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inspiares · 10 months

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quo vadis ticket reselling

The aim of this present essay is to analyze ticket reselling or scalping and the challenges this area of the live music industry is facing concerning this situation. This subject is right now on its peak of “popularity” among the most debated topics of the music industry after the Taylor Swift debacle, that is the frustrated ticket selling management and process with companies Live Nation and its owned and associated ticketing company Ticketmaster.

In order to be able to put the reader in context, the Taylor Swift case occurred back in November when: “Ticketmaster made headlines after its site crashed during the pre-sale ticket drop for Swift’s upcoming “Eras” tour. After hours-long wait times and oversold tickets, Ticketmaster temporarily suspended sales. While the company blamed high demand, Swift said Ticketmaster assured her they could manage the situation. In a statement, Swift said she asked the groups several times “if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” Live Nation’s president told Congress last month the industry has faced “industrial scale ticket scalping” that contributed to the issues with the Swift presale.”[1]

However, before getting our feet in the mud of ticket reselling to try to uncover what is happening with scalping, what are the challenges and how they could be tackled, we would like to point out some facts and data that have been surfacing regarding ticket reselling these past few months and that we think that will be useful to understand the dilemma.

Growth of the secondary ticketing market

“Despite COVID-19, the European secondary ticketing market was estimated to be worth €1.83bn in 2021, with predictions to grow to €2.29bn by 2023; money that is drained from consumers and the sports and cultural industries.”[2]

Secondary ticketing fraud and disappointment from fans

““We all know people who have bought tickets to the big concerts, sporting events and festivals who have not been able to attend because the tickets were fake or were duplicates,” she said.”[3]

Huge fees besides the ticket price

“Some customers who bought VIP packages for the tour — already among the priciest and highest-quality experiences at the venue — saw service fees as high as $550 (about a 15% service fee) atop the $3,757 the customer already spent on their seat. The most expensive tickets, of course, will also catch the most eye-popping fees. Among the more affordable seats, one customer’s screenshot detailed a $43.90 service fee on a $162 ticket (about a 27 percent fee), plus another $8 for the facility charge.”

What is happening with ticket scalping?

As it was mentioned, the Taylor Swift case with the selling of tickets for her tour has started a debate over ticketing and secondary market ticketing, reselling or scalping that is putting Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster at stake for their monopolistic practices.

Concretely, the US Senate has asked what happened with Taylor Swift demand for tickets and why people experience problems to get their seats even if they were previously registered in a verified fan program. And, also, they want more information regarding additional fees, dynamic prices, limited availability of tickets and restrictions to ticket scalping.

As it has been mentioned before and stated by the entertainment company, Live Nation response to that petition has been to reflect that the problem occurred with Taylor Swift and other similar cases and the backbone of this problem was the over-demand for tickets to speculate with them in the secondary market and in other landing and re-selling pages and apps such as StubHub for instance. That is also their shield defense method and justification of their practices within their own feud. In that sense, other players and the government have acknowledged that “Live Nation’s model, “makes them a vertically integrated giant,” […]. “They book the concert, sell the tickets and own the venue [and] that makes for little competition. And despite the consent decree which they agreed to extend, we don’t see the competition that we should. We’ve seen evidence of violations of them using monopoly power to cut out competition.”[4]

What are the arguments from the key players regarding this situation?

While the company is under a thorough investigation by the US Senate, they have been calling for action to prevent and limit reselling. To that respect Live Nation recently announced a support statement for a Fair Ticketing Act[5] based on the following premises:

Source: Live Nation Entertainment

So, In its intend to push for a “Fair Ticketing act ”Live Nation — owner of both the eponymous live music promoter as well as ticketing giant Ticketmaster — is advocating for federal laws that could weaken scalpers’ ability to mark up ticket prices and gouge customers for in-demand concerts. Among the changes it proposed are outlawing speculative ticketing in which scalpers try to sell tickets they don’t actually own yet, expanding legislation to stop bots from buying mass amounts of tickets and slowing down on-sale periods, mandating all-in ticketing to avoid hidden fees at the end of purchases, and protecting artists’ ability to decide how their tickets can sell on the secondary market.”[6] However, “Legislation focused around the points Live Nation mentioned doesn’t touch on all the complaints customers often have in the ticket-buying process such as high fees or dynamically-priced tickets, but they could in part address other long-held issues in the market regarding flexibility for artists and transparency for fans.”[7]

But, just as StubHub – a major reselling company among others - claims, the act is missing any mention of Live Nation and Ticketmaster behavior, as we were also pointin out in this essay. In particular, regarding the Fair Ticketing Act, a StubHub rep stated that: “LNE and TM’s “Fair Ticketing Act” specifically focuses on regulating the secondary ticketing market and does not include any significant reforms to their own practices. Anything but fair, the proposal is meant to strengthen the control LNE, TM, and their venues and artists have over this industry and consumers at large.

