Technology Blows

tb ticketmaster pt 2
===

​[00:00:00]

Dan and Meg Talk Meg Goes Birding with Meg and Dan, The Podcast
---

Dan Slimmon: Welcome listeners to the very first episode of our brand new podcast, Dan and Meg Talk Meg Goes Birding with Meg and Dan: The Podcast. This is a new mini podcast that we do every time Meg comes on Technology Blows. Say hi, Meg

Meg: Hello

Dan Slimmon: That's Meg. Meg Goes Birding is her Instagram account.

Meg: Yep it is @

Dan Slimmon: meggoesbirding, check it out. Follow it. Right now up there, Meg, um, I was, I was scrolling through it the, uh, the other day. [00:01:00] Um, first of all, snowy egret. Love to see a snowy egret.

When did you see that?

Meg: and I saw that. Uh that's an older one Um that's from 2024 lot of the stuff that's on there right now is from uh South Carolina which is where my my parents live and uh my mom's a big birder so when I go to visit her we go on little birding trips and she has like a crazy camera like one of those really long telephoto lenses So she takes really good pictures and I take okay pictures Um and uh good news for devoted followers of uh Meg Goes Birding my birding account which is that uh between the last episode and this episode I went to Maui was really fun and uh I took some bird pictures And I have not posted them yet but I will soon So picture drop coming up

a bird picture drop coming up

So uh if you wanna see some uh Hawaiian birds Uh unfortunately my most successful birding trip in [00:02:00] Hawaii was um in The middle of a torrential downpour um on top of Haleakalā the volcano Uh so uh for that I did not take any pictures because it was raining so hard Um but I saw some real cool stuff that uh you're just gonna have to go see on your own someday

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, you just,

Meg: update Thanks for checking in

Dan Slimmon: thanks so much. I just wanted to also point out it's not just, it's not just birds. There's some good... There's some pictures of,

Meg: That's

Dan Slimmon: adorable turtles following. They're covered in algae, and they're crawling all over a log, and then one of them falls in the algae-covered water, and it's just a delight.

So check it out, everybody. Meg goes birding.

Meg: Maybe someday I'll get more than 150 followers on this account that I

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. I mean, you'll probably get at least two from this.

Meg: nice

Dan Slimmon: Uh, thanks everybody for listening. Catch us next time on Dan and Meg Talk Meg Goes Birding with Meg and Dan, the podcast. Uh, it's been a pleasure to have you.

Intro: Industry consolidation and Clear Channel
---

Dan Slimmon: And now welcome back for part [00:03:00] two of this Technology Blows episode on the ticket selling platform that everyone hates and hates to hate, Ticketmaster.

Uh, And welcome back Meg Sinnick, my guest

Meg: Hello Thanks for having me

Dan Slimmon: Um, so, so when we left off last time, we had just seen Pearl Jam attempt to take on Ticketmaster, the new leviathan of ticketing, and get more or less law mogged, just Marty Bergmanned within an inch of their life. So that didn't go great for them. It didn't go great for music, didn't go great for America.

The whole congressional investigation into the Ticketmaster antitrust in the early '90s gets dropped, and this touches off an avalanche of industry consolidation. During the '90s, thousands of concert promoters, radio stations, record labels, talent agencies all get bought up by [00:04:00] deep-pocketed financiers, and they get squished together into soulless conglomerates with names like SFX and Clear Channel and Front Line Management.

Uh, did you-- I, I d- just, I just learned this the other day. I didn't know about this. Um, when I listened to local radio, local alternative rock radio in high school, 93.3, Planet 93.3 in Jacksonville, Florida, uh, I didn't realize that most of that content was-- That was a Clear Channel affiliated station, I think, as far as I can tell.

Um, and so that DJ who would talk about all the parties in Jacksonville, Florida, and all the cool concerts coming to Jacksonville, Florida, was based in Cleveland

Meg: Wow Yeah I guess I never really thought about that Like um uh back I mean I would say the the the heyday of my radio listening was probably to early 2000s

[00:05:00] Um yeah

Dan Slimmon: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Meg: where were we at in the radio world then

Dan Slimmon: At that time

Meg: any real lo local stations

Dan Slimmon: By the, by the mid-2000s or late 2000s, it, they, we kinda like got rid of all those. They ate them all they ate them all up, and that's why there are no local DJs anymore.

And then eventually Clear Channel got bought by, um, Live Nation, and Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. So it all just, you know

Meg: So all the radio stations are now owned by Ticketmaster

Dan Slimmon: Um, all the ra- radio stations are, I think they, they spun off into some... Like, they're always spinning off the, you know, they'll buy up a, a couple billion dollars worth of one thing, and then they'll sell off a different couple billion dollars worth of something else. So it's probably all owned by somebody else now.

But, uh, but it's definitely not, they're definitely not, like, individual companies located in the places that they serve one of the most important de- deals to shake out of this whole consolidation is that in 2010, Live Nation, which [00:06:00] is the industry's most powerful concert promoter and venue operator, merges with Ticketmaster, the industry's most worthless turd, and they become Ticketmaster, Live Nation, Live Nation, Ticketmaster, one big thing.

So in keeping with the Stop Making Sense allegory from part one, this corresponds to the moment in Stop Making Sense when all the performers merge their bodies into a single massive stage-spanning pancake of flesh. You remember that classic shot from Stop Making Sense

Meg: remember that that body horror uh little detour that they took and it stopped making sense.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, it's, I think it's at a, it's at a moment. It was between songs.

Meg: dancing too hard

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Uh, yeah, Jonathan, I mean, it, it, it's, it's beautiful. Jonathan Demme's a, a genius.

Meg: say it really it really um you know says something about the the music like how we're really all one

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Yeah.

Meg: by the music

Dan Slimmon: I never thought about that before

Meg: And It's, like it's beautiful but it's also horrific

Dan Slimmon: it's too many eyes [00:07:00]

for,

Meg: Too many

Dan Slimmon: to, to be on a rock show stage.

Meg: Right Right

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Um, anyway, so from, from 1994, music industry power accumulates in fewer and fewer hands, and as we'll see by the end of the episode, this concentration of power will ultimately drag Live Nation, Ticketmaster back into the antitrust arena.

And God willing, we don't totally know yet, but could lead to actual consequences

Meg: I'll believe it when I see it

Paul Allen brings Ticketmaster into the Cyber Age
---

Dan Slimmon: so the year before the Pearl Jam hearing, 1993, was the beginning of the end for Ticketmaster's Fred Rosen era. This is the year, 1993 is the year that Microsoft co-founder and childhood friend of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, buys Ticketmaster.

Do you know Paul Allen?

Meg: Okay Uh I've heard the name but no I didn't know that he bought Ticketmaster

Dan Slimmon: He sure did. He bought every-- He bought lots of stuff. He left Mi-- He, he left Microsoft in 1983, uh, and, uh, [00:08:00] to recover from Hodgkin's lymphoma, which he did. And, He's got a new lease on life, So he's just gonna buy things that he, properties that he, he loves.

