Taylor Swift - Midnights

C'mon I don't think it would be out of character for Taylor to sell VIP packages but also want to make sure there was no dynamic pricing for the lower priced tickets. I don't think having the former necessarily means she'd be fine with the later. She's smart and savvy, I'm sure she saw the blowback Springsteen got for it and hoped to avoid it.

Maybe! Springsteen got blowback, but he still sold out the tour, and never said a word about it publicly, let alone reversed his position. I think it's here to stay, and in fact has been in effect for a couple of years already. If anything, if Taylor Swift went out of her way not to have dynamic pricing her people would probably have said something about it.

Yeah, if anything I'm wondering if it's just going to end up another thing Ticketmaster forces on the artists. "Oh, you don't like dynamic pricing? Good luck with all those other venues!"

Someone in my office posted on Slack, for those buying tickets (which doesn't include me): "Use your phone/cellular, and not our work Wifi, or else everyone will get flagged by Ticketmaster for being on the same network... they’ll boot you out of the queue because you’ll be flagged as a potential bot"

So word to the wise, I guess.

Everything I have ever heard about this stuff is that Ticketmaster in a sense exists to take the heat off artists. The number one reason ticket prices are high is because artists ok higher prices, to make more money. If they wanted prices to be lower, prices would be lower; we can thank the Eagles for recognizing there's a lot more money to be wrung out of fans. At the same time, a big stage spectacular like Taylor Swift puts on costs a lot of money, so I have no idea what the minimum ticket price would be for her to even break even, let alone make hundreds of millions of dollars.

The number one reason ticket prices are high is because artists ok higher prices

That.... seems to be really at odds with statements from artists recently about the difficulties of touring right now precisely BECAUSE they don't want to raise tickets. I mean obviously the Taylor Swifts of the world operate at an entirely different level, but I think putting most of the blame on high ticket prices on the artists is disingenuous at best.

Josh is correct. If supply is low and demand is high, fans will scalp these tickets at absurdly high prices in the secondary market no matter what. So artists have to decide whether they keep the scalping money themselves (through Ticketmaster reselling, VIP meet-and-greet packages and dynamic pricing etc. etc.) or keep them artificially low (through something like Verified Fan). Bruce and Taylor made their decisions (which is probably why neither of them are talking about any of this). Those TM fees are usually split between TM and the venue once the artists take their gigantic % (at this level, usually 90-95, or Jimmy Buffett's famous 105) of the base ticket sales.

I mean, undoubtedly true with some artists. I just push back at the blanket statement of, "ticket prices are high because artists ok higher prices".

This was pretty interesting:

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1120252212/does-ticketmaster-have-a-monopoly-on-live-events

Pretty early on, the first guest (CFO of Live Nation Joe Berchtold, so grain of salt, I guess) insists the ticket prices are set by artists, and Ticketmaster executes what the artist wants to do. Ticketmaster et al. are of course making money on top of the ticket price (hence the fees), but that base ticket price is set by the act and their people.

But who knows, supposedly even Pearl Jam had dynamic pricing for their most recent tour so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(And yeah, we're mostly talking about the expensive tickets being charged by those top acts.)

Artists with leverage definitely set their own prices. There's 0 chance Taylor and Bruce were surprised by the dynamic-pricing and resale shenanigans. Artists who play smaller clubs who could easily be replaced (business-wise) by others who can draw the same or better crowds have no leverage and therefore have less clout to negotiate things like low ticket prices or Ticketmaster fees.

lmao what a clusterfuck

Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.

— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022

Is that the real Ticketmaster account? lol

That's so fucked up. I wonder what percentage of tix from the "presale" went to fans.

that you had to ask if that's the real Ticketmaster is really lol @ Twitter jeez

Taylor should circumvent Ticketmaster and tour farmers markets with Neil Young.

Holy fuck, that is really fucked up.

They're going to have to invent a new category of venue larger than football stadiums to accommodate her future tours.

i guess because of the amount of tickets on "secondary markets" that it's too late for Taylor to be like "i'm refunding everyone and starting all over again" huh

I'm really curious to know what she will, or even can, do. Announce another whole tour? Extend a whole new leg? Doesn't seem like enough gaps in the dates to add that many shows in between stops.

I predict she won't do shit. And that includes marshaling her "army" to help take down Ticketmaster.

Josh you seem really cynical and bitter towards her. I mean, she may not always have the best answer, but it seems like she has a decent track record of at least trying to apologize to her fans for problems.

Cynical for sure! If she wanted to make a difference she probably could, though as those that tried before her discovered it would come at great expense and inconvenience. But bitter? Nah, fans have no right to see her live and she has no obligation to do anything for them. Economically speaking, this outcome makes total sense. I'm strictly armchair in this brouhaha. I just find it gross.

