Thread by @future_of_music

Watch the Senate hearing on #Ticketmaster live right here and follow this thread for our ongoing commentary! 🎟️🎟️🎟️🧵 judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/thats…

You can also watch the hearing right here:

https://twitter.com/SenAmyKlobuchar/status/1617899830587654146?s=20&t=KT2pog-KShAq0gdOoZyoFg

@senamyklobuchar is kicking it off with a fiery opening statement, focusing on anticompetitive behavior impacting venues and artists and concertgoers!

@SenAmyKlobuchar .@SenMikeLee makes the second Taylor Swift joke of the day, but notes this issue goes beyond this one incident. Suggests that the issue might have lessons for merger policy broadly, and spells out the story of the consent decree that accompanied the 2010 merger.

.@SenMikeLee suggests--correctly in our view--that the consent decree hasn't worked to protect against anticompetitive behavior. As we argued: a better approach would have been to block the merger outright.

Livenation exec Joe Berchtold is already blaming artists for high ticket prices and venues for high ticket fees--making statements that are technically kind of true but completely miss the critical point.

Now Berchtold is offering a list of actually pretty reasonable, anodyne policy suggestions like strengthening enforcement of BOTS act. We should do a better job of regulating bots and predatory resellers. But that doesn't address Livenation's anticompetitive and unfair practices!

Jack Groetzinger has spelled out how Livenation 's monopoly makes it hard for @SeatGeek to get a foothold in primary ticketing and argues the problem needs a structural solution.

Indie concert promoter @jamUSA did a solid job of making concrete the way that LiveNation shut him out of being able to put on arena shows, and the way that they can leverage one part of their business for unfair advantage in other lines of business.

Sal Nuzzo of conservative think tank @JmsMadisonInst asks whether the Taylor Swift debacle would have happen in a healthy competitive market? We probably disagree with him about what that might look like, but the fundamental question is right on.

Kathleen Bradish @AntitrustInst offers some reasonable legislative suggestions about how to strengthen enforcement and make it easier to block or challenge bad mergers.

.@lawrencetheband is totally killing it, noting that the core of the problem is that Livenation is acting as promoter, venue, and ticketing service at the same time.

This level of granular detail about deal terms and contracts from @lawrencetheband is exactly why artists have to be at the table in these kinds of discussions to offer their lived experience. Deducting $30 from payout for a stack of clean towels?!?

.@aainstitute asked for reaction to Live Nation's policy proposals, basically suggests they might be good ideas but they're not addressing the central issue of competition. She also notes the problem of retaliation against venues makes it harder to bring an antitrust case.

@aainstitute In our comments we also note that creating an ongoing monitoring requirement creates a new form of uncompensated labor that artists are forced to perform. static1.squarespace.com/static/5bff3d2…

It's encouraging that this hearing hasn't just been a litigating of the specific technical challenges in the Taylor Swift onsale and has stayed focused on the big picture!

Also, we love to see a shoutout from @lawrencetheband to legendary all-ages venue/participatory arts center AS220! ❤️

.@MarshaBlackburn is no fan of ticket-buying bots, but she seems fed up that Ticketmaster hasn't asked FTC for more help going after bots while using bots as an excuse!

.@SenBlumenthal calls for new legislation and stepped up enforcement, but brings up BOSS act, which as far as we know not a single artist organization supports. There's some good stuff in there, but a bunch of weird provisions that primarily benefit predatory resellers.

Odd soliloquy about transferability from @SenKennedy. He doesn't seem to understand that most artists don't have a lot of agency in the current environment to set policies around transferability.

That both the center-left @AntitrustInst and @JmsMadisonInst oppose artists ability to limit tickets' transferability is not surprising--it reflects the problem of an economic style of reasoning, centering outmoded theory over lived experience.

and even to the degree that we can agree with those folks that LiveNation is a problem, it's reflective of a bigger issue. Antitrust and antimonopoly have to do a better job at understanding harms to workers and to communities.

No antitrust group should be having briefings on the hill about ticketing and failing to invite a single representative of musicians or their teams. @AntitrustInst needs to update their thinking.

More on this in our joint statement with @a2im @artistsrightsnow @musicworkers @UMAW_ futureofmusic.org/news/2023/1/24… Neither Ticketmaster nor scalpers should be making the rules for live events ticketing.

@a2im @MusicWorkers @UMAW_ Clear consensus about all-in pricing disclosure, though @lawrencetheband rightly notes that the fee components need to be itemized, so fans understand what the base price is. We agree!

.@senmikelee seems to think non-transferability isn't a fan-friendly policy, or is pro-ticketmaster. But Ticketmaster critic @zachlanebryan has limited transferability on has fan-friendly summer tour (with no Ticketmaster venues).

The elegant solution to this problem (and what we advocate for in our written testimony) is fan-to-fan face value marketplaces, which Ticketmaster has done, but so has AXS and others.

Well, the hearing has wrapped, and it was a good one. Senators were engaged, fired up, and mostly asking substantive, thoughtful questions. Live Nation/ Ticketmaster took a lot of criticism, and efforts to change the subject or point fingers elsewhere mostly fell flat.