Ticket transferability laws that empower consumers in the ticket buying transaction have long had the support and advocacy of consumer groups. LNE and TM’s regular opposition to these laws and their frequent use of derogatory terms like “scalper” are a veiled attempt to maintain the control they’ve had over consumers and cover up their own willful failures in helping to enforce existing statutes like the BOTS Act that go after bad actors.

This proposal is particularly concerning in a marketplace where LNE and TM regularly manipulate the release of ticket supply and availability to take advantage of high demand through dynamic ticket pricing.

LNE and TM’s own resale marketplaces cater to the same consumers and professional ticket resellers (or in their words, “scalpers”) as their secondary marketplace competitors, AND they provide services, such as their TradeDesk inventory management system, to encourage professional resellers to utilize their own resale sites“.[8]

Live Nation, however, responded to that by stating “The artist will always make the best decision for fans. FAIR Ticketing is not about locking down resale to our site, all resellers can take part as long as they are abiding by the terms the artist sets on their content. This isn’t theoretical, that is exactly how the NFL Ticket Exchange works. StubHub is pushing to make it illegal for artists to have choice – even choices that are good for consumers.”[9]

So, in summary, what StubHub is accusing Live Nation of is that they want restrict certain behaviors and practices for resellers and competitors, while they continue acting the same way, to which Live Nation claims that they are looking for the artist interests, and that is why they see suitable to sometimes have higher fees or prices, to prevent the Artist wishes from having all their sold out tickets from a concert being sold in a secondary market, for instance.

The debate is served, and the opinions on whichever secondary should be legal or not, and under which circumstances as well.

Is there any regulation of the secondary market that could outline some kind of solution to overcome this situation?

Thereunder, unlike the United States, Europe (the European Union) already started making steps to respond to this ticket scalping situation some time ago. To do so, they adopted regulation secondary ticketing markets in the Digital Service Act (“DSA”)[10] which aims to prevent abuses on online marketplaces, including ticket resale sites. To that extent, it includes measures to ensure professional sellers are identifiable, prevent certain manipulative sales tactics and requires regular reporting to try to improve transparency for consumers. In more detail, online market places will be required to obtain essential information about third party professional sellers, from their name and contact details, to their bank details and ID, before traders are allowed to list tickets on the platform, to increase accountability for marketplaces, resale platforms should make it clear throughout the buying process that the tickets listed are provided by a third party, dark patterns (user interfaces designed in such a way as to trick users into making certain decisions, such as “pop-ups” or giving prominence to specific choices) will be prohibited; those platforms will be required to provide with transparent annual reporting and finally, every Member State will be required to appoint a Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) to enforce the rules laid out in the DSA.

So, while the DSA may not be the most extensive or even demanding regulation, it is a step further on, not limiting secondary ticketing, but making it fairer and more transparent, to prevent, above all, fraud. Right now, lots of fans are willingly buying in secondary ticketing pages or apps, such as Ticket Swap, as they see a guarantee for the tickets they’re buying, and they rely on those providers to attend their favorite events. However, speculation is still an open debate.

Conclusions and ideas to handle this disjunctive

In conclusion, what is being discussed here goes beyond the regulation and what kind of regulation ticket reselling or scalping should have, as the Taylor Swift debacle and the US government saying in all this opened up much more debates regarding ticketing and the music industry.

In our personal opinion, the way to tackle this great challenge of ticket scalping is not by making it illegal. It’s a question of assuming there’s always going to be a secondary market for ticket demands. However, the way Live Nation, for instance, wants to regulate it, by making it difficult for companies that aren’t theirs, such as StubHub or Ticket Swap, for instance, to resell tickets, while they can still “play” with the dynamic pricing isn’t the solution as well. That’s why we think there’s a necessity to push these new players of the industry, like the European Parliament did with the DSA Act which, even if it’s not perfect or covers all the demands by other players such as promoters, has put the focus on, at least, guaranteeing that the fans that buy tickets from the secondary market can actually attend the event and purchase it from a “legal owner” if it can be said like this. This would make ticketing companies and ticketing reselling companies “official channels” for the purchase of live performance tickets from Artists.

