Ticketmaster is such an obvious monopoly in plain sight. The only reason I can see the FTC not more aggressively pursuing it (and instead wasting time on big-tech) is the people in power at the FTC don't go to enough concerts or care about a $10 markup on their tickets.
For an American age 15 to 25 today, much more of their spending power, time, and opportunity is lost to Ticketmaster than FB/IG/Tiktok/Twitter monopolistic behavior combined.
Hopefully the Taylor Swift ticket sale breaks into the Overton window and results in actual enforcement. Ticketmaster should have to divest Livenation and every other ticketing company it's acquired since 2010.
I say this as the PM of the first attempt to sell tickets within Facebook Events in 2015. Even for Facebook, it was virtually impossible to get share because all the major venues and artists have exclusive lockups with Ticketmaster or a subsidiary of theirs.
Mostly agreed but I think the appropriate regulatory response is to split Ticketmaster into three businesses: a venue operator, a ticketing company, and a ticket resale company, and to forbid exclusive agreements between them.
As separate companies they’d seek the best deals and wouldn’t collude to exclude new entrants in each others’ markets.
Yes, the exclusivity agreements are the worst. I think they should pretty much be banned everywhere. Remember back in the 90s what microsoft got away with by getting exclusity with EVERY PC manufacturer.
Each clone would be vertically integrated and would do the same abusive things. Clone A’s venues would use clone A’s ticketing service which would give most of the tickets to clone A’s ticket resale service.
For a consumer who just wants reasonably priced tickets for a particular venue, there would be no change from today under that arrangement.
But if you split the company vertically, the venue business needs to look after its own profits rather than maximizing the vertically integrated profits.
The theory is that the vertical integration gives them an unfair advantage. Split it up, and others can compete on the merits. If there's still no competition, that indicates they're better than everyone else for fair reasons, so it's not a problem. (I don't agree with this theory)
The monopolies in each segment collapse without the vertically integrated monopoly.
Today you can’t start a ticketing business because Ticketmaster owns so many venues and they won’t use you. You can’t compete in ticket resale because Ticketmaster’s resale gets inventory even before retail tickets are sold.
If these were separate companies there would be no reason, and it would likely be illegal per the breakup ruling, for every venue to use a single ticketing service, or for a ticketing service to use (give a huge advantage to) a single resale service.
The problem isn’t dominance in one segment; that is normal and fine and self-correcting. The problem is leveraging dominance in multiple segments to exclude competition in any of them.
Maybe I phrased it wrong. What I was trying to say is that the theory distinguishes between unfair market dominance and simply being the best. If the splits continue to dominate that would be strong evidence it's the latter.
(The reason I disagree with this is because I think that corporations, like countries, are a social contract that should only be allowed if they serve the people. I think a free market serves the people, but a market needs heavy govt interference to be free. I know that's a minority opinion, so I didn't get into it)
I don't think seeing live music is or should be a luxury... my teenage years were filled with free or cheap concerts and I'm very thankful for that.
But then again I grew up in a large city in Europe, so that might skew my experience. Or maybe not, since I went to a ton of $10 concerts in NYC in my la 20s (thanks John Zorn for starting The Stone)
Hmm. I dislike Ticketmaster and I am sympathetic to your sentiment, but the argument used here is flawed. Is it a live concert? If yes, does everyone has to have the same level of access to this entertainment/culture? If yes, there is appx. 7.8b people on earth now. Are they all guaranteed access to entertainment and culture?
The music is still accessible at libraries. Live entertainment is definitely "inessential":
lux·u·ry
an inessential, desirable item which is expensive or difficult to obtain.
plural noun: luxuries
"luxuries like raspberry vinegar and state-of-the-art CD players"
“Inessential” is subjective. There isn’t a thing in the world where you can’t find someone making the argument that it’s inessential because it’s not essential to them.
And using price a test of luxury in a discussion about monopolies is kind of circular; it leads to saying that anything a monopoly has successfully captured is necessarily a luxury.
That gets you to prescription eyeglasses being a luxury, because I don’t need them, people can just buy contacts, and a monopoly has driven the price to astronomical levels.
This is 100% correct. Sort of like cable internet: seen as a luxury so it’s seen as waste to go after them.
But here’s the thing: the law should apply equally. If the FTC did go after a couple of these ‘ frivolous ‘ monopolies, it would set the tone across the board. This is an area where everyone can meet in the middle..
