Today is a sad day to be a Joe.
Concerts are my vice. It's not only one of my favorite forms of entertainment, but it's something I almost never feel bad about spending money on. Going to concerts not only gives me a fantastic Tuesday night but also helps financially support artists I really care about. It's a win-win.
And ever since I started going to shows on my own at the end of high school, I've had remarkable luck buying tickets. I don't recall a time when I ever really wanted to go to a show but couldn't get a ticket, and I don't recall ever paying a price that I didn't think was within the error bars of "reasonable." The only times I've paid over $200 for a ticket were for Elton John's last North American tour show and Paul McCartney, and if you're gonna pick two shows to cross that threshold, that's not bad company.
But today, on the Ides of March, in our Lord's year 2023, for the first time in recent memory, I didn't get what I wanted.
The Cure are touring North America for the first time in seven years this summer and are playing three shows at the Hollywood Bowl in LA. I was supposed to be visiting home in Chicago when they were stopping in California but was so determined to go that I changed my outbound flight to leave from Los Angeles, not San Francisco, and was planning to overnight bus there the night of May 22nd to get there in time for the May 23rd show. I'm a proud polygamist when it comes to adoring great bands, but the line from The Cure to my heart is perhaps the straightest of any. They're not my favorite band of all time, but they move me more than any other. I was not going to miss them.
But my plans were complicated by the fact that Robert Smith, The Cure's enigmatic front man, is insistent on being as protective as possible of his fans who are trying to buy tickets for this tour. To avoid crazy dynamic pricing, the band is mandating all tickets be sold below a certain price threshold. To cut off exploitative secondary market scalping, they are making all tickets non-transferrable except through an exchange where tickets are resold at face value. And perhaps most prohibitively, to block out any bots trying to score tickets en masse, the primary sale is only open to buyers who get selected through Ticketmaster's Verified Fan program.
And I wasn't selected for the Verified Fan program. I'm currently in the email-refreshing purgatory commonly referred to as "the waitlist" alongside a bunch of still-weeping Taylor Swift fans.
Is this going to change my plans? I hope not. I'm gonna find a way into that venue. But it did give me a chance to reflect on some of these new ideas to de-suckify Ticketmaster.
First, I don't like the fact that only certain fans get selected for the Verified Fan program, and not just because it adversely impacted me. It feels like an unnecessary punch in the gut to not even get a chance to buy tickets. If I were to walk up to a box office, ask to buy a ticket for a show, and the broker says, "We're sold out," it would sting, but I get it. If I were to walk up to a box office, ask to buy a ticket for a show, and the broker just says, "No," it would sting a heck of a lot more. That's what not getting selected for the Verified Fan program feels like. You're just told "No," and you don't really know why, and you sort of can't do anything about it.
But putting that aside, it's becoming very clear that if artists want to start having more control over how their tickets are distributed, they just have to hold Ticketmaster's feet closer to the fire. Ticketmaster can't afford much more bad PR; the antitrust watchdogs are sniffing the ground as we speak, and Ticketmaster knows that. And they clearly have the capabilities to solve a lot of the consumer complaints around the process because Robert Smith asked for the solutions, and Ticketmaster seems to have sort of just done it. Are we ever going to get a fix for the extortionate fees? No. Not without Congress. It's a crime, but like petty theft and "Disco Duck," it's just one we have to live with. But controlling ticket prices and limiting secondary market scalpers and blocking out the bots? That seems doable. Now we just need artists to be more annoying in insisting these practices are the norm, not the Robert Smith Special.
And let me be clear: I don't expect all artists or management groups to want to utilize these practices. They're great for fans but not always great for business. As one example, using dynamic pricing rather than setting a price ceiling will almost always help tours generate more revenue. But I'm hopeful a lot of artists will adopt them.
Being a ticket seller will never win you popularity contests. You have 50,000 fans jockeying for 20,000 seats. Some people are going to get the short stick, and those people will be pissed. But I'm happy more artists are starting to implement tactics to ensure if only 20,000 people can be at the show, it's 20,000 fans who are genuinely dying to be there. Even if that means I can't buy Cure tickets.
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