Moreover, other innovative ideas could go by the usage of NFTs. Right now, the usage of NFTs is being under scrutiny as well after some experiences with “crypto-art” that may have damaged their reputation. However, there are already companies advocating and working on multiple uses for these tokens, regarding royalties, digital merchandising, ticketing. A combined usage of a NFT in the ticketing and “fan-artist” engagement fields could be creating exclusive tokens for fans to be able to have priority in those live performances and/or in the venues and other kind of associated experiences to their ticket, what is now VIP or Golden Ticket for instance. This would also help ensure that the reselling of the token has traceability and counts on the benefits of the blockchain technology. A lot has to be worked in this area but those companies, some of which have already presented ideas at the MWC or 4YFN events, may be a great tool for the future of ticketing.

Finally, what the US Senate is doing right now with the scrutiny over Live Nation still has no other outcome more than trying to discover Live Nation and Ticketmaster practices and make them work with the same rules as the other promoters in the country and globally. Our thought regarding that subject is that this exercise should be an empowerment to be able to do things right and combat the lobby this company and their associates are doing, by making a “fresh” start for other promoters and stopping the monopolistic practices they seem to be using right now. Nevertheless, the regulation and re-position if it can be defined like that of promoting and ticketing companies in the music industry may not be as easy as it may seem on paper, so we wouldn’t advocate 100% on that idea, even though practices like this in the market should be avoided and tackled.

In a nutshell, ticketing scalping may be more moral or immoral and overflows a much bigger complexity than saying yes or no to letting people and companies resell one or more times a ticket, as it needs a deeper thought on the limitation of those selling and reselling prices, the demands from fans, the impact on Artist’s careers and fairness in the future.

[1] As stated in the article “Ticketmaster Urges Congress To Crack Down On Ticket Scalping As Lawmakers Take Aim Over Taylor Swift Debacle” published on https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/02/23/ticketmaster-urges-congress-to-crack-down-on-ticket-scalping-as-lawmakers-take-aim-over-taylor-swift-debacle/?sh=1c042495c4c5

[2] As stated in the article “European Parliament approves new digital rules with major impact on secondary ticketing” published on https://www.feat-alliance.org/2022/07/05/new-eu-digital-laws-resale/

[3] Quote extracted from the article “Why didn't we make ticket scalping illegal?” published on https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131244894/why-didnt-we-make-ticket-scalping-illegal

[4] As stated in the article “Ticketmaster Takes Aim at Resale Sites, Scalpers with ‘Fair Ticketing Act’ Proposal” published on https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ticketmaster-live-nation-ticket-scalpers-fair-ticket-act-1234685502/

[5] The full statement “Live Nation Entertainment announces support for a Fair Ticketing Act” can be read at https://www.livenationentertainment.com/2023/02/live-nation-entertainment-announces-support-for-a-fair-ticketing-act/

[6] As stated in the article “Ticketmaster Takes Aim at Resale Sites, Scalpers with ‘Fair Ticketing Act’ Proposal” published on https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ticketmaster-live-nation-ticket-scalpers-fair-ticket-act-1234685502/

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[8] As stated in the article “StubHub Slams Live Nation’s ‘Anything But Fair’ FAIR Ticketing Act Proposal” published on https://variety.com/2023/music/news/stubhub-slams-live-nation-fair-ticketing-act-1235537266/

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[10] The DSA will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union, and its provisions will mainly apply fifteen months after entry into force or from 1 January 2024, whichever comes later.

#music #music blog #artistmanagement #ticketreselling #ticketscalping #taylorswift #livenation #livemusic #concerts #artists #promoter

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inspiares · 1 year

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the art of modern-day artist management & how to keep an artist in the game

Game on!

Is managing an artist in the present a new form of art itself? Is it possible nowadays to keep an artist on the wheel? What are the requirements to do so? Why is it necessary to have a modern-day artist manager?

Well, let us start by sharing this quote: “Little is written about Leopold Mozart. As a musician working in Salzburg he had a successful but undistinguished career. It wasn’t until 1776, when he became a pioneering music manager, that he made his mark on history.

