OFF: Future of music...

[CWarburton at OAG.COM]

> From:    M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK>
>--snip--<
> The biz has to go for remaining high-margin product: live appearances
> and memorabilia. If this leads to more bands appearing in my
> town, which is very at the margin, then I'll not be complaining.
>
> FoFP

However, this somewhat disturbing item got posted to the BelewTribe group

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Ticketmaster Auction Will Let Highest Bidder Set
Concert Prices
By CHRIS NELSON


Three years after Ticketmaster introduced ticketFast, its online
print-at-home ticketing service, consumers have so embraced it that
the company now sells a half-million home-printed tickets for
sporting and entertainment events each month in North America.
Where ticketFast is available, 30 percent of tickets sold are now
printed at home, said the company, which is by far the nation's
largest ticket agency.

But consumers, many of whom have complained for years about climbing
ticket prices and Ticketmaster service charges, may be less eager for
the next phase of Ticketmaster's Internet evolution.

Late this year the company plans to begin auctioning the best seats
to concerts through ticketmaster.com.

With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be
able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a
market will bear.

"The tickets are worth what they're worth," said John Pleasants,
Ticketmaster's president and chief executive. "If somebody wants to
charge $50 for a ticket, but it's actually worth $1,000 on eBay, the
ticket's worth $1,000. I think more and more, our clients; the
promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves are
saying to themselves, `Maybe that money should be coming to me
instead of Bob the Broker.'"

EBay has long been a busy marketplace for tickets auctioned by
brokers and others. Late last week, for example, it had more than
22,000 listings for ticket sales.

Venue operators, promoters and performers will decide whether to
participate in the Ticketmaster auctions, Mr. Pleasants said. In
June, the company tested the system for the Lennox Lewis-Vitali
Klitschko boxing match at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The
minimum bid for the package; two ringside seats, a boxing glove
autographed by Mr. Lewis and access to workouts, among other features
was $3,000, and the top payer spent about $7,000, a Staples Center
spokesman, Michael Roth, said.

Once the auction service goes live, Ticketmaster will receive flat
fees or a percentage of the winning bids, to be decided with the
operators of each event, said Sean Moriarty, Ticketmaster's executive
vice president for products, technology and operations.

Along with home printing, auctions are central to "a new age of the
ticket," Mr. Pleasants said. In the second quarter of this year,
tickets sold online, with or without home printing, represented 51
percent of Ticketmaster's ticket sales. The rest were sold by
phone or at walk-up locations.

Ticket Forwarding allows season ticket holders for several sports
teams (including the New York Knicks, Rangers and Giants) to e-mail
extra tickets to other users, with Ticketmaster charging the sender
$1.95 per transaction.

TicketExchange provides a forum for season ticket holders to auction
tickets online. The seller and buyer pay Ticketmaster 5 percent to 10
percent of the resale price, a fee the company splits with the team.

In the case of the ticketFast home-printing service, buyers pay an
additional $1.75 to $2.50 per order, with the fee set by the event
operator. Home printing has won converts among people who want tickets
immediately, instead of receiving them by mail or a delivery service
or having to stand in line at a will-call window.

One satisfied customer is Brian Resnik, 29, of Tampa, Fla., who says
the home-printing fee is a bargain compared with the $19.50 that
Ticketmaster charges for two-day shipping through United Parcel
Service.

But some other users, who praised the convenience of home printing,
objected to being charged an extra fee.

"It's kind of mind-boggling to me," said Joe Guckin, 41, of
Philadelphia, who used ticketFast to buy tickets for a Baltimore
Orioles home game last season. "You're printing up the ticket, on
your printer at home, your paper, your ink, etc. and you have
to pay for that?"

The company replies that home-printing consumers are helping to pay
for the technology that makes the service possible.

Ticketmaster has spent $15 million to $20 million to outfit almost
700 stadiums, arenas, theaters and concert halls in this country and
Canada with bar-code scanners that read and authenticate the tickets
and computers that capture information such as which seats are filled
and which doors have the most traffic, Mr.Moriarty said. In 2003, the
company has sold 400,000 to 600,000 ticketFast tickets each month.

Some ticketFast customers, like Diane DeRooy, 52, of Seattle,
complain that Ticketmaster assesses a lot of fees even before levying
the print-at-home charge. A ticket to see Crosby, Stills & Nash on
Friday at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J., for example,
carries $13.80 in venue, processing and convenience fees, plus a
$2.50 charge for the home-printing option. Without the fees, a ticket
costs $30.25 to $70.25.

Many of those customers are skeptical about Ticketmaster's plans to
auction the best seats to concerts.

"The band's biggest fans ought to have the best seats, not the band's
richest fans," said Tim Todd, 47, of Kansas City, Mo., who used
ticketFast recently to buy tickets for a concert by the rock group
Phish. Ticketmaster would be, in essence, official scalpers, Mr.
Guckin said, voicing a sentiment expressed by some other customers.

Industry watchers agree that auctions will affect all concertgoers.
Prime seats are undervalued in the marketplace, said Alan B. Krueger,
a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs, who has studied ticket prices. He predicts
that once auctions begin revealing a ticket's market value, prices as
a whole will climb faster.

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry trade magazine,
Pollstar, predicted that all ticket prices would become more fluid.
After a promoter assesses initial sales from an auction, remaining
ticket prices could be raised or lowered to meet goals.

The notion of ticket auctions is annoying, Mr. Resnik said, but he is
resigned to them.

"I guess the capitalist inside me would say, `Hey, if that's what
they can get for tickets, I guess that's just something I can't
afford, like a yacht and a Learjet.' "
***********************************************************************

And it's also somewhat worrying to see this from http://www.billions.com

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BILLIONS DISCONTINUES ONLINE TICKETING
We regret to announce that our experimentation with online ticketing on this
site has come to a disappointing end. Ticketmaster's market-strangling greed
has generated an offensive against MusicToday's ticketing services which
were designed to offer tickets to fans with smaller surcharges. The positive
reaction of music fans to this offer has so threatened Ticketmaster's
predatory business model that they have forced new restrictions on band's
websites and those such as Billions Online that sell tickets through the
MusicToday system.

Under the new terms, fans would be forced to register for a new user name
and password for every single artist for whom they wanted to purchase
tickets through our site. In addition, we would only be able to offer
tickets to events in Ticketmaster-controlled venues during a very limited
pre-sale window. The net effect would be fewer tickets sold and much higher
costs to Billions to coordinate the announcement and administration of
on-sale dates. Particularly given that we feel the modified service would be
of significantly reduced value to our visitors, we have little choice but to
shut it down altogether.

Once again in America, money wins. We regret the inconvenience.
*****************************************************************

Which cropped up in connection with the increasingly incestuous and
unhealthy relationship between TicketBastard & ClearChannel (who own a
billboard near you).  CC have sold their stake in JazzFM and somewhat
disingenuously deny any current plans to move into UK radio when
restrictions on ownership are lifted.  I believe they do already own some
venues in the UK.   MacConcert anybody???

I'd be feeling depressed if it weren't for having seen Radio Birdman
(sssssssmokin!) at the w/e and Mountain'n'Stray last night.

Cheers dudes
ChrisW