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Articles pay walled. no chance in hell am I reading past the headline.
I went to an event last weekend, tickets from ticketmaster were $48 a seat.... With an additional $27 In "fees" (per ticket!) >

I bought tickets to an nfl game last year. Paid about 20% in fees. Then something came up and I couldn’t go, so I sold the tickets through Ticketmaster…. They took 20% of my sale price in fees, and the buyer paid 20% in fees too. Insane. >

coming and going.. >

That is awesome, hopefully he starts a trend. The venue should get 0% of all merch and they should provide a good space for it. >

Good to hear. Wish this weren’t behind a paywall tho. >

Get yourself a 12 foot ladder and you can climb right over that wall. >

Ticket master sells ladders for a low price.  Just add on the $35 screw you fee.  Also the $5 conveince fee.  The $3 download fee and a $10 facilities fee. >


Ticket master sells ladders for a low price.  Just add on the $35 screw you fee.  Also the $5 conveince fee.  The $3 download fee and a $10 facilities fee.

this made me laugh. >

Hopefully this does not slow down the hearings or their results at all. They've proven that they are not trustworthy. >

I don't see how a small venue owner that owns like a dozen venues around California would stop a congressional hearing investigating ticketmaster. >

Oh gotcha, I didn't read more than a tiny bit of the article. Thought it was saying that ticketmaster, as a venue owner, was doing this. >

To explain this a little bit - venues, and festivals, generally take a cut of the merch sales. It's called a hard and soft split. Hard is generally anything that's not apparel, but it can also be just music. Soft is either apparel, or just clothing (but not trinkets like posters or hats). Usually, you'll see a split like "80/20 90/10". This means. The artist keeps 80% of hard, and the venue gets 20%; the artist keeps 90% of soft, and the venue gets 10%. 
In some cases, large festivals will take 70/30 out of hard, which is bonkers.   
Now there's a difference as well between "artist sells" and "venue sells shows". Artists sells shows means the artist sells their own merch. The venue provides a space, usually a table, some lights, usually some grid (but not always or enough), and internet, but the artist is charge of staffing, credit card processing, display, price tags, cash bank, etc. If the artist cannot find a seller, they may ask the venue.
A venue sells situation means the venue does everything - staffing, set up, display, price tags, etc. The artist just hands the merch over, verifies the counts are correct with the venue, and waits to count out at the end of the night (they may add product during the show if needed).   
Usually, venues are artist sells up until you get to the "mid range" capacity, which is like...1500+. Then it switches to venue sells, cause having a local experienced crew is just better for big shows.  
So indie artists, rising artists, etc at these small venues, in an artist sells situation, hate giving over 20% of their sales (on top of credit card fees, taxes, etc) to a venue that does nothing but provide a table. And that money the venue is taking can literally be money out of the gas tank. It costs so goddamn much to go on tour. So that's why there is a lot of push back lately. The movement started in Europe and now is moving here. >

I worked in a lot of venues and when you do that you pretty much work any job that needs to be done. If I was selling merch for the venue I ALWAYS miscounted in favor of the band. Granted this was 15 years ago now (fuck) and it was mostly cash so a lot easier to help the band out. >

Good. Fuck Ticketmaster and their shady and predatory business practices. >

Who believes this will really happen? Just like the coupons they made to avoid paying out lawsuits. It will be done In  such a way to get good publicity and with enough loopholes not to pay anything. >

It's not ticketmaster doing this. Which is stated in literally the first sentence of the story.