Uh, for example, Paul Allen loves the Seattle Seahawks. Ever since he was a boy, you know, he's wished he could be a Seahawk. So he takes some of his infinite Microsoft money, and he buys the Seattle Seahawks. So now he's a Seahawk

Meg: Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: tha-

Meg: life to be able to buy a sports team It's like a thing a thing that'll never happen to either of us

Dan Slimmon: No, I, they would have to be really bad for me to be able to afford to buy his sports team . No, you certainly could not. Yeah, maybe a bocce team. Maybe I could sponsor a bocce, a bocce league or something.

Meg: my Baci team I own this Baci

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I'm on your bocce team now because I bought it. he, he adores, Paul Allen adores classic animated films, so one day he [00:09:00] goes out and gets himself a nice 18% of DreamWorks SKG.

Meg: Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: And in 1993, Paul Allen buys Ticketmaster because he's captivated by the siren song of e-commerce. So he spend, he spends a cool 300 million smackarooneys on Ticketmaster, H-h-his vision for Ticketmaster is, is the World Wide Web, right? And that's 1993. This internet thing is really starting to look important. Um, about a year later, they'll have websites that you can log into, which is huge

Meg: It's wild cause to think back to 1993 like there wasn't a lot going on in 1993

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Meg: web

Dan Slimmon: No, really

Meg: I w when was the heyday of AOL

Dan Slimmon: AOL was maybe '89 to '95

Meg: Oh okay All right That's earlier than I thought Never mind

Dan Slimmon: Um, but, but that was all-- But that wasn't like the World Wide Web, right? That was

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: sites that AOL has in [00:10:00] AOL.

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: Um, the, so the 1994 was when we first get cookies,

Meg: Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: which is, which is when you can start logging into things and also start buying, having a shopping cart on websites, and things really, like, exploded from there.

So yes. Yeah. Um, if anybody's interested in that, there's a two-parter on cookies. Go check back in the feed. It's a really good one

Meg: I might check that out

Dan Slimmon: the idea is on Ticketmaster, you go to ticketmaster.com, you buy the tickets there, and you print them out with your printer, and you bring the paper, the printed paper ticket to the concert Which honestly I have no problem with.

That's pretty nice. It's a pretty simple experience compared to like going and waiting in line at the box office. Seems like pretty good to me

Meg: Yeah no not a problem with that

Dan Slimmon: But part of the downside for Paul Allen is that this makes him Fred Rosen's boss. Uh, wow, you're so good at this. Uh, you're right. He's t- [00:11:00] he's terri- he's a terrible person to have a boss. He should never have one. Uh, and, and they, they are, like, fighting all the time. Paul Allen's like, "We- we're gonna do online ticket sales," and Fred Rosen is, like, an absolute piss baby about being told to build an online system.

He does not want to do it. he thinks people won't print their tickets at home. He thinks just people won't bother to do it. Wrong. They absolutely will, will do it. Um, another thing Fred Rosen thinks is that hackers will get in and, like, steal the tickets or, like, make con- counterfeit tickets and get into the venues for free.

Doesn't really become a thing. That, that never, that never really became a thing that happened. Um, so wrong again, Fred. And what nobody actually worries about, and they should have uh, is the real problem that online sicket- t- ticket sales will create, which is that it becomes too easy to get tickets online. but we'll, [00:12:00] we'll get to that.

Now, now Ticketmaster does eventually build online ticketing, as we know, and one day they flip it on. They're like, "All right, ticket, online ticket buying is on now. Anybody can buy tickets online." And all the ex- executives are, like, sitting in a room staring at a computer screen waiting for somebody to buy the first ticket online so they know that the system works.

And ding, the first purchase comes through. It's a ticket to a Seattle Mariners game, and they're, the, the executives are so excited that this is working that Paul Allen actually calls up the phone number of the customer that they, they just typed into the website and s- is like, "Good afternoon, sir. This is Ticketmaster.

We, we hope you don't mind us calling, but you're our first online buyer." Silence. Paul Allen's like, "Uh, I, I mean, um, we just, uh, we'd like to know why you chose to buy from the website instead of [00:13:00] going to the box office." And the customer says nothing. They're, like, waiting on the, for, like, 10 seconds for the customer to respond, and finally the customer says, "I bought on the website because I don't like talking to people, and I don't like talking to you."

Click.

I stan an antisocial king. Ticketmaster is doing about 90% of its business online within a year after launching this website.

It's just, like, all online now. Credit where credit is due, you know, this is an inv- innovation that fans actually like Is it an innovation worth what it costs us as a society? Debatable, right? But, but at the moment, it's, it's definitely worth building for Ticketmaster, and it's also just solely in terms of the ticket experience, buying a ticket online is better than waiting in line at the box office for an hour,

Meg: No I mean I buy everything Uh

all my tickets online [00:14:00] I mean there's a occasional like I don't know like a comedy show where I'll buy it at the door but that's the situation where like I know it's not gonna be sold out you know '

Dan Slimmon: Cause it's a local comedy show

Meg: go Right exactly I've made the decision to go last minute you

Dan Slimmon: Yes

Meg: It's like stuff like that But like I would say the majority of anything I buy where there's any risk of it being sold out I buy it online Yeah,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, why would you leave your house? Um, oh, by the way, I'm going to, uh, to the band, to see the band that you recommended. That's tomorrow.

Meg: about Wolves of Glendale

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, Wolves of Glendale

Meg: Have you listened to any of their music yet

Dan Slimmon: I listened to their Bee Movie song and I enjoyed that. And, um, and I haven't listened to anything else because I want to be surprised by the songs when I see them

Meg: because so much of their music is like narrative and comedic I think that's actually gonna be fine Like they uh they played a lot of new music the last time I saw them, so it was a lot of songs I had not heard And so usually when I go see a band and they play new songs I can [00:15:00] be like a little bit like All right all right you know But this I was just like on the edge of my seat I was just like I love this This is this is going somewhere And like you get you It's it's Because it's more plotty

than normal non-comedy music I think you're gonna have a great time.

Dan Slimmon: have a great time

Meg: I really stan I really stan my Wolves of Glendale Check them out folks They're

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Meg: They're

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Go see Wolves of Glendale if they're coming to your town. Check out their YouTube.

Meg: Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: I'll, I'll buy my ticket at the box office.

Meg: Are you going to

Dan Slimmon: Yeah

Meg: All right

Is it any

Dan Slimmon: Hope-

Meg: gonna

Dan Slimmon: hopefully it's not sold, sold out. I don't know. The space, the space doesn't usually sell out.

now, now in 1997... So in 1997, Paul Allen gets out of Ticketmaster. He sells the company. Um, weirdly, he sells it to Barry Diller, the Home Shopping Network guy.

Meg: Sure why not

Dan Slimmon: part of

Meg: you know he's he's a e-commerce guy I guess like

Dan Slimmon: Sure.

Meg: some ways

Dan Slimmon: Yep. and so the next year, like Fred, Fred Rosen and Barry Diller do not get along at all, even worse than Paul Allen, [00:16:00] and they're at each other's throats all the time.

