Ticketbastards

[mayhap]

I knew, of course, that Ticketmaster are a monopolistic pricegouging tick swollen with the blood of performing artists, but what I did not actually realize owing to not really going to concerts is how astonishingly crap they are at what they do.

Their website is useless. Their mobile website is worse than useless, as it is explicitly designed not to sell tickets. Their mobile app is, at best, approximately a quarter baked, will let you set up an account with a mistyped email address but not let you change it (God help me if I had actually managed to buy any tickets with a .bet email address, as I'm certain I would never have been able to retrieve them) and makes you type in a captcha just to find out if there are tickets available, responding with the enigmatic message that no tickets are available but tickets may still be available. (So far as I have been able to ascertain, this is a lie. Tickets are not, in fact, available.)

Operation: Save Rock and Roll has thus come to an early and ignominious end. I guess the saving grace is that I don't actually have to give those Ticketbastards $10 for the privilege of inconveniencing me.

Comments

[coercedbynutmeg.livejournal.com]

When I become a top-performing artist, I will have to look at alternative ways of hawking my tickets, because those guys fucking SUCK.

(Not that I'd know, never having purchased a ticket for anything ever, but whatever.)

[mayhap]

I think some artists did get together and try to resist their ongoing tentacle rape, or at least I seem to remember hearing something about it, but it must not have worked, because here we are. I don't think you can do a non-Ticketdisaster show at a Tickettrasher venue, so it's pretty much their way or the highway, and the highway is pretty unsuitable for most performances.

[coercedbynutmeg.livejournal.com]

But they don't own all stadiums/theatres/concert halls, do they? I just thought they were the Mobsters who Sell Tickets.
Maybe entertainers use them (or some entertainment/promotion company) as a go-between, because, like, I'm not going to call Verizon Wireless Amphitheater and say "Hey, I want to have a show on July 17." I wonder if they've ever faced any anti-trust suits.

Again, I've never bought any tickets thru them. I wouldn't even know how.

[mayhap]

Oh yeah, they don't actually own any venues (or they would all have, like, one toilet with a sign on it saying there are no toilets available but there may still be toilets available). They just have exclusive contracts with them. Sadly it looks like there hasn't been any serious push to prosecute them for anti-trust since a year-long Justice Department investigation was mysteriously quashed in 1995 immediately after the Ticketmaster dude retained a law firm that just happened to be super-cozy with the anti-trust division.

Man, the more I learn about these fuckbuckets the less I like them, and my liking was already pretty low this morning. I recommend not taking an interest in pop music so you never have to deal with them.

[wisdomeagle]

:(

[mayhap]

We'll have our own Fall Out Boy concert party! We can play YouTube videos really loudly and drop heavy things on our feet to simulate them being stepped on!

But yeah, sadface.

[wisdomeagle]

I think this is an awesome plan. My eardrums already hurt. :)