I don’t get why so many people want to see her live in the first place. I would say I’m a moderate to serious fan of her music, depending on the album… but it’s not like her singing or musicianship are the focus of the appeal, at least for me (it’s the songwriting/recording). I’ve never particularly enjoyed seeing her perform on TV or whatever.

Last night, out of boredom/curiosity, I turned on the Reputation tour doc… and had to turn it right off, it was so not my thing (and Reputation is probably my second-favorite album of hers).

I guess you have to be a true “fan,” in every respect, to want to see her do her thing onstage… and all these people are!

xp - Even looking at it solely from the cynical/economic standpoint, even just adding more shows sense, no?

Iirc that's what Garth Brooks did/does. He just keeps adding shows until he sates demand. But I don't think it's as easy to do that (relatively speaking) when you have a huge state of the art touring spectacular like a lot of pop stars have.

xxp Yeah I saw her once, on the Speak Now tour, and it was fun, she was fine. But live performance is never going to be her strongest suit. Lots of forced, on-the-nose between songs patter etc. (I actually got a free media pass for that tour, I wonder if they even bother with those any more.)

The real scoop is that "Mean" is actually about Josh In Chicago.

Can't remember where I saw it, but someone did some math on the alleged demand numbers Ticketmaster was pushing, the stadium capacities and calendar and apparently she'd have to perform nightly for like two and a half years to meet the demand.

Lol, yeah, exactly, she can only play so much!

I've seen her twice, the first on the Speak Now tour (where iirc she was still kind of in aw shucks, pre-supermodel strut mode, and she had a fake front porch set with someone feeding a stuffed goat) and the second part of a big radio station obligation holiday thing (where I was standing next to her mom). The vibe was definitely pretty different between the two. The holiday show reminded me of any number of huge pop star show, so if that's what you're into, that's what you're gonna get.

Sure this was going to end in tears for some anyway, given the demand, but that still doesn't excuse Ticketmaster fucking things up royally.

otm

taylor swift's family has been part of america's ruling class, why not be cynical?

Josh said that to her mom, she she elbowed him in the solar plexus (Taylor was performing "Our Song" at that moment).

ehhhh: https://instagram.com/stories/taylorswift/2974356694747521845?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=Zjc2ZTc4Nzk=

I figured she'd address it somehow. I'm both encouraged by that response, in that I didn't expect her to punch back directly at Ticketmaster at all, but also.. like it really reads like basically, "yeah, this tour is all sold out and I hope we can figure out something for my next tour" and doesn't address some of the other issues.

I don't know, I don't care about getting tickets, I just hope this momentum of anti-Ticketmaster sentiment keeps some pressure on.

Check out the Springsteen thread for his own belated response, which is basically a big shrug.

I'm starting to think the only solution to this stuff is to seriously curtail secondary market sales, but I'm not sure how you legally go about doing that. Ed Sheeran supposedly limits how much his tickets can be resold for, I don't know how that works.

Definitely love the trend towards big artists saying, "sorry you are too poor to see me, sucks 2 b u, buy my new album!".

2.4 million people(?!)

A guy I work with (who was lukewarm about the new album, so I was surprised he went for tickets) says he managed to get great seats in the Capital One presale.

To me, the Capital One thing is like an extra little twist of the knife... I've taken advantage of such things in the past where I could (e.g., an "Amex Presale"), but the idea of needing to have a particular credit card feels extra moded.

Also throw in the fact that football season ticket holders in these venues also get a special pre-sale. I heard it was six tickets each at Soldier Field, so of course there's no tickets left.

^^Wow. In some cases that might be the only benefit of having season tickets (Cough Cough Houston Texans).

Saw a post on reddit where a Texans (I believe) season ticket holder said that their special pre-sale was sold out in under a minute.

Antitrust investigation opened up? Good luck with that, DOJ.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkyEa6UWAAIu6Pv.jpg

“Like Capital One, Citi offers cardholders early access to concert presales through its Citi Entertainment program, which has no fee to access and is available to all Citi credit card and debit card holders. American Express offers some cardholders preferential access to tickets for Broadway shows and concerts, in addition to exclusive entrances at some venues.”

Keep journalism alive

Rather delayed but finally giving this a full listen. Low key electronic Taylor really is remarkably good.

I gave it a spin a few weeks ago after loving "Glitch" on Four Tet's Spotify playlist. Pretty solid album!

I re-listened today… every track after the first three still ended up being a skip for me, except for “Karma” & “Sweet Nothing” (“Hits Different” is also OK).

Curious: what’s the consensus about the meaning of the lyric “at tea time” in Anti-Hero? Does Taylor mean to imply that her critics are upper crust snobs drinking tea at a country club, or is it a draggy reference about serving tea?