ticket prices. It IS indeed set by the producers, promotors, and presenters (all of which would be Live Nation for their shows). Either he is ignorant of how the industry works or he just told a bald-faced lie.

@Thegary the latter.