Leopold quickly recognised the talent of his son, Wolfgang Amadeus. He nurtured Wolfgang’s prodigious talent, booking him on several successful European tours before finally landing him a deal with the Court of Prince Colloredo.

When young Wolfgang complained about his first financial contract (150 florins per year), it was Leopold’s canny negotiation skills that secured Wolfgang a triple salary increase, the equivalent of $4,500 per year! Perhaps, without the help of his manager, young Wolfgang’s career could have stalled before his first symphony?

My (tongue-in-cheek) point is, the history of the music manager is almost as old as music itself. An artist’s ability to create great music does not necessarily make them a great business person. A manager represents an artist’s best interests and helps guide their career.”[1]

Firstly, after posing some questions about the music industry panorama and the role of the artist manager in the present, as well as a “curious” quote explaining how important it has been and can be for an artist to count on this person as a part of his/her/they career, the aim of this of this essay is to examine and put some thoughts onto these initial questions, as we think that the role is in constant change. Not only that, but also that the role has forcedly, in one or another way, evolved to adapt to new needs required for an artist to have a long career as well as for the manager to be considered a successful.

Without further prelude, let’s dive right into the subject by starting to put the spotlight on the fact that just as in many other aspects and areas of the industry - and as we have discussed in the previous essays regarding publishing and recorded music-, digitalization, the internet and social media have changed completely the rules of the game in the music business.

Indeed, this fact as announced has provoked that role of an artist manager has also had to changed. Before that, an artist management company could have a manager, an account and a lawyer and we could say it was more than enough, as the deal with a label, a publisher and a booking agent where B2B relationships.

Now, the tasks carried out by a manager have “[…] moved from simply being the sale of either cassettes, vinyl, CDs, videos and live touring into a world that encompasses social media brands, streaming platforms, virtual concerts as well as physical concerts, new technology, fan management and fan engagement, campaign management and instant global music distribution at virtually zero cost.”[2] Also, this has developed into managers having to “[…] consider themselves as a CEO. And they must have oversight of absolutely everything! Finance, logistics, HR, technology, global marketing, e-commerce, merchandising, film rights, publishing, syncs, master rights, radio streaming….. […].”[3]

So, in a nutshell this means that managers have had to adapt their services and craft to reflect those changes and deal with:

On the one side, the emergence of new fee structures,

On the other, the expansion of management roles to offer new services and, last but not least,

The biggest of the changes, the analysis of the great quantity of data that now it’s available, whether if it’s using AI as a support or not.

Regarding that last thing, data, the volume of information to which artist managers and other players of the industry have access has risen exponentially, and this has led to artist manager having to understand it and interpret it in order to use the data for the benefit of the artist. In this regard, “At first you had a few pieces of data and they were called ‘insights’. Things like, ‘Hey, you’ve got a bunch of fans in Thailand and China and Japan!’. Then, as we received more data, it got more functional. ‘Great, let’s use it to plan tours – where should we go and how much time, money and effort am I going to spend in each of the markets around the world’. But we’re now at the point where people are asking, how can this data and information be used for the purpose of making the art itself?”[4] This said, data can drive to discovery, innovation and revenue across the value chain and make an artist more competitive in a court based on the music data. So, artist managers are now then like some kind of gurus and chess players – strategists - that need to have a clear vision of where they want to take their artist to.

In addition, social media and streaming platforms have also provided musicians with global audiences and different alternatives to distribute their work, but that also leads us again to the fact that those tools, besides their functionalities as a social network, ultimately provide with data and that data, as we were stating has become one of the most important assets to keep in mind as a modern artist manager.

Besides that, this new era of the music industry has been also affected by the generalized short attention span society has in the present. Matt Johnson and Steve Ambler from Red Light Management/SB Management point out that, "People have such short attention spans nowadays, it’s a real challenge to retain it in a very noisy, cluttered landscape. And dealing with the vast number of people scattered across the industry who are stuck in their ways and the archaic nature of some deals that are still getting done."[5]

To that respect, as we were discussing, is not only analyzing, but also understanding data. The ability of the social networks to put people very quickly in the spotlight by going viral, has also led to a necessity of knowing how to manage all that information so it can have a good impact on their roster. Regarding that, “The algorithms working behind the scenes at Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Apple, YouTube etc are changing not just the music industry but possibly society itself. “Spotify and YouTube are subject to algorithms where having a hefty spike of people aware your record is out and streaming it, sends a message to the effect of, ‘This track’s performing well, play it more […] The smart music companies now understand they have to work with this data and be pragmatic about it. You’re seeing more companies realizing the old methods just aren’t gonna work and power is shifting”[6]. And the artist manager must then, “[…] make sure that the artist is doing the right thing he needs to do at the right time. He watches out for his artists so that they are not taken advantage of by any of the different elements.”[7]

At the end of the day, it’s no mystery that certain skills, knowledge and experience are crucial to become a successful artist manager and help the artists reach their goal. This happens to every other job, as it’s part of the nature of it.