So Fred Rosen gets out, and he leaves Ticketmaster, now meanwhile, so

Skyrocketing website load
---

Dan Slimmon: between 1996 and 2003, Ticketmaster's getting exclusive contracts with more and more venues across the country. Ticket prices rise between those two years of 82-- uh, uh, rise by 82%. and the average to-total Ticketmaster fee is about 27% of face value during this time

Meg: Yikes What is it today

Dan Slimmon: Uh, it's down to between like 20 and 23

Meg: Okay

Dan Slimmon: but, uh, still, you know, they get-- they make it back. Now, why they h- they-- what happened is they, um, the government said they had to have it all, they had to have all of the fees in one fee that you can see up front. And so they just move some of the fees around to, like, the resale process or to, you know, Lil Jon meet and greets or whatever, [00:17:00] 'cause now they own Live Nation.

They just, like, move the fees around. So, um, you're still paying just as much, but they can comply with the law. Fucking rules. but, you know, it was worse. They were making, they were making just-- they were just raking it in in 2003. So now, because they have this website, they're selling almost all their tickets on a central website.

Before this, they had, like, 11 different regional Ticketmaster phone numbers, and you call whichever number for whichever region you're gonna-- you're looking for shows in. Uh, now it's all under one website. They have one big database with all the tickets, and, uh, that's very convenient for buyers. It's very convenient for Ticketmaster, but it's also, it also becomes really hard to keep their website up, uh, because everybody in the nation is hitting the same website on the same servers to [00:18:00] buy tickets, and you can't buy tickets almost anywhere else.

So they get these huge traffic spikes when tickets go on sale, and it brings down their servers. Uh, so, so, so between 2003 and 2005, Ticketmaster spends hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D. Um, which is a little inside baseball, but, like, um, this is my, this is what I do is keep servers up. So I was, I was really interested to learn that, like, they're one of the first companies to do cross-- what's called cross data center replication,

Meg: Great

Dan Slimmon: one place in, like, California, and they have, they have a-another copy of their data in, like, Chicago, so that if any time, if, if, like, data, if their website in LA goes down, they can just pick it up with their website in Chicago and everything will be fine.

They're, they're, they're doing this in, like, 2005. I-- the, the first I heard, I'm, you know, in the industry, [00:19:00] the first I've heard of anybody doing this was, like, Netflix around 2012, 2013. So Ticketmaster really was a crazy ahead of the curve on this stuff.

Meg: Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: Good for them, I guess.

Meg: Yeah good for them

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah.

Meg: Nice

Dan Slimmon: it, it's, it's certainly a lot more profit for them.

But after a while, it starts to mean something darker too, because

Meg: Okay

Dan Slimmon: this scale-up of their web operations, not dark, dark, you know, still Ticketmaster.

But, like, they're scaling up,

Ticketmaster: Rise of the Machines
---

Dan Slimmon: they're scaling up how many tickets they can sell, and it sets the stage for the struggle that Ticketmaster will be locked in for the next, like, 20 years and even beyond. With all their inventory combined under one site and the ticket buying process totally automated, and all this fancy infrastructure that's resilient against huge traffic spikes, they've unwittingly created a Petri dish for [00:20:00] bots

Meg: Hmm Okay So when did bots

show up

Dan Slimmon: bots, bots start showing up around 2003, 2004 Uh, the, their, um, the earliest one that we know about is a company called, um, Wiseguy Tickets, it's these, like, three guys who start a company and they're selling-- They're buying up from 2002 to 2009, they're buying up, like, millions of tickets and selling them on resale websites like StubHub

Meg: Okay So StubHub is around at this point?

Dan Slimmon: StubHub is around at this point. Yes. Uh, and it's owned by eBay, and Ticketmaster does not like it, but there's nothing that they can really do about it yet and, and they, and they don't really like these guys buying up all their tickets with bots, but they don't care that much. Um, what they care about is that, like, they're being sold on StubHub instead of on Ticketmaster, [00:21:00] so StubHub's making profit that Ticketmaster could have made the Wiseguy Tickets guys, they, they've, they built all their stuff by hiring Bulgarian programmers over the internet to write their bots for them, and, and they're in, like, full racketeering mode.

They've got aliases, shell corporations. They're, they're lying to everybody about what their business does. They're lying to their ISP, to their landlords. They're lying to their own employees about what their business is. I mean, they're just like... They think they're international terrorists or something.

The head of this company thinks he's Castor fucking Troy, and he needs to get the, like, face-off surgery to hide from the FBI

Meg: Is this illegal though

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, it's legal

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: It's not even illegal, really.

Meg: Okay

Dan Slimmon: It's a little illegal. Parts of it are a little illegal, but it's fine really. The law- the most illegal thing is the law is all the [00:22:00] lying.

Meg: Okay

Dan Slimmon: Um, yeah. Is, so it's, it's like the FBI... It's like he got the cast, the, the, the, the face-off surgery, but the FBI wasn't even looking for him, so now he's gonna spend the rest of his life looking like Tr- John Travolta for, for no reason I don't know.

It's, it, it-- You can tell, like, it felt like it should be illegal. It was like, it feels like this is illegal, so I guess we just have to be extra crime mode what finally does draw law enforcement attention onto Wiseguy Tickets is an incident when, as an Arkansas deputy attorney general would later put it, "All hell broke loose with Hannah Montana

Meg: Are we in the Hannah Montana years yet

Dan Slimmon: Yes, we're in the Hannah Montana years, Meg.

Meg: I

Dan Slimmon: Uh

Meg: was a little old for Hannah Montana so I don't really have a good sense of when she was around

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, right

Meg: so I'm gonna guess mid-2000s cause I

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, 2000 to 2007. We're, here we are, right? 2007, yeah.

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: eye

Meg: [00:23:00] a whole world of Disney Channel stuff that happened while we were in college that

Dan Slimmon: Exactly

Meg: people reference all the time like my younger friends and I'll just be like What the fuck

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, what the hell are you talking about?

Meg: are

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, The Suite Life with Zack & Cody, right.

Meg: Who are they I don't know

Dan Slimmon: I think one of

Meg: brothers The Sprouse, the Sprouse brothers

No I'm serious Like Cole Sprouse is he was he one of Zack and Cody Am I crazy Never mind This is a

Dan Slimmon: Oppa Seulgi? I, uh, I thought one of them was like Zac Efron

Meg: Oh literally Zac Efron was Zack in Zack Cody

Dan Slimmon: I don't fucking know.

Meg: That would be

Dan Slimmon: And I'm not gonna go check and put a little interstitial in that. We're not gonna look it up, listeners.

Meg: Leave it in leave it in the comments Leave a c tell us off in the comments

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, @MegGoesBirding

Meg: 40s We were not watching the Disney Channel in 2007 We were w at concerts at Westco and Eclectic We were um we were chalking

Dan Slimmon: Yeah

Meg: from cops running from campus cops We were

Dan Slimmon: I think

Meg: the [00:24:00] tunnels

Dan Slimmon: I was getting liquor bought for me by, uh, by my old, my two f- two years older friend and waiting in the parking lot, that sort of thing

Meg: Yep Mm-hmm Absolutely

Dan Slimmon: It would be weird if we were watching Disney Channel stuff in 2007, so stop asking us

Meg: Yeah stop asking Stop asking

Dan Slimmon: So this is the, so this was the... I actually did a little bit of reading on Miley Cyrus for the, 'cause I was interested in this concert that she did.

