Ticket Fiasco

[John C <blackcountryman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The ticket companies are wrecking live music.  They've made decent tickets 
completely unavailable to the general public, priced them out of the range of 
the ordinary fan, or sold them all directly to scalping outfits who operate 
under the semi-respectable rubric of "ticket clubs" and so forth.
 
It's certainly short-sighted on their part.  I used to go to 5 or 10 shows a 
year.  If a band I liked played NY I would go.  But now, the only tickets 
available in arenas are way the heck in the nosebleeds.  AND they cost way too 
much.  The result?  I don't much bother anymore.  Obviously, I break the bank 
(or more likely, cash in favors through work) to see Zeppelin alumni, but 
that's about it.  I'm not going to drop a couple hundred $ to sit in the Blue 
Seats for U2, or what's left of the Who.
 
In another 10 or 15 years there won't be a single touring act I would cross the 
street to see.  I'll sit in my recliner and listen to Zep bootlegs and Elvis 
CDs and yell to my grandkids that their music sucks.  
 
 


LGM
 
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:26:11 +0100
From: Dragonlady <dr4gonlady@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: ticket bastards and NYC
 
I've never heard anything more unfair than this lottery thing, how is 
that even legal? You stand there for hours and the guy who walks in at 
the last minute get to draw a better seat?
 
It's already such a lottery to get good seats when you are a fan. Of 
course one can't expect the venues or ticket companies to think about 
the actual music fans, they're only interested in selling their tickets.
 
It's the same everywhere. Here you have to be a paying member of the 
company to have a chance for better tickets. It's really a privilege of 
the rich. And often a venue will reserve the first rows for big 
companies like banks, they buy all the good seats and give them to their 
clients or employees who of course rarely care about such things. So 
fans will only have bad seats and the artists will play to people who 
don't even want to be there.