<<But here’s the thing: the law should apply equally. If the FTC did go after a couple of these ‘ frivolous ‘ monopolies, it would set the tone across the board. This is an area where everyone can meet in the middle..
This is what I think is really missing from the arguments. Antitrust enforcement and even basic law enforcement has been mostly AWOL whenever bigger players are involved. It really undermines average Joe's trust in the system as a whole. I don't really care about Swift and Ticketmaster. I am concerned that the system is seemingly falling apart ( or working as intended depending on how cynical one is ).
The fact that concerts are a luxury is not the problem. The problem is that the relationship between LiveNation and Ticketmaster is anti-competitive and does not provide any economic benefit for anybody besides LiveNation/TicketMaster.
The way capitalism is supposed to work is that competition and supply and demand push the market price of goods to an optimal price thats economically beneficial for buyer and seller. But anti-competitive practices like bundling products and artificially limiting supply interfere with that process.
If LiveNation and TicketMaster were two different entities, there would be a lot more competition for who to use for ticket distribution and prices for tickets would be a lot cheaper, which benefits the purchaser and increases economic competition and productivity.
Going to a concert is a pure luxury. It's like getting excited that Champagne is too expensive - not really a working person's problem, and I'm not sure pure luxuries need government intervention in the same way as communication systems do.
This comment makes me feel uneasy, but I can't work out how to disagree with it.
There are some services which are obviously utilities where monopolies are either bad, or must be otherwise regulated. Power, fuel, healthcare, education - all these fit into that. I guess these are services where inefficient pricing has a broader effect on the market.
Whereas in luxuries, if the price is too high, then it has no real effect other than the peasants don't get to eat the cake.
So my two arguments against your position:
1. Even a monopoly in such a luxury industry is still protected by the law, and so must also be subject to it. Assumedly, as a peasant unable to afford Taylor Swift tickets, I am still not allowed to hack Ticketmaster's servers to get one illegally, or to break into the concert by force even though I'm causing no harm since it's a luxury good.
2. Ticketmaster's profits from its monopoly, if unchecked, allow it to crowd out other parts of the market. It can start to buy local pubs that show music, and extend its monopoly there too. Where do we stop it, and say "that's not a luxury market, so you can't have a monopoly there"?
Unreasonable thought experiment - Taylor Swift has a monopoly on her music catalogue. If we removed that monopoly and allowed others to perform and sell it, it'd reduce costs for working people.
That's exactly how copyright was supposed to work, no? It balanced the artist's ability to make money against making their art accessible to everyone by giving them a temporary monopoly. It's modern incarnation is arguably much closer to a permanent monopoly, and I agree - it should be limited.
I could cover the entire of her latest album and sell copies? I didn't think copyright allowed for that without permission but maybe I don't know copyright like I thought I did.
Yup. As mentioned, she doesn’t own the rights to her early albums, so this year she actually re-recorded and released alternate versions of her own music.
Cover songs are covered under “compulsory” licenses. You can safely cover an entire album without permission as long as you pay the royalties to the writers.
The entire “songbook” genre is basically this. If you want to drill down further there is an entire category of albums which is just people covering “Dark Side of the Moon”
Wow. Attending live music events is a pure luxury that the average person shouldn’t have reasonable access to without being price gouged by an obvious monopoly?
Because not getting to go to see Taylor Swift isn't a 'problem'. Just like not having a diamond isn't a 'problem'.
Not being able to access water or not having a way to communicate with your community is a 'problem' for example, so we should protect those things. The right to see Taylor Swift? I'm not so sure it's a good use of precious government resources.
…because the discussion is about working people being able to access things? It’s not relevant for people who can pay anything. I think you’re deliberately being confused.
Strange story… this guys startup filed an antitrust lawsuit against TicketMaster which ended up with TicketMaster… acquiring his company? Seems like something is being left out.
> Songkick shut down in October 2017 after earlier declaring bankruptcy. In January 2018, Live Nation reached a $110 million settlement with Songkick to resolve an antitrust lawsuit the startup had filed under which Live Nation agreed to acquire Songkick’s technology assets and patents.
Seems straightforward enough. Startup threatens to disrupt incumbent. Incumbent does shady things. Startup sues. Incumbent settles for money and IP that makes the threat go away.
Songkick pivoted too late into trying to establish their own thing, but by that time were deep into affiliate revenue from existing players. They'd painted themselves into a corner they couldn't get out of.
