It seems as if news regarding concerts going awry has become commonplace recently. Ranging from chaotic ticket-buying shenanigans to many getting injured or in extreme cases, passing away. Concert culture has been going down the toilet and there is a need for change to create a more positive experience for all concert goers.
The more recent news regarding concerts consists of the company Ticketmaster and their current stance in the ticket sales market. Ticketmaster has had lots of controversy over the past few decades, and one of the first instances was back in 1994 when the American rock band Pearljam filed a complaint with the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. Pearljam claimed that Ticketmaster had established a monopoly, but no action ended up taking place against Ticketmaster.
In 2010, a Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger was approved by the DOJ further resulting in the creation of a larger monopoly in the ticket sales business. That merger later resulted in an over 70% market share obtained by just a single company, clearly showing signs of a major monopoly taking foot in the ticket sales and distribution business.
Ticketmaster has also made absurdly prolonged contracts with various venues essentially locking them in a deal with Ticketmaster for up to a decade, resulting in less competition and opportunities for competitors to expand their market share against Ticketmaster.
Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota has created the Unlock Ticketing Markets Act, which essentially gives power to the FTC to prevent these anti-competitive contracts.
Another bill proposed was the TICKET Act, which helps keep Ticketmaster (and other ticket sellers) accountable for marketing the full price of tickets, including the sneaky fees which aren’t disclosed before the purchase process of a ticket. The TICKET Act is a bipartisan bill sponsored by many U.S. Senators.
Another bill that goes hand in hand with the previous bill mentioned is the BOSS and SWIFT Act which proposes a breakdown of fees in ticket prices, mentioning the amount of tickets available before sales open, and banning staff from purchasing and then reselling tickets at absurd prices. The bill is sponsored by Congressmen Pascrell and Pallone of New Jersey.
It is important to mention that these are bills and not laws currently in place. These smaller bills that have been made will most likely be put in a much larger bill with more legislation which will garner more support in the House and Senate, therefore going to President Biden’s office where he will sign it into law.
These bills have been proposed mainly because of the media attention regarding the chaos that occurred when fans of Taylor Swift, Blink-182, and Bruce Springsteen attempted to purchase tickets to their concerts and were greeted by Ticketmaster’s down website, extensive crashed queue services, and extremely pricy tickets that were automatically purchased by scalper bots, that were resold by the bots for upwards of a thousand dollars.
Ticketmaster is only one part of the issue regarding the overall state of concert culture. Some other issues consist of concert management/venues and artist accountability.
Concert venues sometimes can be infamous for prohibiting outside products including water, which was an issue very recently. On November 17th 2023, Taylor Swift fans couldn’t bring water into a venue in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, which led to hundreds of fans passing out due to dehydration and the sad passing of one of her fans. Taylor Swift’s management attempted to help with the distribution of free water during the show.
In 2021, Travis Scott held the infamous Astroworld Music festival in Houston Texas. During his set, many people ended up passing away due to compression asphyxia caused by a crowd crush. This crowd crush was created by many factors including poor concert layouts, excessive amounts of people, and Travis Scott’s input on events occurring during the concert.
The concert layout was a huge issue during the entire set. Many people were attempting to leave the extremely crowded areas, but were being crushed up against the railings of the stage and couldn’t exit. The excessive numbers of people which were causing this crowd crush attended the concert without a ticket and overwhelmed the staff who were attempting to keep track of all attendees at this concert. This occurred many times at previous Travis Scott concerts as well.
Travis Scott has stated that he was unaware of these deaths occurring, but still decided to encourage his fans to put up a middle finger towards an ambulance attempting to help one of the attendees who experienced compression asphyxia .
All these tragedies really show the need for more artist accountability for the safety of their fans, promoting positive concert etiquette, and accounting for venue policies and layouts before having concerts occur so that fans don’t get the short end of the stick. Positive experiences for concert goers are very important and these issues could be resolved if there is more communication for hosting concerts.
Disclaimer: Articles designated as “Editorial” represent the views and opinions of the author, not the 2023-2024 Periscope staff, CHS/CASD administration, or the CHS student body.
