More Flash Boys+

Customers trust the banks.

Fans trust the acts.

Therefore, high speed electronic trading could not be eradicated and we can't go to all-in ticketing.

You don't want to believe your banker is ripping you off. But that's what these big brokerage houses were doing in their dark pools. Selling access to high speed traders. Making trades that were less than satisfactory to the customer.

In order to get people to change, you've got to bring them across the divide of disillusionment.

Acts scalp their own tickets on a regular basis. They refuse to go to all-in ticketing because then the price will appear higher, better to have Ticketmaster take the blame.

Actually, the situation with high speed electronic trading and Ticketmaster is very similar. Each developed to fill a vacuum.

I won't recite the history of Ticketmaster's development. But I will tell you the fees are so high because they're a way to prevent revenue from being commissioned by artists.

You see the artists are the culprits.

BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE THIS! You've stayed up all night listening to their music, you've signed up for their mailing list, you can't fathom that they're part of the problem.

But the truth is they want to commission all revenue. But the fees are not commissionable. So, the promoter gets kicked back from Ticketmaster, the fees are his profit, otherwise he would not be able to be in business.

This is the way it works. The promoter guarantees a huge sum to your favorite artist and he's got to get it back.

The artist could play for a small guarantee and a percentage of the net, but he doesn't want to, and doesn't have to, because people are lining up to pay him, unless they're not. The truth is if you're nobody, you can't make any money.

But let's stay with the hit acts. The promoter takes all the risk and the act makes all the money. No one shows up and the act still gets paid.

But the act wants even more. So this Ticketmaster game was developed in order for the promoter to make a profit. Sure, Ticketmaster takes a bit, but nowhere near as much as you think.

As for the insane fees on developing acts... Welcome to the real world, where blockbuster acts get paid and you don't make money until you've truly broken through. Usually these acts play clubs, and the club has overhead, and winning and losing nights, they want to stay in business. Used to be the labels supported the clubs, but that went out the window with Napster and the Internet.

But you don't want to hear all this. Or you already know it and see it as the normal way of doing business.

But the point is, fees could be eliminated tomorrow, if only the acts said so.

When a ticket is twenty bucks plus another twenty in fees, it's really FORTY BUCKS! But the act wants you to believe they care about you, that they don't want to charge too much, and it's the big bad boys at Ticketmaster who are to blame. But the truth is, if the tickets were really twenty bucks, the gig wouldn't happen, because costs wouldn't be covered, no one could make a profit.

And I'm wasting my breath here. Because I've written the above numerous times and my inbox still fills up with people blaming Ticketmaster.

But the point is... Some people know how this world works.

And some people don't.

And if you're one of the latter, I hope you're employed by someone else who doesn't fire you, because if you're forced to live by your wits, you're going to be in trouble.

ADDENDUM

Many people have e-mailed me Jesse Winchester's performance on Elvis Costello's "Spectacle." It illustrates the power of television and also the fact that traditional metrics truly don't capture the status of an artist.

An artist's worth is not his sales, either recordings or tickets, never mind merch and sponsorship, but the impression he makes, whether it's indelible, whether it sticks with people.

Based on the amount of e-mail I'm getting linking to this clip, Jesse Winchester was a star. No joke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKGWpqnS8E


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