Pearl Jam tries to improve upon the Ticketmaster system for new tour
Pearl Jam will employ "all-in" ticketing for their new nine show tour kicking off in late summer
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Is Ticketmaster an irredeemable monopoly taking advantage of fans, or is there a way to work with the company that doesn’t end in a giant lawsuit from disgruntled audience members? Pearl Jam is attempting the latter, with a few new measures in place for their partnership with Live Nation on their upcoming nine-show tour, according to a new Variety report.
These are the ways Pearl Jam and Ticketmaster will try to avoid the issues that have plagued everyone from Taylor Swift to The Cure. First, they’ll employ “all-in” ticket pricing, which means all those extra fees will be lumped in with the main fee, so no surprises at checkout. (Apparently, other artists have resisted this model for fear that the appearance of a higher price will turn fans off from buying tickets.) The band is also limiting dynamic pricing (in which tickets hike in price based on demand) to just 10% of tickets, which will “help subsidize lower prices for the other 90%,” according to Variety. Tickets will also be non-transferable to help avoid scalping.
“Pearl Jam has always advocated on behalf of their fans and we hope more artists, teams and venues follow their lead and start using the all-in pricing display available on Ticketmaster,” said Ticketmaster in a statement to the outlet. “It would be better for fans if all-in pricing was mandated nationally, but in the meantime we created the all-in display option to help fans see the full costs upfront.”
Ticketmaster may be pushing its luck mentioning national mandates when it has drawn the ire of the U.S. Senate, but it will be interesting to see if these measures improve upon the problems about which fans and artists alike have complained. While Pearl Jam has opted to work with Ticketmaster to try to find a solution, others are trying to circumvent the service altogether. Maggie Rogers, for example, opted to sell her tickets directly at the box office. Could the future of ticketing be in the past? Only time will tell, but at least artists are taking steps to make things better. (Dates for the new tour can be found at Variety.)
29 Comments
I remember part of the thrill of going to a concert was getting to the box office on the day the tickets went on sale. You got there knowing what the price was going to be and you bought exactly the amount of tickets you could, or that they would allow at one time.
Then you waited months for the show.
Ok boomer.
This was still happening for millennials.
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Maggie Rogers, for example, opted to sell her tickets directly at the box office. Could the future of ticketing be in the past?Let’s not forget, it wasn’t that long ago that you had to go to physical locations like Tower Records to buy tickets from TicketMaster.
Let’s not forget, Tower Records used to be a thing that existed.
Box office only is probably fine for artists with smaller fanbases who only play big cities. But if your a big artist on a stadium or even arena tour, you kind of expect people to travel from outside that city to see your show. If you are just selling tickets at the venue they probably aren’t going to do that.
There is a difference between the venue and the box office though. You can often go to one venue’s box office and purchase tickets for a concert somewhere else.For reasons that I don’t understand this is sometimes cheaper than purchasing tickets online.
Harder to charge bullshit fees when there’s a breathing person in front of you.
Shit, people used to make a days-long slumber party out of it.
And bands aren’t stupid, and realize if you expect people to do that, you are seriously limiting the number of people are able to buy tickets. Hell before computer linked ticking systems each box office or authorized seller would have different blocks of pre-printed tickets. So you never really knew if you were getting the best tickets available, or how many overall were left if your location sold out. And that kind of system sounds way worse than paying a Ticketmaster fee.
So bands have control of the dynamic pricing after all?
Play Jeremy!
You’ll get an Eddie Vedder ukulele solo and like it!
boy, you could really use a history lesson.
I think a lot of artists won’t want to do the all in ticket thing, because when prices are stupid expensive the fans will blame them. With TM they get kind of a buffer of someone else that the fans can hate. As for the non-transferable thing, as long as there is a method to return my ticket (or have some kind of fan to fan face value selling thing) that works. Because if you expect me to buy an event ticket a sometimes a year or more in advance, and not be able to sell it if I can’t go that is really annoying. Although if tickets are non-transferable how can I buy tickets as a present for someone?
This is a deterrent to many other acts’ fans/listeners, but Pearl Jam fans are a different animal. A good number of them will watch the band no matter what, and transferring a ticket to someone else is nearly unthinkable. While I really loved the band especially during the Vitalogy era, I really can’t say I’ve kept up with them past Yield, and I think I’m in the minority among their big fans. I know people who still actively listen to Pearl Jam and to their collection of bootlegs, and the band still sells out stadiums and arenas even over multiple nights in the same city. The band knows this and a lot of what they do is about keeping their current fans happy, not to gain new ones.
I have seen Pearl Jam 6 times since 1998 and even they recognize that if tickets are going to be super expensive and non-transferable, you kind of need a way to make them refundable. The last time I saw them was in September 2022, which was a show that was originally supposed to be March 2020, which means I got my tickets in 2019. I am sure a lot of other people held on to those tickets too, but I know from reading the fan club message board that the fan to fan ticket exchange (which lets you sell your tickets at face value) was quite active.And I know I couldn’t transfer my fan club tix to someone, but if I bought regular tickets for someone as a gift, there should be a way to transfer them.
I am not a PJ fan really at all, but I have gotten the impression that they just really don’t like the way Ticketmaster does business, and fight it out of principle. I can respect that.
The funny thing is for at least the last few big tours, Pearl Jam has used Ticketmaster to sell their fanclub tickets. And to be honest it has worked way smoother than when they have tried to manage ticket sales on their own. So maybe what TM charges is worth it if I don’t have to spend a whole day in front of my computer hitting refresh every 5 seconds.
Tickets are already stupid expensive, with or without the fees. Fans might complain, but they still go to the shows, so who cares who they blame?
If fans blame the artists directly I can see it costing artists money. If Ticketmaster can act as a buffer and the artists act like they can’t do anything about it they have a bit of shielding.
My point is that tickets are already expensive, before or after Ticketmaster fees, and fans don’t blame artists now. Or if they do, they don’t complain enough that they don’t buy the tickets anyways.
And honestly, I don’t think anyone selling tickets through Ticketmaster really couldn’t afford to make slightly less money, except maybe some fringe cases.
I like the all in model, personally, but I don’t see anything about the fees. Will the $15/ticket fee be added in to the price, effectively hiding it and allowing TM to really stick it to us? Hopefully there’s at least a breakdown at checkout.
Would it matter? Are you going to cancel the purchase if Ticketmaster turns out to be gouging you on fees? What’s that number that makes you do so?
If you’ve already mentally accepted you’re going to pay $200 for a ticket to a show, when do you decide the fees are too much? $25? $50? $100? I think most people are going to just suck it up and pay it no matter what.
Possibly, sure. I’m definitely not paying $200 for a single show though, I can get into a 3 day festival and see a dozen bands for less than $200.
In any case, the point is that TM lost in court over those fees like 10 years ago, hardly did anything to comply with the judgement against them and then started doing the same thing all over again. If people keep seeing those fees maybe they’ll at least get dragged into court and have to pay lawyers again.
Well, here’s hoping you’re right about the lawsuits.
You dumbfucks do realize that Ticketmaster just takes the heat on behalf of the shitty artists who are ripping you off, right? Its one of the services Ticketmaster provides its paying customers – the artists.
Capitalism is a beautiful thing especially when you’ve got dumbfucks who dont even understand who is fucking them in the ass.
“(Apparently, other artists have resisted this model for fear that the appearance of a higher price will turn fans off from buying tickets.)“
Who are these deeply stupid people that think customers willing to pay sometimes hundreds of dollars for a concert ticket are going to be going to be less pissed off by seeing the price go up at the end of the transaction rather than just having the price be listed up front?