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Event
M.I.A.
Saint Andrews Hall, Detroit, MI
Tue, Sep 27, 2005 08:00 PM
Review Your Order
Item Charge
Tickets (M.I.A.)
Full Price Ticket US $15.00 x 3
Total Building Facility Charge(s) US $0.50 x 3
Total Convenience Charge(s)

US $5.30 x 3

Order Processing Charge(s) US $4.35
UPS Delivery

US $14.50

TOTAL CHARGES US $81.25

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Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.

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Whoah, the NIN drummer had some kind of heart problem about halfway through the show, and they canceled the rest of the gig!

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[09_17_2005]


We had to cancel the show tonight. Have to cancel tomorrow as well. Feeling kind of numb right now.
Jerome is spending the night in the hospital with chest pains and an irregular heartbeat. Uncertainty abounds.


1:09am_BST

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The real comparison is in airline tickets.

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I haven't been to a show for years that had tickets sold through ticketmaster. Everything have went to lately has been in some dive bar kind of place where they don't have seating anyway.

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And if the venue is big enough to be pwnd by TicketMaster, I'll go somewhere else. .

I wish I could do that. Clearchannel came in and bought every venue in the Detroit area except the corner bars. Only local bands play there because they only hold about 200 people. I support the local bands a lot, but sometimes you want to see someone from out of town. I avoid arena shows at all costs unless it's a band I fell in love with when they were small (NIN and maybe the Cure are the only two I'll see at a stadium).

So, at least in my town, because Ticketmaster has contracts with the venues, boycotting Ticketmaster means a lot of bands signed to minor labels. I need my Peaches!

Oh well. I wasn't really expecting any solutions. I just wanted to rant.

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RIP - Birch Hill Nightclub, Old Bridge, NJ - 10/26/03

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What REALLY gripes me is that they advertise that the tickets are only $15.00 and you CAN'T buy them anywhere for $15.00. That is FALSE advertising. If the going rate is $27 a ticket. Fine. But NO they tell you the tickets are only $15.

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It's a loophole. They just whack on lots and lots of fees which bumps up the price significantly. All online shops do the same thing with their delivery charges. What is advertised isn't the final price of an item. In this case, TicketMaster have suspiciously high P&P and handling fees.

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They are making a killing, so maybe it's a good decision... I still hate it though.

They even charge you $1.50 to print your own tickets... how lame.

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They are making a killing, so maybe it's a good decision...

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Some bands are starting to find creative responses to keeping their core fans happy. A friend of mine is a big Matchbox 20 fan and a member of "Fanbox 20" or whatever it's called. She got apparently great tickets through the fan club. I believe U2 is similarly careful to pack the good seats with their fans. Still, as long as there's a demand to pay high dollar for the good seats, then there will be some kind of supply.

Amusing contrast: one of my big hobbies is swing dancing. The swing dancing community, as such, is notoriously cheap. You can go to a weekend event with three live bands (jazz big bands!), after-hours DJed events with food, and more and it's only going to cost you $75 for the whole weekend. But, for many of the people in the community, that's a lot of cash. If you doubled the prices, you'd slash the attendance. For contrast, you can easily spend $75 for a single ticket to a stadium rock show. If they doubled the price, at least for the good seats, they'd probably still have a full house.

(And, since when is Dead Can Dance an obscure band?)

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Considering Ticketmaster does little more than run a database and a website, I don't know how they explain their fees except to say they can get away with it.

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There's no reason that Ticketmaster needs to charge that much.