I interviewed there very early and was very impressed by the team, but I also declined as I already had experience in the music industry and I believed you had to build alternative ticketing and meaningful data for artists, promoters and venues to be in a position to move up the chain (venue size)... I also believed you had to start small and go slow and go up that chain at the same speed artists do... that a ticketing company should have their own fans, the artists... that it takes 1-2 decades to beat the Ticketmaster racket.
In the early phase Songkick were looking at a business model which was "we'll sell you merchandise for that gig you went to" and only later was "we'll sell you the tickets"... by the time they'd pivoted they'd had too much investment and needed revenue, and they took the affiliate revenue which then made it hard to pivot.
It was a good team, a good company, and I remain impressed with what they achieved as well as having the guts to sue Ticketmaster whilst taking the affiliate revenue. But in the end, I wish they'd have understood the touring aspect better and sooner.
Yooooo I _love_ everything you’ve posted on this thread. Read the blog post, had my thoughts, came here and saw them (and more) written out better than I could ever communicate hah.
Have you seen what Venue Pilot is up to? Product feels like it has a ways to go, but the overarching idea & presented feature set is banger IMO.
Standout to me is the integration of the entire booking flow into the ticketing backend; holds, offer, date(s) confirmed, offer produces settlement, settlement is semi or fully auto generated from ticket sales, etc etc.
Feels like that tooling is so obvious to anyone with a technical background, yet it’s completely non existent in this world of business. Not sure VenuePilot has it dialed (yet?) but I am digging where their heads are at.
They settled out of court, and there's nothing that says the terms can't be ironic. It's just whatever both parties agree to.
Let's assume Songkick sued because their company is essentially doomed due to Ticketmaster's bad behavior. Then Songkick needs an outcome that addresses that. One outcome is that Ticketmaster's behavior could change. Another outcome is Ticketmaster can pay Songkick for whatever the business might have been worth if it had succeeded.
It's analogous to buying a product that has a repair, replace, or refund guarantee. Ticketmaster changing their behavior is like repair: you get to enjoy the thing you were expecting to have. Shutting down the company and selling part of it to Ticketmaster is like refund: you don't get to enjoy the thing, and you get money instead.
This outcome doesn't improve things for consumers. But it's Songkick bringing the suit, and Songkick is a business whose primary goal is to look out for themselves. If some consumer group had brought the suit, their goal would be consumer protection.
> In January 2018, shortly prior to a pending trial, Live Nation settled the lawsuit for $110 million, and also acquired the remaining intellectual property not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount.
It sounds like after the sale of the part of the company not involved in the lawsuit to WMG, they basically had no reason to keep the IP so they sold it to whoever wanted it.
More likely: you start out with a smallish company trying to compete with a behemoth. You do well for a while, but as soon as you become an active threat, you start hearing a lot of "we'd love to work with you, but we just signed an exclusive deal with the behemoth that gives us access to a lot of high value stuff they won't allow otherwise." Your company is starved of revenue and dwindles. Eventually you decide to sue.
That gets real messy real fast, since no matter how strong your case is, you're going up against an entity with deep pockets to keep lots of lawyers tangling things up. You don't have the cash to fund both an expensive litigation and keep paying your employees to run the actual business that is being slowly starved of oxygen by the same monopolistic practices that you're suing for and can prove are happening.
The behemoth's objective now is to make you go away with the least total cost to them. A large settlement alone would not result in you going away; if you manage to hang on for that long by borrowing against everything you own, then the cash infusion could revitalize your company enough to compete for real. But if the behemoth gets your IP, the threat to them is mostly neutralized (assuming you retain the rights to use your own IP, you'd be competing on a supposedly even playing field, but with a gorilla that can do everything you can do and set prices just low enough to finish starving you out.) So the behemoth offers you a sweet deal: a large lump of cash in exchange for handing over the IP and going away. You will try to stand on principle and refuse for as long as you can, but the writing is on the wall. And your employees' families are hungry. How willing are you to hurt them in order to hurt the behemoth?
So sure, money is speaking, but it's not saying what you think it is: it's not whispering enticements.
It is yelling threats.
[I know nothing about this specific situation, but I have seen this play out in others.]
Truly, I appreciate this angle and I gave the benefit of the doubt to the author -- but to start a company by suing TicketMaster instead of competing on good faith... And to eventually sell your IP to them in order to help them be the behemoth you hate... It just doesn't make sense to me.