She was, she was gearing up in 2007 for the Best of Both Worlds Tour, which is called that because it featured performances from both Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus

Meg: I still think it's one of her songs

Dan Slimmon: Is it? Yes, it is one of her songs, yes.

Meg: yeah

Dan Slimmon: Um, it is one of her songs, but yeah, so like, on stage they would have Miley Cyrus do a bunch of songs, and then they had a body double who would come in and, and do like dancing with the Jonas Brothers for a little while until they could do the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana costume change into Miley Cyrus, [00:25:00] and she would come back out as Miley Cyrus, and the body double would disappear, and they would continue the rest of the show with Miley Cyrus songs

Meg: just a question though Um Hannah Montana versus Miley Cyrus do they have like different hair Like what how do they look different

Dan Slimmon: one of them has an eye patch, I think.

Meg: No. they don't

Dan Slimmon: No. Uh,

one of them,

Meg: Sorry I thought you were being serious and I was like No I know that's wrong

Dan Slimmon: I, I, I don't know. I th- maybe one of them's a brunette, one of them's... One, they have different hair. I don't know. Let's look it up. I'm gonna look it up. Ha-

Meg: comments Leave it in the

Dan Slimmon: Montana, Miley Cyrus. Uh, yeah, one of them has brown hair, and one of them has, one of them has, like, wavy brown hair, and the other one has, like, straight blonde hair.

And, and that is, as far as I can tell, the only distinction between these two characters. I don't know. I'm not an expert teen idols. And it would be weird if I was. they start s- It would be weird, folks. Uh, so w- ticket, ticket sales open for this Best of Both Worlds Tour, and tickets [00:26:00] are going for face values of $20 to $60.

But within 12 minutes of the on-sale, every single ticket is gone. They're all sold out.

Meg: Hmm

Dan Slimmon: 12 minutes. And so now, suburban moms who promised Hannah Montana tickets to their daughters are googling Hannah Montana tickets, and they're finding them on StubHub for, like, five to 10 times the face value. Uh, uh, some up to $258.

And people go absolutely ape shit. it's a very ugly time online. They... All hell breaks loose with Hannah Montana, as that, as that attorney general put it so correctly. Uh, and it's a big part of what finally gets the DOJ to shut down Wiseguy Tickets cause they were one of the huge buyers of th- these Hannah Montana tickets that, uh, ended up on StubHub.

Which just goes to show you can use shell corporations and Bulgarian hackers to defraud Ticketmaster all you want, but woe betide you if you ill-treat suburban moms

Meg: Yeah when they get angry and they have [00:27:00] numbers you're in trouble

Dan Slimmon: they have so, they, there's so many. They all wanted to get, said get their daughters to the Hannah Montana show so they could go to the wine bar. the Wi- Wise Guys ended up getting, I think, two years probation and some community service, which is nothing at all.

They made $25 million

Meg: They get to keep the $25 million?

Dan Slimmon: I think so. I don't think it was illegal to make the $25 million.

Meg: Right

Dan Slimmon: Like, like, they, they got in trouble because of... What they, what they got them on was that they were, like, violating Ticketmaster's con- their contract with Ticketmaster by automating buying things on Ticketmaster's website. But the judge didn't-- Like, the judge didn't determine that Ticketmaster was entitled to the 25 million in profit, because if they hadn't...

The wiseguy hadn't bought the tickets that they would have sold for the 20 to $60 in ticket, the profit wouldn't have been made in any way

this is, this is the kind of thing you can only really do if, as a scalper, if, if, if you're scalping online and you no longer have to worry [00:28:00] about sneak thieves sneaking up and stealing your dollars

Meg: Right

Dan Slimmon: this is only the beginning of Ticketmaster's problem with bots. The, the bot problem only gets worse And in 2013, uh, Ticketmaster estimates that bots are g- bots are buying 60% of the desirable tickets, for the biggest shows.

60% of the tickets are just being snapped up online by somebody who's not even gonna go to the show. They're just gonna sell, resell them on StubHub. Uh, at one point, Aerosmith's manager, Tim Collins, is-- They're about to start an Aerosmith show. He wants to get a sense of, like, the impact of automated ticketing, ticket scalping, so he, he interviews everybody in the front section of, of an arena in, in LA before the show.

Every single person that he talks to bought their ticket from a scalper

Meg: Wow that's crazy

Dan Slimmon: You just cannot get a front row ticket or anywhere near it unless you are willing to pay 10 to [00:29:00] 20 times what the ticket is selling for. crazy And, and you know what? I don't know. When I, when we first talked about ticket, ticket scalpers in the first part, I, um, I gave them a bit of a pass, right?

Uh, 'cause they're just kind of inevitable, but they're not that bad. But this is bad. Like historically, scalpers weren't that big a problem because if, if they wanted to buy up a significant portion of the ticket inventory, they had to like hire a bunch of people to wait in line at the box office, right?

Meg: by physical capacity

Dan Slimmon: Right, and then how much they, they actually had to hire a human to go stand in line or they had to stand in line. Uh, now they don't have to do that, right? It's a centralized website with, with five nines of uptime. Scalpers can go buy hundreds of thousands of tickets through Ticketmaster's website b- by just clicking a button on their little bot thing.

so yeah, it's bad for fa- it's bad for fans, it's bad for artists, but more importantly, it's bad for venues and promoters, which means it's bad for Ticketmaster

Meg: Mm-hmm [00:30:00] Mm-hmm

Dan Slimmon: And this is what Ticketmaster's gonna spend the next 15, 20 years trying to fix, investing probably billions of dollars into fixing this bot problem

Meg: And just just just jumping way ahead do they ever fix it Like in our present timeline

Dan Slimmon: N- no, no. No, sorry. They did not

Meg: Cause I was gonna say I think the answer's no, but just double-checking

Dan Slimmon: No, they never fixed it. Well, they fixed it. We'll t- so we'll talk about whether they fixed it because, because they, they fixed the problem they had

with scalping,

Meg: Pass it on to us

Dan Slimmon: right?

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: They didn't fix the problem users have with scalpers because that's not their problem

Meg: Yep

Dan Slimmon: Um, they do, they b- do they,

It's demanding to defeat those evil machines
---

Dan Slimmon: they have two basic strategies, right? For fighting the bots. They d- one is they fight the bots. Like they, they, they put on CAPTCHAs. They, [00:31:00] they, uh, the little like robot, are you a robot things on the websites.

Meg: an episode about that by the way Cause

Dan Slimmon: Not yet

Meg: that shit is insane

Dan Slimmon: I know

Meg: in like some real rage fits over that in the past Like where I'm just like What I don't know if this is a bike or not It's like a like two pixel images Like is this supposed to be a bike I don't fucking know."

