Is Ticketmaster Evil?
Not eivil, just misguided, unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done about Ticketmaster….I’ll try to tell you briefly how it works. The band is booked and a flat fee is negotiated and paid to them for doing a show. Occasionally they will get a set percentage of tickets sold, but not often. The promoter of the show or particular venue is responsible for ticket sales, the band has nothing to do with that. Unfortunately most venues have contracts with agencies (mostly Ticketmaster) for selling their tickets. If a band (such as Pearl Jam) decides that they don’t want TicketMaster to sell their tickets (and profit from the sales), they don’t play at the venues that contract with TicketMaster. The problem with that is that you really narrow your playing field (as PJ found out the hard way) and miss the opportunity to play for a large part of your fan base. Something like 75% of the the nation’s clubs/theaters/amphitheaters have an exclusive contract with TM. So unfortunately there’