Ticketmaster is a monopoly and they maintain this through monopolizing venues. The US has seen this kind of monpoly before and it led to antritrust action, notably in US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which led to the forced separation of studios, theaters and distrbituion. It should be a clear model that Ticketmaster should not be able to own or have exclusive deals with any venues.
The dirty little secret of Ticketmaster is that most artists actually like that Ticketmaster exists. Why? Because they are sort of a reputational sacrificial anode. They are the token bad guys.
Imagine if a band started selling tickets for $300. Fans might complain and the artists might look bad. They don't want that. But if they charge $150 and Ticketmaster charges $100 in "fees" then Ticketmaster are the bad guys. The artists take no heat from that.
So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now. It's the same as "fuel surcharges" on plane tickets. That too should be illegal. The ticket just costs more. That's it.
The third leg of this are the ticket reselling sites that fuel demand. Another dirty little secret is that the artists themselves sell tickets directly on these sites too. On the principle of transparent pricing I'd like to see this outlawed too. But again artists like to just blame this on Ticketmaster and Stubhub.
> So the second thing we need is transparent pricing. There should be absolutely no fee sharing between Ticketmaster and artists because that's what happens now.
Oh, it's not just artists who share in the fees. There's a bunch of different stakeholders, none of which trust each other. This is why, in a way, the fees do represent transparent pricing. Sure, it doesn't seem transparent for the consumer, but for all those different stakeholders, it makes it very transparent, right at the time of the ticket sale, how much their cut of the money is.
Yea the real issue isn't ticketmaster or resellers, it's just supply and demand. If there are 3 million tickets and 15 million people want them you're gonna have a bad time, there's no way around it. Ticketmaster certainly isn't helping but Taylor really just needs to do more shows to solve this.
Years ago I saw a post on HN (or maybe reddit) about using reverse dutch auctions for these sort of situations and how it provided the fairest outcomes for all parties.
It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate.
> I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants
Fans don't want a market clearing price. Artists will also say they don't want a market clearing price, and some (most?) of them are being honest when saying that. They want a price that allows a large number of their long-term fans to be able to attend their concerts, and that price will be well below a market clearing price.
For a massive artist like Swift, with huge demand and limited supply for tour dates, a market clearing price would mean only people with high levels of disposable income would be able to go to the shows. Many of those people would only be casual Swift fans. So the die-hard fan who has listened to every album a hundred times but has a low paying job can't go, but people who have never listened to an album but earn a lot of money can.
In other industries, that kind of market dynamic isn't a problem. People will accept that only very rich people can afford supercars, even if they aren't necessarily car enthusiasts, whereas lots of die-hard car enthusiasts can't will never be able to afford a supercar.
But music is its own thing, for reasons I don't entirely understand. Perhaps it's because, more than other industries, successful artists owe so much of their success to a loyal following of fans, and they want to preserve that relationship over short-term profit maximization. Or perhaps it's because many people just feel that music is an inherent part of the human experience, and shouldn't be subject to the same raw market forces that prevail in other industries. I'm not someone who goes to see a lot of live music, this is just behavior I've observed in others.
Artists and fans want some kind of system that allows long-term fans to attend shows at "fair" prices. In this context, "fair" is not determined by the market, but by some kind of intuitive and emotional sense of how much a concert ticket "should" cost. I can't say what the price is, but I can say that if the market-clearing price for Swift's latest tour turned out to be $600, the fans wouldn't say "OK, fair enough, I can't afford it but I will accept the outcome as utility maximizing for the greatest number of market participants." They would say something closer to "this is total bullshit"
The ticket prices start high and are gradually reduced at a set rate until they reach a pre-defined minimum. The idea being that scaplers can't profit off of purchasing early since the official clearinghouse is lowering the price all the time.
People have to make a judgement call on the value of the tickets and purchase at an appropriate time.
Apparently there is actually an approach called "Dutch reverse auction" [0], but that's not what the proposal is about - rather it's a about a regular Dutch auction [1].
Hard for me not to hear the name Pearl Jam whenever I see ticketmaster. Eddie Vedder's Audible that came out last year had a brief section on their encounter. The revolving door of regulators to big industry wasn't painted in a good light there.
Can somebody explain the power balance in that industry to me? What prevents Taylor Swift (or any other artist) from selling their own ticket via a shopify shop or similar? If they don't like TicketMaster, why are they
using it?
