The Price You Pay

 I assume that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fan. Maybe a Swiftie, but at least a fan of live music. Or perhaps she's just that dedicated a fan of social justice. So much so that she is actively campaigning to break up the monopoly held by Ticketmaster/LiveNation when it comes to selling tickets to concerts across this great land of ours. Twelve years ago the U.S. Justice Department approved the consolidation of these great beasts of entertainment accounting, and over the past decade and change ticket prices that were already ridiculously expensive have done nothing up go up. 

“We’re sorry! Something went wrong on our end and we need to start over. Broken things are a drag — our team is on it so it doesn’t happen again.” This was the message Swifties who scrambled to get tickets to Taylor's upcoming tour last week. Machinery that should be selling tickets to fans of the artist are instead dragged down by traffic that is snapping up ducats that can be turned around abruptly and sold to those same fans at an extreme markup. This is all part of the business plan engineered by Irving Azoff, the music industry weasel who made this unholy alliance and then washed his hands of it two years later and walked away. “Life at a public company ain’t for me,” he said at the time. 

Irving was able to walk away from the train wreck he created, taking with him the stable of clients he maintained as a manager, The Eagles, Christina Aguilera, Van Halen, Steely Dan and Jennifer Hudson. He also chose to remain on the board of Clear Channel and the sports management company IMG. 

Don't worry about Irving. He's going to be alright.

As a matter of fact, he probably won't have to buy a ticket for Taylor's upcoming tour. A bigshot like Irving will likely be comped in. If he really wants to see the show. All those folks, perhaps including Representative AOC, have to buy theirs. For the price that the market seems to be willing to bear. Before the public sales to Swift's "Era" tour, resale tickets were "available" for resale for as much as twenty-eight thousand dollars.

Here is the part where I bore you with the twenty dollar tickets I used to buy for concerts.

Here is where I remind everyone of Pearl Jam's ill-fated attempt at breaking Ticketmaster's stranglehold on the industry back in a previous century. For their most recent tour, guess who Pearl Jam has selling tickets for them? 

No word on if AOC is a Pearl Jammie.