The Mac Mentioned in "Legal Ticket Scalping" Article

[EveryHour]

Sorry if this is a bit of a bummer among all of the tour and Barnes & Noble excitement, but I have a responsibilty to report any mention of The Mac!

The new issue of Rolling Stone (4/16/09, Lil' Wayne cover) has an article about legal ticket scalping on page 15, and the Mac are mentioned.

Well, at least now everyone's strong suspicions as to why it has become increasingly more and more difficult for us regular folks to get good tickets have been confirmed.

The article states that it has unfortunately become common practice for the venue, promoter, ticketing agency and/or "artist camp" (artist, management and agent) to take the best seats and feed them directly to resellers, such as TicketsNow, StubHub, and Ticketmaster's own TicketExchange before the general public even has a crack at them. Apparently this has been going on behind the scenes for years, but was recently brought into the spotlight due to the proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. In a testimony to Congress, Irving Azoff (big-wig artist manager and now CEO of Ticketmaster......is Stevie still with him?) confirmed that 15-20% of tickets, "the vast majority of the best seats", are regularly excluded from public on-sale. Other industry sources state the number can be as high as 30% for some shows. Fleetwood Mac and Britney Spears are specifically mentioned in the article as being artists who participate in this practice. Irving Azoff also gets called out on the carpet for stating that the "increasingly lucrative secondary concert ticket market is 'a mess'", but then allowing the system to automatically redirect fans to brokers when they couldn't pull up seats for Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. (Needless to say, Springsteen was pissed!)

Artists currently making a stand against these practices, and trying to come up with ways to prevent it (and all types of scalping), include Trent Reznor, Tom Waits, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and, of course, Tom Petty. Possible solutions are "paperless tickets" (your ID and credit card are scanned to enter the venue--I did it for AC/DC and it went fine), customer's names being printed on tickets, and all tickets in the best sections being "will-call pick-up only" (which Springsteen and Pearl Jam already do). Doc McGhee, manager of Kiss, says, "The artists are participating in it, which I don't agree with. They're participating and basically scalping."



I'm trying not to think about it, but I'm angry. Stevie, being someone who claims to be "old school rock 'n' roll"........this could not be farther from being so! And as close as she and Tom Petty are, I can't believe he hasn't pestered her enough for her to take a stand on this issue.