We did this for Prince and the NPGMC after Ticketmaster was unable to stay online to sell small numbers of tickets to large numbers of fans. Maybe six weeks of code* and three dozen servers outperformed the behemoth.
Seems to us that it takes a Prince, a Pearl Jam ... or a Taylor Swift ... with the seat filling power, the independent vision, and the interest + will to take on such problems themselves instead of have it all "handled" for them by the revolving door group of industry insider managers and label execs.
To the sibling note, yes, it may also take alternative venues, or other cleverness. NPGMC for example created a "club" of "members" at scale, that allowed a variety of workarounds not available if albums or events are "public".
* Note: We already specialized in handling landing pages and sales for live streaming events because we'd found while we could deliver the online video events, even mega brand sites couldn't handle the flash traffic for scheduled sales. So, we had know-how to rapidly apply similar concepts to this.
Speaking of Prince… I wonder if a municipality could enact a one-day renaming of a venue. Arena with exclusivity contracts becomes Prince Arena ahead of time.
Ticketmaster has exclusivity contracts with the major venues. I believe Pearl Jam ran into this issue where their concerts had to be held in out-of-the way venues.
Quote from Rolling Stone article:
The web of exclusive deals is what hurt Pearl Jam the most during its aborted ’95 tour. Locked out of mainstream venues, the group sold tickets through newcomer ETM Entertainment for shows at fairgrounds, soccer fields and state parks in such distant locales as Casper, Wyo., and Las Cruces, N.M.
The mega venues all have exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster, usually because they're owned by them. None of the mid sized venues in my city use Ticketmaster, they're all on AXS(not much better imo) or self host. But if you're putting on an arena show tour you're stuck with Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster is in the industry of taking the blame for high prices. Concert ticket demand vastly outstrips concert ticket supply at the prices that artists are happy with.
The only real solution is to raise prices. But artists can't do that without fans being angry. So instead Ticketmaster does it for them and pays the venue a k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ "rebate". If the artist is popular enough, the venue pays money to the artist. Everybody is happy and Ticketmaster reaps the rewards of being the entity everybody is mad at.
"The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has confirmed that it is investigating whether Live Nation has been violating a consent decree that it has been required to follow since merging with Ticketmaster nearly a decade ago.
The consent degree forbids Live Nation from keeping concerts and tours from venues that do not use Ticketmaster for ticket services. It also prevents the company from retaliating against venues that engage one of Ticketmaster’s competitors."
...
"Live Nation indicated that those who were demanding an investigation misunderstood the consent degree as well as 'general ticketing industry dynamics.' On September 18th, Michael Rapino, who runs Live Nation, further addressed the issue at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, which took place in New York.
Rapino insisted that, while the consent decree prevents Live Nation from threatening to block shows at venues that use a different ticketing platform than Ticketmaster, it does not prevent the company from making decisions that make economic sense.
He further said that, if a venue wants to use a ticketing platform other than Ticketmaster, the venue may not make economic sense to his company."
Because most venues have a contractual agreement to only use ticketmaster to sell the tickets.
So not only would they have to sell their own tickets, they'd also have to provide their own venues. Taylor Swift is powerful, but not "build my own stadium to perform" powerful.
So I'm not an expert, but I did look into this area previously for an idea and I found that ticketmaster has a lot of exclusive contracts or outright ownership of venues. So if you don't play with them you don't have a place to play.
I’m no expert, but last I heard Live Nation (TicketMaster’s parent company) owns the venues and the promoters. Essentially they make it near impossible to have a tour and play on large venues if you are not using their whole “stack” of services. Many artists tried and failed to operate without them. Pearl Jam being one of the most notorious examples.
So apparently this is the context I was missing - ticketmaster wasn't able to handle the load of selling tickets to Taylor Swift's new tour because it was bombarded with "3.5 billion ticket requests from fans, bots and scalpers"[0].
I think your perception is incorrect in both counts.
They went bankrupt and saved the app by selling it to Warner and selling IP to Live Nation.
And it doesn't seem like he was aiming for a heartwarming tale, the last message says "we gave it our best shot" and he is disappointed that there is no big, healthy competition.
A more charitable read is that people paying you money means that you're doing something they want or need. If nobody is paying you anything that means they don't need anything you're doing, so why are you even doing it? "Pivoting" then is just seeing that people have a need that is currently not being satisfied and building something to address that.
