The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped
Starred review from May 1, 2011
Processing charges, shipping charges, e-ticket "convenience" charges, will-call charges--the ticketing industry is a billion-dollar business, and Budnick and Baron, executive editor and editor in chief, respectively, of Relix magazine, have written the definitive history. Scalping has been prevalent in the United States since Charles Dickens's 19th-century tour, and promoters been have trying to control the action ever since. The authors have done their homework and present their information in great detail. Their book is chock-full of interviews with many of the key individuals in the history of the online ticketing business. VERDICT In other hands, this book could have been dull and academic, but it reads like an adventure story, full of colorful characters, shady transactions, and surprising twists and turns. For everyone who has been dumbstruck by the extra fees added to the price of admission, this book is just the ticket. Highly recommended for eventgoers everywhere.--Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2011
The lively, sprawling chronology of the concert-ticket sales business.
Relix editors Budnick (Jambands: The Complete Guide to the Players, Music, and Scene, 2003, etc.) and Baron begin by recapturing the "eureka moment" of computer moguls Harvey Dubner and partner Jack Quinn in the 1960s. Both men managed to surmount a spectrum of technological kinks to roll out a revolutionary operating system that expanded automated ticketing to encompass not only theater venues, but the lucrative rock music and sporting-event business as well. Dubbed Ticket Reservation Systems, it endured fierce competition and necessary rebranding (Ticketron), while an ingenious startup venture (that would become Ticketmaster) began competing for venue contracts and consumer sales with technology capable of processing increasingly complex ticketing platforms. The authors engagingly trace the industry's evolution through its rapid and profitable growth trends in the '70s and '80s, aided partly by shrewd businessmen like Ticketmaster honcho Fred Rosen, an entrepreneur who savored his company's absorption of rival agent Ticketron in 1991. However, trouble began to mount. Customers revolted over Ticketmaster's excessive, involuntary tiers of "service fees," and allegations of unsavory and overzealous business practices sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for antitrust practices. A host of volatile lawsuits followed, though nothing could prevent the highly scrutinized merger with LiveNation in 2010. Budnick and Baron offer information in accessible language fortified with verbatim dialogue from a pantheon of music-industry brass. Classic-rock bands, musicians, managers, concert promoters, radio broadcasters and entertainment attorneys contribute to a spirited forum on how the grinding gears of the evolving (often double-crossing) ticket market has affected their concert tours and business.
An exhaustive, somewhat circuitous literary treatment that favors history over histrionics.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)