However, we would point out that an artist manager, whichever type, more 360 or more only business oriented, with a bigger team or company or alone, has much more responsibility, as the development and exposure of the art – in this case music - of certain people and their ambition to be musicians, producers, songwriters as their primary (and/or only job) forces the artist manager to have and develop new abilities constantly to help and develop the artist career.

Then, ee can affirm that the modern-day artist manager must be data oriented as it is the biggest asset, but, at the same time, the artist manager has to be risky, when appropriate.

A lot of things have been mentioned throughout the whole essay, but the truth and summary of all of it would be that an artist manager must be multidisciplinary, as we were saying previously, they have artists career at their stake, so they have to be ready to reinvent and create multiple strategies and take risks. That doesn’t mean you have to take them with the whole roster, it’s also a question of knowing which artists could fit in certain innovative ideas and which ones doesn’t or other ideas can be applied to them. All of this, in our opinion, comes now from the above mentioned, profoundanalysis of data, so an artist manager becomes part data scientist, but also being creative with their own ideas for the artists, thinking out of the box.

Overall, and as a note to conclude with the present essay, we would say that the modern-day artist manager has to be more open than ever to new ideas, very up to date with what is going on in the music industry, motivated, knowing how to read the particularities of each artist of the roster, to come up with strategies and a career development that is perdurable for them and that adapts to the necessities and ambitions of each artist as well. This includes knowing where to put the efforts, where to invest, and where to draw that red line. To do so, it is needed to have a control of data.

it is important to think about the immediate next steps for the artists in the roster but also the long-term career and combine this data analysis with other evidence to make the right steps towards the future and the ultimate goals. As Johnny Pinchard and Dan Bearman from Holy-Toto state to keep the longevity of the artists “As managers have ever-increasing access to data and analytics, it will become vital that they become experts in using these insights to best serve the artists. And managers investing time and money into artists’ development, rather than labels, will become more and more expected."[8] Artists create stories and have their own storytelling, and the modern artist manager is also making his art to make that story visible.

Finally, it’s also important to point out the artist manager doesn’t have to work alone and do all this process solo. In fact, most of the time there’s a team of collaborators or members of the company that are experts in certain fields or areas of the industry. Nevertheless, we would advise that right now an artist manager not only counts on big network of collaborators and colleagues, but also contacts that are experts and have that same philosophy of being constantly learning and trying to be one step ahead. In relation to that “The key to success is standing out and getting your music away from the noise to the prospective fan using innovative ways of distribution and marketing. Artist, tour, financial management and promotions — each is a different type of art.”[9]

So, at the end, it’s question of knowing where to be and be there at the same time, and this is easier said than done, so, as with the same words that we were starting this document, we must culminate that the game is on for all those emerging, established, and veteran artist managers that want to leave their blueprint in their artist and the music industry nowadays.

[1] Quote from the article “The future role of a music manager” published on https://theartistnetwork.ws/the-future-role-of-a-music-manager/

[2] As stated in the article article “The future role of a music manager” published on https://theartistnetwork.ws/the-future-role-of-a-music-manager/

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[5] As stated in the article “Managers shaping the industry reveal their biggest challenges” published on https://www.musicweek.com/management/read/managers-shaping-the-industry-reveal-their-biggest-challenges/066730

[6] As stated in the article article “The future role of a music manager” published on https://theartistnetwork.ws/the-future-role-of-a-music-manager/

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[8] As stated in the article “Managers shaping the industry reveal their biggest challenges” published on https://www.musicweek.com/management/read/managers-shaping-the-industry-reveal-their-biggest-challenges/066730

[9] As stated in the article “Modern day artist management” published on https://medium.com/giglue/modern-day-artist-management-1dc11acb0d36

#music #musicblog #artistmanagement #brand #innovation

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