I think your view of VC-backed startups is skewed. They exist to make the VC investors money. If they happen to change the world while doing that, that’sa nice secondary effect.
How did Taylor Swift gradually become one of the biggest, if not the biggest pop star, all of a sudden? She has gotten bigger and bigger ever since the Kanye West incident 13 years ago. She’s not a great performer like Beyoncé and she’s not a great singer like Adele. What’s going on here?
She’s been brilliant at adapting her style to match current trends in ways that connect with people. Compare her most recent album to her early country music days. And she’s done a great job of controlling her public perception by limiting access, when no one would say the same about Kanye.
This. It is a little bit like talking about politics. People will agree with sufficiently generic statements along the lines of 'there should be some accountability'; they will start arguing over what that means though. If you listen to her songs, it is an equivalent of that generic statements most people can relate to.
I am aware of her and I am very detached from US pop culture. It is catchy.
All of a sudden? Her's has been a steady rise for over 13 years. She was already big at the "incident" you are referencing. Is kind of the point in why that was an incident, no?
> Defendants [LiveNation and Ticketmaster] have also recently begun using
their unique multi-level leverage (which arose from their merger) to prevent artists from
using Songkick’s competitive services, and to tie (1) Live Nation’s concert promotion
services, Live Nation’s artist management services, Ticketmaster’s concert venue
ticketing services, and/or use of the venues Defendants own, manage, and/or control; to
(2) the artists’ use of Ticketmaster’s own artist presale ticketing services (recently
rebranded as Ticketmaster’s “OnTour” division).
> Michael Rapino, LiveNation’s CEO and Director, has admitted that artists today make 95% of their income
from live music events and that Live Nation is now the “largest single financer” of
artists worldwide (more than record companies). Armed as he is with this power over
artists’ careers, Mr. Rapino has used this position to intimidate artists into using
Ticketmaster over any other artist presale ticketing service. Indeed, Mr. Rapino made
several threats to withhold Defendants’ services if artists insisted on using Songkick’s
artist presale ticketing services. He also told several artists that they could not take a
single ticket off of the Ticketmaster system, period.
> Following fact and expert discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all of Songkick’s antitrust and non-trade secret claims. The Court denied that motion in its entirety on the papers. Before that decision, no antitrust plaintiff had ever withstood summary judgment against Ticketmaster, making Songkick the first. The decision also set up for trial (for the first time ever) what the defendants’ lead attorney acknowledged was a claim that put the legality of Ticketmaster’s exclusive dealing practices “squarely at issue.” Faced with Songkick’s claim and the prospect of a looming trial against Quinn Emanuel in late January 2018, the defendants resolved the dispute by paying Songkick $110 million in settlement (nearly 100% of its lost going concern value damages) and acquiring its assets for a confidential sum.
(Note that Songkick announced it would shut down in October 2017. It's very possible that Songkick was likely to succeed on the merits but was forced to take a settlement to meet the needs of its team and investors.)
IMO it's vital that this be taken seriously. An increasingly gloves-off anticompetitive Ticketmaster, in the midst of a global recession, could do irreparable damage to an entire generation of musical creators. Something has to change.
> The last thing I want to see on HN (or anywhere else for that matter) is thoughts on Taylor Swift
You’re responding to the original submission. You can flag it if it’s that important to you. Or just skip it in your reading list and never respond at all. Of course if you’re interested in Swift programming topics there might be a little missing from your feed as a result...;)
I feel the topic of online markets and nuances thereof have high hak-relevance to HN. As witnessed by the actual discussion. OTOH I don’t think you should be downvoted for grousing about it, as someone has obviously done for you...
It's fine, I'm not mad about being downvoted for making grouchy jokes. And, in more seriousness, I agree that, through the power of abstraction, value is gleanable even from Taylor-Swift-related content
For an American age 15 to 25 today, much more of their spending power, time, and opportunity is lost to Ticketmaster than FB/IG/Tiktok/Twitter monopolistic behavior combined.
Hopefully the Taylor Swift ticket sale breaks into the Overton window and results in actual enforcement. Ticketmaster should have to divest Livenation and every other ticketing company it's acquired since 2010.
I say this as the PM of the first attempt to sell tickets within Facebook Events in 2015. Even for Facebook, it was virtually impossible to get share because all the major venues and artists have exclusive lockups with Ticketmaster or a subsidiary of theirs.