Dan Slimmon: yeah. Is that a lowercase L or a

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: I? Fucking come on. And th- and they, and they, they just, it's just humans now doing it any- Like, they just... If you wanna... If the robots... The, the humans are the one fillings, filling the CAPTCHAs. If, if, if a robot wants to do it, they just send it to a CAPTCHA farm in, like,

Meg: Is that

Dan Slimmon: Ghana,

Meg: Oh my God

Dan Slimmon: and, and they have...

Yeah, they just have, like, hundreds of people sitting there. Like, they r- they refr- they, like, mirror the CAPTCHA over the internet to their CAPTCHA farm in some developing nation where people just click, where people just do them all [00:32:00] day

Meg: Oh that makes me so angry So we're doing this we're doing this for no fucking reason

Dan Slimmon: Welcome to Technology Blows, Magnum

Meg: I know All right Well another episode

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, Look

I can't wait to do that episode. yeah, so the scalps just don't work. The, the, the thinking is... So to introduce the thinking behind Ticketmaster's anti-scalping measures, uh, I've got some, I've got a recording from Sean Moriarty, a Ticketmaster CEO in a 2006 interview that aired on NPR's All Things Considered.

Whoever is putting on the event fundamentally uh

uh has the right to have certain conditions that have to be accepted by the buyer of the ticket ticket in in most cases is actually a revocable license and always has been It's got privileges and terms of use associated with it That's the philosophy of Ticketmaster about tickets. It's not a thing that we sell you that you own now. It a contract that, that, that can be [00:33:00] unilaterally revoked at any time

Meg: Just and just a side note I think it's interesting that they chose to uh do this topic on the five-year anniversary of 9/11 This was uh an

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah.

Meg: from September 11 2006

Dan Slimmon: It was the second worst 9/11, in recent history is when they had to, uh, interview Sean Moriarty from fucking Ticketmaster

Yeah. Anyway, anyway, if that, if that, if that sounds familiar, that, the philo- that philosophy that it's a, it's a contract, not a, a thing that we've sold, this is the model that will unleash the streaming boom of the 2010s and replace iTunes Music with Spotify, Microsoft Office with Google Docs, right?

Um, Netflix sending you DVDs with Netflix streaming this is like really early for somebody to be, you know, pushing on this, and of course it's Ticketmaster

inventing this

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: terrible thing that sucks

Meg: [00:34:00] Yep

Dan Slimmon: everything. Uh, all, all intellectual property now is just, is just a, like, you can borrow it from us for some money. You can rent it from us for some money, and then you can't watch it again till you pay more so the next thing they come up with is this

Verified Fan
---

Dan Slimmon: 2017 they come up with this thing called Verified Fan. Verified Fan is a system where they can use computers to sort of figure out who the real fans are and let the real fans buy tickets in a pre-sale before any non-real fans, which are supposed to be the bots, get access to buy the tickets.

sounds like a good idea until you remember that, like, they can't tell who the bots are.

Meg: Right

Dan Slimmon: How are-- So, if the whole premise is that they can't tell who's a bot and who's not, then how is making people register as a verified fan gonna help? the way it works is you, like, you register as a verified fan for each event.

You're going to event and you're like, "Hey, put this on my, put this in my logbook. I went to go see U2 at the Meadowlands or whatever. [00:35:00] I'm a real, I'm a re- that means I'm a real U2 fan, and I've been to multiple U2 shows, and I can, uh, prove that, like, I'm an actual, I deserve to get the U2 tickets before the, before the bots do."

Meg: I can name three songs off their first album

Dan Slimmon: yeah, yeah. what are the first three tracks of The Joshua Tree? Sorry

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: it's such... It's like gatekeeping as a, as a, a s- you know, service business model. It's disgusting. And like who, why, like Ticketmaster gets to decide? The, the company famously run by a guy who falls asleep at every concert he goes to gets to decide whether I'm a real enough fan to see a band.

it's degrading. And the bots of course just fucking register as verified fans for the shows that... It's a, it's a manual process that you have to do every time, so nobody, no real people a- actually wanna do it, but the bot runners are like, "Oh yeah, I'll just write some code to sign up as a verified fan, and now, now I get into all the pre-sales completely in- [00:36:00] ineffectual, like, like anti-scalping theater. so none of these solutions are, are effective at stopping bots, but that's okay with Ticketmaster because stopping bots is not their real strategy. That's, that's just a stage fight that they're doing. What we as fans would call the bot problem is that because of bots, fans can't get the-- a fair shot at good tickets to the show, right?

Out-scalping the scalpers with Platinum Tickets
---

Dan Slimmon: What Ticketmaster would call the bot problem is that somebody's making money on tickets that's not Ticketmaster,

Meg: yeah

Dan Slimmon: right? Uh, and they-- so they're like, "What? How do we fix that problem?" So this brings up Cr- Ticketmaster's actual strategy for dealing with automated scalping, which is essentially shut ticket brokers out of the business, and there's a, there's a few different ways that they, that they do this over the years, or they, they try to do this over the years.

so one is they buy a ticket resale website in [00:37:00] 2008 called TicketsNow, it's a competitor to StubHub, which, which is owned by eBay. eBay owns StubHub. Ticketmaster owns TicketsNow. Basically, Ticketmaster's like, "Hey, this online ticket scalping thing seems profitable. Let's get into that, and let's, like, arbitrage our own damn selves."

the problem is there's already an established ecosystem of these ticket resale sites, so now they have to, like, compete with StubHub. They can't just d- you know, They're like, "Ugh, competition, yuck." Uh, things are so much cleaner when you can just leverage all your exclusive contracts to sue the shit out of everyone who tries to compete with you, right?

But since they're not the first to this market, they don't get a chance to do that here. So they come up with a couple ways to, like, set things up so they can avoid this whole competition thing. One way they do this is they lobby state legislatures to pass what are called venue [00:38:00] consent laws, basically laws that say if a venue has an exclusive deal with Ticketmaster, no third party is allowed to sell tickets to that, to that venue's events.

Only Ticketmaster is allowed to sell tickets to that event within the state.

Which rules. I mean, why, why haven't other businesses thought of this? This is great. Just make it illegal for anybody to compete with you by making the l- states pass laws that it's illegal to compete with you. Genius

Meg: So did this did this work So they got they got some of these laws passed

Dan Slimmon: Only a couple states, uh, l- like Louisiana, I think, got one. I'm not sure. I'm, I, I'm not sure how many states got these laws passed, but not, not many, and I'm not sure if it's even still a law anywhere. Um, it didn't... It was, like, one of several different things they were trying,

Meg: Didn't

Dan Slimmon: some of which worked. Some of which worked, some of which didn't.

Um, the, they also introduced this thing called Verified Resale. Um, [00:39:00] now, now it's called Ticketmaster Resale, which is where you can resell your tickets on the Ticketmaster platform,

Meg: right?

Dan Slimmon: right?

