As someone who enjoys live music, I love attending concerts! I already have seven concerts lined up from April to October. The fees on those were absolutely ridiculous, as to be expected. We already know Ticketmaster is not shy to make sure they nearly double an initial ticket price with the fees placed on tickets. But getting those tickets wasn’t impossible… that was until I recently tried to get tickets for the “All Things Go Music Festival.”
I recently found out about the festival this past year from a few people who went. Seeing the amazing lineup this past fall, I really wanted to attend this year. As I only live a little over an hour outside of Columbia, Maryland, it would be perfect… or so I thought. I saw this year’s lineup, was very excited about the artists set to play on Sunday, and decided to sign up for presale.
Presale rolls around and I hop in the queue before I leave work. I thought “Okay 9,000 people in front of me is a lot, but the venue seats 19,000 people, I should still have a good chance of getting tickets, right?” I get through the queue in about a half hour. Once I got to the actual point of being able to pick and purchase tickets, the problem started to arise. I was watching tickets sell out right in front of my eyes. I sat at the buying point for nearly an hour trying to get tickets. Getting extremely frustrated and nearly on the verge of tears over the ordeal, once I saw there weren’t any more tickets showing up, I gave up. I went to Instagram to see if “All Things Go” said anything about the situation, and the only post I saw was announcing that the presale was live. The second I looked at the comments, I saw hundreds of comments complaining about a nearly identical situation as mine. I attempted the general sale the next day with an outcome of a nearly identical situation. I later looked at Instagram to see that the festival had “sold out” with once again the comments ranging from “you ruined it by letting the resellers take over” and “I’m not your bestie. All those bots you let get presale are.” “All Things Go” hasn’t made a statement regarding the situation except to let fans join the waitlist as tickets become available.
As a Taylor Swift fan who tried to buy tickets for the Pittsburgh show of “The Eras Tour” in November of 2022, the “All Things Go” ticket-buying experience was almost nearly as frustrating. As I sat in the queue from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., finally got in there, and saw every single ticket was sold out, then to find out the general sale was canceled, I was absolutely devastated.
Some artists even tried to go against Ticketmaster, like Zach Bryan during his “Burn, Burn, Burn” summer 2023 tour. He even released a live album from that tour titled “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.” But because of the sheer powerhouse that Ticketmaster is, Bryan was forced to use them for his 2024 “Quittin Time” tour. However, “All Things Go” and “The Eras Tour” are not the first instances of Ticketmaster being the problem.
Problems with Ticketmaster date back to as early as 1994, when Pearl Jam sued them for not allowing them to keep their ticket prices under $20 following a Chicago charity show, which led to the band canceling their 1994 summer tour. This led to a massive antitrust lawsuit which Pearl Jam unfortunately lost. That lawsuit ensued over 30 years ago, and issues with Ticketmaster have increased exponentially since then, especially following the 2010 merger with Live Nation, who had a lot of ties with certain venues, while Ticketmaster was in charge of distribution. The merger made them an even bigger powerhouse in the live entertainment industry than ever before.
The Department of Justice is planning on filing a federal antitrust lawsuit against the powerhouse in the coming weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ticketmaster and Live Nation make up 70% of all ticket sales. This dominance has allowed them to significantly gouge prices. The lawsuit started to ensue following the amount of outrage regarding the 2022 buying process for “The Eras Tour.” I don’t know if anything will actually come out of this lawsuit, I sure hope so, though. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that they wiggle their way out of the lawsuit and just had to pay money in “damages.”
