The Cure vs. Oasis in Ticketmaster concert prices

Music journalist, author and The Cure biographer Simon Price recently claimed that artists were aware of polarizing ticket sales practices such as “dynamic pricing” because they would have been offered a simple choice of turning them on or off. deactivate them.

Simon Price opens up on the subject

Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing recently made headlines as prices for Oasis reunion concerts reportedly rose from £150 ($201) to £350 ($470) and more, altering the mood after the one of the biggest developments in rock this year. The Gallagher brothers stressed that they were “at no time aware that dynamic pricing was going to be used”, while the latest incident led some UK government officials to say that an investigation into the practice of sale was necessary.

Oasis’ situation came a few years after “dynamic pricing” allegedly inflated prices for Bruce Springsteen shows by as much as $5,000, and controversy surrounding the pre-sale of Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

Last year, The Cure’s Robert Smith blocked Ticketmaster from implementing “dynamic pricing” on tickets for The Cure’s 2023 U.S. tour, and forced the company to issue small refunds after discovering that it charged fans “unduly high” transaction fees.

In an interview with the Irish IndependentMusic journalist, author and biographer of The Cure, Simon Price, argued that Smith standing up to Ticketmaster was “a really honorable thing to do”, adding that tickets for concerts at arenas and stadiums “is a murky industry , dirty and corrupt. »

Price referred to a 2012 documentary on Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’, which discussed artists’ complicity with the practices of ticketing companies, saying that “it appeared that the artists themselves were receiving a nice bribe from the secondary sales market. Little has changed. Price added:

“Artists often like to pretend they don’t know anything about it. But they do it. It’s a very simple question: When you sign up to sell a concert through Ticketmaster, do you want to enable or disable dynamic pricing? Turn on or off – it’s a simple switch.

Prize additionally claimed:

“There’s this idea that (dynamic ticketing) is pure free market capitalism, but it’s not – it’s a scheme, a de facto monopoly with the same companies wearing different masks. They ensure that the face value of the ticket is only nominal: you will never get the ticket at that price.