Ticket Prices Are Out of Control, And We Need to Act

Earlier this week, I went online to look into tickets for a concert I wanted to see in September. The ticket prices were outrageous ($250+ for anything resembling a view of the stage). What was really appalling was finding out the “service fees” attached to a ticket. Ticketmaster charges 25% in fees on top of the face value of the ticket. (Does “face value” even mean anything when the real price is so much higher?) Ticketmaster, in a coinage worthy of “1984” calls these “convenience charges.”

In organizing its upcoming tour, The Cure wanted to make tickets affordable for the fans. So their ticket prices start at $20. Imagine customers’ surprise when the $20 ticket came with a $25 fee. Fans were very upset, and The Cure negotiated with Ticketmaster to refund $5 - $10 to some of the fans. Still, that’s a 50% markup. Ridiculous.

There’s a whole debate to be had about why the base prices for concerts (and sporting events) have skyrocketed. This isn’t about that problem.

Instead, we need to get serious about cracking down on fees and looking at the ticket sale monopoly. The Justice Department opened an investigation into Ticketmaster owner Live Nation last November. According to the New York Times, it is investigating whether Live Nation “has abused its power over the multi-billion dollar live music industry”:  

Members of the antitrust division’s staff at the Justice Department have in recent months contacted music venues and players in the ticket market, asking about Live Nation’s practices and the wider dynamics of the industry.

In addition, Live Nation officials came under fire during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January. It would appear the topic is one of the few bipartisan efforts; Republicans and Democrats alike are critical of the company:  

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, summed it up when he told (a Live Nation executive): “I want to congratulate you and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement: You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.”

Now, I know there are some free-marketeers who will say the market is determining what is acceptable, and if people are willing to pay fees, so be it. But the free market only works when there is competition. Right now, it’s not a free market: Live Nation has a monopoly.

According to Fortune, over 90% of tickets aren’t even released to the public. The majority of tickets get allotted to credit card company promotions and secondary market brokers. And who owns many of those brokers? That’s right - Live Nation. When Ticketmaster/Live Nation finally releases that 10% of publicly-available tickets, brokers’ bots snap them up. The average fan doesn’t stand a chance at getting an affordable, good seat.

I strongly recommend making your voice heard. Contact your representatives and senators. Let them know you support this bipartisan effort.

Give the music back to the fans.

NEWS AND NOTES:

FACEBOOK LAUNCHES SUBSCRIPTION VERIFICATION PLAN: Facebook owner Meta has announced a paid plan for subscribers to have “verified accounts” that will display a badge similar to Twitter’s infamous “blue checkmark.” According to Reuters: 

The Meta Verified service will give users a blue badge after they verify their accounts using a government ID and will cost $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 a month on Apple's iOS system and Google-owned Android…

Let’s hope the Meta verification process is better than Twitter’s. Last year, when it launched the “Twitter Blue” paid plan, we saw a bunch of fake accounts which prompted Twitter to make changes to its policy.

YOU CAN NOW COPYRIGHT SOME AI-GENERATED CONTENT: Gotta give credit to the U.S. Copyright Office for moving relatively quickly and coming up with guidance about AI content. In essence, you can’t copyright something that is AI-generated in full. There needs to be substantial human involvement. So your ChatGPT-generated science fiction doesn’t qualify for a copyright. The key, according to the Copyright Office, is how much work was done by a human author. According to Mashable:

(A) user "may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way" that it becomes an original work based on the user's creativity, and such a work could be copyrighted. Ultimately, "what matters is the extent to which the human had creative control over the work's expression," said (Copyright Office Director Shira) Perlmutter.

This is a good start, but the rules will need to evolve as the technology does. How will we determine how much control is required to produce a copyright-worthy work? For now, the Copyright Office is accepting submissions and considering them on a case-by-case basis. 

NEWS SITES SEEING A DROP IN TRAFFIC: Visits to news websites are dropping, in some cases by as much as 20-30% or more, year over year. The excellent analytics site shows us just how precipitous things have become for sites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com:

You can see that sites that improved their audience tend to publish soft news. People.com and Variety.com saw huge gains. 

LINKS AND LIKES

BASEBALL TO SHOW REPLAY CENTER LIVE: Major League Baseball (MLB) has struck a deal that will allow game viewers a live, behind-the-scenes peek at its replay center. In partnership with Zoom, games broadcast on MLB Network and Apple TV will show what’s going on in the (New York-based) center as it’s deciding on a replay. 

This welcome bit of transparency should pull back the curtain on what has been an opaque process. According to an MLB press release, the system will be powered by Zoom, and the facility will be renamed the “Zoom Replay Operations Center.” It’s only a matter of time before someone dubs it “Z-ROC.”

COKE INVITES PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE A.I.-GENERATED ART: While many companies are concerned about the use of A.I., Coca-Cola is embracing it. The company has unveiled a website called “Create Real Magic,” where users can generate Coke-themed artwork based on a simple prompt. Here’s the one I “created”:

The site is fun to play with but requires verified registration to use. This is an unnecessary roadblock to using a gimmick that benefits the company, which can use your “work” in any way it sees fit.

NEGATIVE WORDS IN ONLINE HEADLINES GENERATE MORE CLICKS: The use of negative, emotionally charged words leads to more readers, according to a new study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. It analyzed more than 100,000 variations of news stories from Upworthy.com. The bottom line?

(W)e found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates, and positive words decreased consumption rates … For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%.

Upworthy, which had its heyday in the early 2010s, aggregated stories and pumped out a ton of clickbait. It was hugely successful at first, but a change in the Facebook algorithm drastically cut its traffic. It proved to be a good site to study because it ran each story with different headlines to see which worked best. (Hat tip to Nieman Lab.) 

BEYOND THE REMOTE

WOMAN FROM “WOODSTOCK” ALBUM COVER PASSES AWAY: It’s one of the iconic photographs from the 1960s: A couple snuggling under a blanket at “Woodstock.”

We’re sad to report that the woman from that couple has passed away. Bobbi Ercoline died this past Saturday after a lengthy illness. Her pictured then-boyfriend, Nick, whom she later married, paid tribute on Facebook to Bobbi, his wife of 54 years:

She lived her life well, and left this world in a much better place. If you knew her, you loved her. She lived by her saying, "Be kind". As a School Nurse she always championed the kids ... ALWAYS!

Our condolences to the Ercoline family.

REMOTE NOTES/LINKEDIN EDITION

Newsletter #44

Founder/Writer: Steve Safran

Editor: John Cockrell

Copyright 2023

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