I kind of get a vibe of AI-generated, human-edited article out of this. Not much of the super obvious patterns I'm familiar with, but there is this repeated/reworded paragraph:

> Charging the $1,000+ market-clearing price would eliminate scalping, maximize revenue, and maximize aggregate consumer welfare. But it would also destroy the artist's relationship with their fans, as they would be seen as the greedy artist who priced out their true fans.

> Artists and sports leagues know the market-clearing price for their tickets is $1,000+. They know that direct pricing would eliminate scalping and maximize revenue. But they also know that directly charging these prices would destroy their carefully cultivated relationship with fans. Nobody wants to be seen as the greedy artist who priced out the true believers.

Moreover, the content of the article seems very superficial and not grounded in reality. To my cursory understanding with a few minutes of research into the topic, Taylor Swift tickets do not, in fact, retail for $1000+ with the help of Ticketmaster. It is the scalpers who charge that. Taylor Swift does not see any of the additional money when a prime seating ticket retails for $300 and is then re-sold for $6000. The premise that an artist allows Ticketmaster to get a cut in order to sell a ticket at the market-clearing rate seems factually incorrect, and therefore the entire posited relationship between artist and Ticketmaster is incorrect.

As far as I understand, Ticketmaster has deals with the most valuable venues in the US such that if you want to perform at the venue, you must use Ticketmaster. It is not that you as an artist choose to use Ticketmaster to inflate your ticket prices for you while deflecting the blame, but rather that if you aren't willing to give Ticketmaster their cut you don't get access to desirable venues at all.

I'm open to correction if someone who is more informed on the topic wishes to chime in, but I would hesitate to take this article at face value. It seems crafted to sell an emotional narrative rather than making accurate observations of reality.

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ffsm8 an hour ago | parent [-]

Ignoring the part about your vibes, Ticketmasters business strategy is well covered at this point and it is precisely what you claim it isn't.

It first sells the ticket, that's the money that partially goes to the creator... And then it lets the buyers resell their ticket through it's platform, which you correctly identified as scalping, but that's kinda core to is profit strategy

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anonymous908213 an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm aware that Ticketmaster supports scalping and profits from it itself. However, the premise of the article is that the artist hires Ticketmaster and profits from allowing Ticketmaster to do this on their behalf. Where is "blame as a service" here, when the reality is that Tickermaster is engaging in rent-seeking behaviour, extracting excess profit solely for its own benefit and not the artist's?

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RandallBrown 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

I think the blame as a service is about the exorbitant fees that Ticketmaster charges. I have heard that some of those fees often go back to the artist.

	▲	anonymous908213 a minute ago \| parent [-]
		I'd be very interested in a more reputable source than "I have heard". It would make a substantial difference in the validity of the premise of the article, but I can't find anything that suggests this is actually the case other than baseless speculation on forum threads. I've read a lot of Reddit posts asserting that artists are in cahoots with Ticketmaster and not a lot of any evidence. Ticketmaster itself, as well as anything I can find written by journalists, suggests that the artist gets only the face value of the ticket and the fees are shared between Ticketmaster and the venue.