Meg: I've seen that for sure Yeah

Dan Slimmon: the, the huge... It's huge now

Meg: to if you go to look for a ticket now, you have the option of either buying the ticket directly then if you don't like the tickets that are available like if you want a better ticket then you see the resale tickets It's

Dan Slimmon: Yes

Meg: place Yeah

Dan Slimmon: Right. I just wanna buy a ticket, man. Like, can you just sell me a ticket so I can go to the show? I don't care which part of your website it's in, right?

Meg: Mm-hmm

It seems to me, like having the same company control both the primary market for tickets and the resale market for tickets could allow that company to artificially manipulate ticket prices.

Dan Slimmon: Here's Sean Moriarty again from that same 2006 NPR interview, uh, just to assuage your concern about that

[00:40:00]

Meg: Hmm Seems like some foreshadowing

Dan Slimmon: yeah, they should have played, like, a little organ sting there

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: on the NPR interview. Anyway, that's what, that's what Sean Mor- Moriarty says. We'll see what happens. Um, in s- in 2022, Ticketmaster comes out with Platinum tickets, their new price manipulation system, which becomes famous when fans go to buy tickets to an upcoming Bruce Springsteen show, and within seconds of the tickets going on sale, almost all the regular seats are gone.

The only tickets left are these Platinum tickets, which are selling for up to $5,000 I mean, you know, it's Bruce Springsteen, but come on. it's basically a way to use Ticketmaster's data to, like, out-scalp the scalpers. Ticketmaster knows who's buying tickets how fast, so they can, estimate the ideal price that a scalper would be able to get for the ticket given demand and just charge that price up front so that Ticketmaster gets the extra profit [00:41:00] instead of the scalpers getting it.

Problem solved. I don't imagine you've ever bought a platinum ticket. They're crazy.

Meg: Gosh no No I have

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Meg: $5,000 on a ticket I I as a g I wonder what the most I've ever spent on a ticket is I feel like it's it's definitely less than 200 and it's probably like a Broadway ticket Like it's something something like that would be the probably the most expensive stuff I've ever gotten

Dan Slimmon: Might've sp- yeah, that's a good point. I might've spent maybe 240 on a Broadway ticket one time

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: But a concert ticket? Absolutely not. I don't even know if I would spend $5,000 to go see Stop Making Sense if they, like, put it back on with a time, time machine and, like, go back to 1983 or whatever and watch Stop, the Stop Making Sense concert. $5,000

Meg: $5,000? I would I'm I'm not gonna say I I would do it but I'd certainly consider it I don't know if you've noticed but I am wearing a Stop Making Sense T-shirt right now

Dan Slimmon: You're a verified fan [00:42:00]

Meg: I'm a verified fan. I'm wearing like a modern reproduction T-shirt Like there's almost no way this is a uh contemporary

Dan Slimmon: Sure, sure. Uh, yeah, it would be, it would be des- destroyed by now if, if I, if you had that, a real one. one, one thing about platinum tickets is that it's completely up to the artist to decide whether they're using platinum tickets. Bruce Springsteen has to check the box on the form when he sets up the concert that says, "Yeah, I wanna sell platinum tickets."

Meg: And does he,

Dan Slimmon: And he, and he does

Meg: Ah Bruce

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. it's disappointing, but it's a lot of money, and I don't think, I don't think Ticketmaster tells, tells Bruce Springsteen, like, exactly how much the t- prices could go up if he clicks the box, if he checks the box, right? but it's technically him opting into it, and [00:43:00] Ticketmaster...

Meg: any of this money

Dan Slimmon: Oh, yeah

Meg: Yeah. Okay

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, um, he gets a large, a large proportion of this money.

so that's why he does it, right? It's more money. Makes sense to me.

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: but it's sucks. And Ticket-- but Ticketmaster, part of the be- part of the business, right, is Ticketmaster gets to be the bad guy. it says verified tickets or it says like platinum tickets next to, to the Ticketmaster logo.

It doesn't say anything on the website about Bruce Springsteen said we could do this

Meg: You know what I was thinking about this cause we talked about this last time Like Ticketmaster is a company that's decided that like our business model is being the bad guy And I'm wondering like what other companies are that where they just straight up are like We know people don't like us We're not even gonna try You know

Like parking enforcement maybe

the city I live in Burbank has a independent company that does parking enforcement Like they have outsourced it for some reason So I wonder if that company has just been like you

know what Fuck it We're bad Everyone hates us

Dan Slimmon: Yeah

Meg: Like We'll [00:44:00] take that you know And so I'm just wondering what other companies are like that

Dan Slimmon: It's, it's hugely valuable to the... Yeah. Yeah. I'll do an episode on every single one somebody comments there, there's a lot of value to being like, "We don't-- We wanna make more money, but we don't wanna deal with the risk of people being mad at us." And okay, we'll take that, we'll take on that risk for you.

We don't care

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: which is a great way to make money and that helps the consumer in no way whatsoever

Meg: Yeah

SafeTix: neither Safe, nor Tix
---

Dan Slimmon: the last anti-scalper innovation I wanna talk about is another thing that comes out in 2021, which they call mobile tickets, or they call it SafeTix. They eventually calls it SafeTix. this is tickets that you can open right in the Ticketmaster mobile app.

So, like, there's no paper ticket. You just get the Ticketmaster mobile app and your ticket's in there. their me- website copy is like, "This is gonna make your life so much better. here's, here's how. You don't have to wait for the tickets to come in the mail," right? "You can transfer [00:45:00] them to your friends through the Ticketmaster app. They're good for the environment because they don't use paper My favorite, they, they allow contactless entry, so it's safe for COVID

You don't have...

Meg: contacting before

Dan Slimmon: Right. Right. All these things were true of tickets already. But it's... Right. What were we doing before we, like, finally we have safe ticks. We don't have to, like, do the thing we do every time we come to a concert where we, like, both lick our hands and rub them against each other while we're exchanging the tickets, right?

Yeah.

yeah. So this co- this copy on the website's written for chumps. This is what Ticketmaster thinks fans are, is, is chumps. Because these things were all true of digital PDFs already. v- contactless, you can transfer them to your friends, you don't have to wait for them to come in the mail.

That they all don't use paper, so they're eco-friendly or whatever. Uh, so let's talk about why they actually [00:46:00] built SafeTix. um... And, and what, what SafeTix actually is. Thank you to security blogger Conduition for reverse engineering how SafeTix works. So when you, when you finalize your ticket purchase, and only after you finalize the purchase, Ticketmaster tells you that your tickets are now available in the app, and you're gonna need the app to get your tickets.

You go into the app, and you see in the middle of the screen, you notice three things. There's a, a 2D barcode, there's a message underneath the 2D barcode that says, "Screenshots won't get you in And then superimposed on the barcode, there's a pair of blue lines that swipe constantly from side to side in this sort of mathematical pas de deux of, of, you know, security-looking stuff.

What's up with the blue lines? Like, why won't s- why won't screenshots get you in? this is because the relative motion of these blue lines, encodes the coefficients of something called a [00:47:00] semi-cyclic Galois code, which, as I'm sure you remember from undergrad group theory, is this class of finite Steinberg field, which means it's topologically equivalent to the prime bounded identity matrix P sub aleph.

