Trent Reznor sheds light on ticket scam

March 26, 10:04 AMNY Entertainment Industry ExaminerJonathan Monina

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Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction have teamed up for a US tour this summer, including shows at Jones Beach and PNC Bank Arts Center, but if you're looking for cheap seats, don't get your hopes up.  Trent Reznor (NiN) has recently posted a blog entry on the band's website explaining the truth behind inflated ticket prices on the web.

Reznor has revealed that the two main online concert ticket distributors (Live Nation and Ticketmaster) have been reserving a large amount of tickets for ticket reselling websites.  These websites are basically scalpers, selling tickets well above the original price.  It has been established that people are willing to pay top dollar for good seats to shows, but many artists do not want to alienate their fans by setting prices way too high.  These ticket resellers do not have this moral issue, and use the laws of supply and demand to set their prices. 

You may be asking yourself, if the true value of tickets are so high, why should scalpers be gaining all the profits from this?  What about the original ticketing agent?  Well, the truth is, the original ticketing agent (Ticketmaster, Live Nation) OWN the re-selling websites.  In other words, they sell the tickets to themselves, and then re-sell them for a premium.  This way, when the artist pushes to have lower ticket prices, the original ticketing agent can agree, knowing that it will be able to make a huge profit as soon as tickets sell out.

Bottom line, we're all being screwed.  For smaller acts, it may not make a huge difference, but when more popular artists come to town, you have to be extremely lucky to land one of the limited number of seats that are sold on the original ticketing site.  Lucky enough to only be robbed by their bogus surcharges that is.  Online ticket sales have not found a great way to be governed just yet, so until there is some sort of regulation passed, prepare to shell out a ton of cash if you want to catch that special band you've always wanted to see.

For more info: Trent Reznor's Post