I'm just fucking with you. They're little fussy doodads. They don't do They, they do absolutely nothing. the only acting of this, part of this Safetix thing that actually does anything is the barcode, and that updates every fifteen seconds.

So the, the data in the barcode has four parts. If you look, if you, like, decode the barcode, which this security researcher did, um, there's a bunch of random-looking letters and numbers. Then the, then there's two six-digit numbers. And then finally, there's a ten-digit number, which is a Unix timestamp. in, in other words, it's the number of seconds since January first, nineteen these two six-digit numbers are...

Have you ever done, like, a website login where [00:48:00] you have to enter a six-digit number that m- v- that changes over time?

Like, it

Meg: yeah yeah yeah A um authenticator

Dan Slimmon: It's exactly that,

yes.

Meg: all the time yeah

Dan Slimmon: That's all it is. It's two of those, one for the, um, one for the event and one for the user, and they just change every 15 seconds like a normal six-digit little time code thing. And they're encoded into the barcode so the barcode scanner can scan it, check whether it's v- a valid ticket and, and lets you in.

That's the only functional part of the SafeTix, the whole SafeTix system

Meg: Okay

Dan Slimmon: Anyway, the whole, the whole SafeTix thing has nothing to do with safety or convenience, and it has everything to do with protecting Ticketmaster's bottom line.

I- i- in fact, i- if you ask me, it makes the whole concert-going experience markedly worse to have SafeTix. If you don't have the internet, [00:49:00] you, and you haven't pre-downloaded the Ticketmaster app, you can't get into the show 'cause you can't download the app and you can't get in. If, if the venue's internet connection is down, no one can get into the show It, it locks you into Ticketmaster's secondary market, so you have to sell your ticket through Ticketmaster.

There's no other way to sell it. And what I find most repellent about it is that the required app lets Ticketmaster harvest personal data from your a- from your phone. Like your-- If you wanna share your ticket with friends, you p- plug in your t- friends' phone numbers. Now Ticketmaster has your friends' phone numbers.

and it's all, it's all built, it's all really built around that. Like, it does not do anything to protect anybody except Ticketmaster, and they're selling all your data to fucking advertisers, uh, or ICE or whatever

so they finally solved it. They finally, uh, SafeTickets is how, SafeTix is how they finally solved the scalper [00:50:00] problem. But they somehow managed to solve it in a way that makes things even worse for ticket buyers and they didn't-- also didn't even solve it because scalpers can still bypass the system in a whole ton of ways.

They, they can... The simplest way is very easy. You just create a dummy Ticketmaster account and you transfer the scalped ticket to the dummy account and give the buyer a password for the dummy account

Meg: Yeah that makes sense

Dan Slimmon: So it's fucking stupid, and SafeTix has done absolutely nothing to solve the problem of, of ticket scalping. I thought, uh, since the conversation between fans and, and Ticketmaster over the last 50 years has, has had so many twists and turns, I thought listeners might appreciate it best through the timeless medium of drama.

So are you ready to do our little skit, Meg?

All right. You

Ticketmaster: the play
---

Dan Slimmon: Welcome to Ticketmaster, ma'am. How may I help you today?

Meg: Hi I'd like to buy two tickets to the Talking Heads concert tonight

Dan Slimmon: Excellent choice, ma'am, and you're in luck. I've got two tickets right here with your name on them [00:51:00] for $44 each

Meg: Wait uh the sign out front said 40

Dan Slimmon: Yes. Yeah, I, you know, I would love to sell them to you for their face value, of course, but I'm sure you understand we at Ticketmaster have to make a profit

Meg: Ah fine your 10 markup

Dan Slimmon: It's 20% now. Actually 25

Meg: 25

Dan Slimmon: Deal. Will that be cash or credit?

Meg: that's ugh All right whatever Um do you take American Express

Dan Slimmon: Oh, I'm sorry. We just sold our last ticket

Meg: Uh to Who did you sell it to

Dan Slimmon: Well, while you were looking in your pocketbook, a kindly Bulgarian man stepped up and bought the last 300 tickets. You, you didn't see him? He had socket wrenches for hands

Meg: So he was a robot

Dan Slimmon: You know, he might have been

Meg: Unbelievable This has happened the last three times I came here Can't you do anything about these robots

Dan Slimmon: That's an interesting question. Maybe we can, but it, it's not gonna be easy. First, I'm gonna need your GPS coordinates

Meg: [00:52:00] I mean if you think it'll help I'll write em down

Dan Slimmon: Thank you. Now, the only other thing I'm gonna need is a list of your 10 best friends and their email addresses and their phone numbers

Meg: Jesus Okay here Does that how does this help keep out the robots

Dan Slimmon: What? And scene I hope that helps explain exactly what went on between customers and Ticketmaster over the last 50 years.

And if you've got any more questions, at me on TikTok.

Looks like anti-trust is back on the menu, boys
---

Dan Slimmon: Now, as you may have heard, there has recently been some encouraging movement on the antitrust front with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Part of what got the ball rolling on this is that the Biden administration decided they were gonna take on antitrust as one of their signature priorities for their presidential administration.

They're like, "We're gonna break up some of these companies." Another star that aligned in the last few years is that Live Nation, together with Ticketmaster, has been pissing off venues finally. [00:53:00] they have been, they've been using their dominance to, in the, in the industry to, like, threaten venues with loss of access to important tours if they don't, um, you know, sell more tickets through Ticketmaster.

according to, to Bloomberg, some large venues would lose, uh, five concerts a year or $1.5 million in revenue because They, they were, opting out of the Ticketmaster side of their deal with Ticketmaster, Live Nation, And, uh, illegally, the Ticketmaster CEO would call them up. There's a call, there's a whole recorded call with Barclays Center, the Barclays Center CEO, where, where the, the C- the Ticketmaster CEO is basically saying, "Well, you have to sell more tickets. You have to sell tickets through Ticketmaster. You can't get out of your contract, and if you do, you might not get the concerts that you want to come to Barclays Center.

We might send them to a competitor in your area instead." And, and that's illegal. [00:54:00] but, you know, what are they gonna do? It's Ticketmaster. It's irremovable infrastructure now. but they, they're actually doing something. So the, the most important motivation for this suit was, again, the only natural force with a bite strong enough to draw blood from the throat of Ticketmaster, that apex predator of the live music ecosystem, the suburban mom Because as you actually alluded to, Meg, in part one, in November of 2022, tickets went on pre-sale for s- Taylor Swift's upcoming Eras Tour.

And despite all of Ticketmaster's hard work over the last 20 years to cut scalpers out of the picture, Ticketmaster's entire goddamn website went dark from the overwhelming traffic volume from Taylor Swift. And within minutes, floor seats for Taylor Swift shows all around the country were being listed for tens of thousands of dollars on StubHub

Meg: Yikes

Dan Slimmon: $35,438 was the highest price that I saw

Meg: That's insane That's a very [00:55:00] nice car.

Dan Slimmon: That's a very nice car. And so, so ba- so, like, this is 30 years after the Pearl Jam hearing. this is finally, like, in 2024, we get a bipartisan coalition of 30 state attorney general, attorneys general, excuse me, uh, who file suit against Live Nation and th- which is the parent company of Ticketmaster now.

It's been an absolute media circus complete with clowns. Here's a Senate testimony from one such clown in in January of this year

Good afternoon Thank you Senator Blackburn and committee members for this opportunity My name is Robert Ritchie AKA Kid Rock I'm proud to say I've been packing arenas amphitheaters and stadiums with the greatest fans on Earth for over 25 years I'm also a capitalist Uh, so that's, that's Kid Rock, fame- famed capitalist Kid Rock

Meg: I love how he talks with a drawl now Like he's from Michigan

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, where'd he pick that up?

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: He's from the suburbs of Detroit[00:56:00]

Meg: Yep

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I don't know how he picked up a sou- picked it up so he sounds like West- he's from West Virginia. But I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's a natural process. It's probably just something that happened to his brain at some point. If artists had real choice real competition would follow and tickets would end up in the hands of real fans at the prices we the artists set It's no secret this it's no secret none that this industry is full of greedy snakes and scoundrels many suits lining their pockets off Talent they never had and fans they mislead. Talent they never had and fans they mislead. Greedy snakes and scoundrels. Powerful words from Mr. Rock

Meg: That's a real uh when you point the finger three fingers point back at you huh

Dan Slimmon: before we start parading through the streets of Washington, DC with Kid Rock on our shoulders, here's the same man not two weeks later in a video he posted on X

All right the best I can come up with at this present time [00:57:00] in the present state of ticketing that I have been working tirelessly to try and fix um and as hard as I have been on Ticketmaster I wanna thank them for working with me on this For this tour I'm using Ticketmaster's face value exchange to keep tickets in the hands of real fans at the prices I set and keep them out of the hands of scalpers bots and bad actors Oh, greedy snakes and scoundrels. What can you do?

Meg: Awesome So what happened here

Dan Slimmon: Well, uh, the same thing that happened to, to Pearl Jam back in 1993, basically. There's no-- There's, 1994. There's, there's no alternative. There's only one company in the game. You gotta play somewhere, and if you are Kid Rock, if you're pulling the kind of crowds Kid Rock is pulling, um, which, which are evidently large crowds, then, um, y- you know, there's on- there's only one kind of venue you can play, and that's the kind that [00:58:00] has, that's owned by Live Nation

Meg: Thank you so much

Dan Slimmon: I hate that guy so much. Oh my God. there's good things, there's good things happening, but he's not part of them.

Meg: No

Dan Slimmon: Uh, they're doing the whole, like, Ticketmaster, Live Nation can be the bad guy thing on a na- on the national stage in front of Congress.

and of course, like Kid Rock gets to be on TV and be seen taking a stand against these snakes. And, uh, at the end of the day, uh, Live Nation gets their money, Kid Rock gets their money, and everybody gets to move on

But enough about T- Kid Rock. I don't wanna talk about Kid Rock anymore. Fuck that guy. Uh, in a, in a rare piece of good news on this front, uh, on Wednesday, April 15th of this year, a federal judge found that Live Nation did engage in anti-competitive practices in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which is huge news, and we're celebrating

Meg: is there gonna be any consequences for it [00:59:00]

Dan Slimmon: Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. That's great. It's great that they were, uh, found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. I think we should celebrate that victory for America and antitrust, So just, let's just sit with that for a second and feel great about that

Meg: All right Yeah. I'll wait until you pull the rug out

Dan Slimmon: Yeah

Meg: Hmm hmm

Dan Slimmon: mm, mm,

Meg: good

Dan Slimmon: justice. We made it. We made it. Um, now we don't know, we don't know what remedy the courts will impose. Remains to be seen, right? It could be just a couple billion dollar fine, You know, they can af- they can afford a couple billion dollars. That'd be no problem.

They'll just get a loan for it. They won't even pay taxes. or will Li- Live Nation Ticketmaster be broken up? Which is one of the options on the table. A judge could decide that's what has to happen. maybe it's, maybe it's foolish. I still do hope that good things can come out of the antitrust process, even though it's not perfect.

So who [01:00:00] knows? Um, but, but probably the day after this episode comes out, it'll, it'll turn out that like, no, actually, they're gonna force a bunch of other companies to merge with Ticketmaster too or something

Meg: Yeah

Corporate euthanasia
---

Dan Slimmon: I just wish we didn't have to, like, cross our fingers and hope for an essentially unaccountable power to do the right thing, nobody wants Ticketmaster, right? Right?

Meg: Yeah

Dan Slimmon: nobody wants this. Nobody... and, and yet, like, through a process that involved surprisingly little mustache twirling, the, the market decided Ticketmaster was gonna run everything, and that was just the way that it was gonna be.

And if we wanna change it, then we just have to hope that we are-- our elected officials don't get gerrymandered out of office in time for Ticketmaster to stay one huge company that everybody fucking hates, um, which is, which is disappointing and why I think we need a democratic mechanism for corporate [01:01:00] euthanasia

Meg: I love that

Dan Slimmon: We just need to be able to just be like, "Is it, do you like this? Do you like this? No?

No. Okay.

Meg: like this Let's get rid of it

Dan Slimmon: Unplug all the servers. Done.

Meg: I love that

Dan Slimmon: send them to a nice server farm upstate but for now, Ticketmaster remains, uh, another, another cesspool that we all have to wade through if we wanna get tickets to go see Beyoncé. and that's our, that's our, that's our story. So, thank, thank you, Meg.

Uh, thank you for being on

Meg: for having me I learned a lot big uh history lesson um some uh live theater we made some interesting connections We talked about birds I'm I'm I'm I'm thrilled

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. And we did everything I set out to do, number one of which was talk about birds. So reminder, Meg Goes Birding on Instagram. Go check it out. Like I said, it's not just birds. thinking...

Meg: a turtle

Dan Slimmon: Exactly. There's a turtle. There's four pictures of two turtles. One of them falls in the water. It's very cute.

There's algae. [01:02:00] There's no... So if you're thinking like, "Well, I don't fucking care about birds. I don't like birds," it's probably not the Instagram account for you, but you should check out the turtle picture anyway

Meg: Yeah Man this is what happens when you interview some or you do an episode with someone who does not have a real uh public-facing internet presence You get their Burning account

Dan Slimmon: It's delightful. Everyone follow it, please. And also follow, uh, Technology Blows @techblows on TikTok. Tell all your friends how much ass this show kicks. Smash that like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. Get at us on social media. We're up there. We're playing the game w- about once a week I'm up there posting one video because I'm old and I don't know how TikTok works.

So we'll see you in a couple weeks on Technology Blows. I've got a couple weeks of, of vacation, and then I've got a, uh, we've got a new two-parter coming out, uh, in, in a couple weeks on the cash register and the man who [01:03:00] invented business-to-business sales, which should be a wild ride. thanks for watching Technology Blows, the techno pessimist podcast we'll see you next time.

​