Springsteen's L.A. tickets hit resale markets; second date added

The return of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to Los Angeles was met with the expected high demand, both from fans and those looking to resell their tickets on secondary markets. A second L.A. date at the Sports Arena was added after an April 26 date, which went on sale at 10 a.m., quickly sold out. Tickets for an April 27 performance will go on sale today at 1 p.m.

The Sports Arena tickets are priced at $68 and $98, not including added fees, which bring the tickets up to $78.55 and $112.35, respectively. A spokesman for Nederlander Concerts, one of the show's promoters, couldn't answer how quickly the April 26 show sold-out, but more than 800 were soon available on resale site StubHub and an additional few hundred, including Ticketmaster's paperless tickets, could be found on sites such as NoHiddenFeesTickets.com.

A portion of tickets for the L.A. dates on Springsteen's tour, in support of his March 6 "Wrecking Ball" album, are paperless, meaning fans will have to present the credit card used to purchase the tickets for entry. A Ticketmaster spokeswoman said the paperless seats, which have a four-ticket limit, are reserved for the "best seats" in the house. Some of the paperless seats listed on the secondary market are already going for more than $1,100.

Springsteen tickets stirs up controversy -- again

The Boss has kicked up another dust-up over concert tickets.

When Bruce Springsteen announced he would sell select seats to his upcoming concert tour only through non-transferable electronic tickets, a holy war of press releases was unleashed.

On one side is Ticketmaster, acting as a proxy for Springsteen, arguing that non-transferable tickets are meant to foil scalpers who scoop up tickets en masse and resell them at astronomical prices. 

On the other are ticket resellers who oppose paperless tickets, saying they restrict the consumer right to do what they want with tickets they purchase.

Both sides argue that they speak for fans, which makes the ensuing scenario especially contentious.

The first salvo was fired by the Fan Freedom Project, a group funded in part by StubHub, a ticket resale platform owned by eBay. The group issued a "consumer alert" last Thursday.

"The devil is in the details," said Elizabeth Owen, the group's consumer advocate, "and if you are buying tickets as a gift, or with a group of friends, you may be surprised to know that for some seats on this tour, that won’t be possible.”

Buyers would need to present identification to claim the tickets, the group said. "If you are buying tickets to go with a group of friends or family, you have to wait for your whole party to arrive to enter instead of distributing the tickets in advance and meeting at your seats," the group warned.

DJ Tiesto headlines massive show Oct. 8 in Carson

 
DJ Tiesto will headline what’s being billed as “the largest single DJ event in U.S. history” on Oct. 8 at the 27,000-capacity Home Depot Center in Carson. The Dutch deejay and producer will be joined at the show, which concludes his Club Life College Invasion Tour, by Diplo and Dada Life as well his College Invasion Tour opener,  DJ Porter Robinson.

The North American tour opened earlier this month in Madison, Wisc., and includes stops in Ontario, Canada; New York; Norfolk, Va.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Austin, Texas; and San Diego before reaching its conclusion in the L.A. area.

“L.A. has always been such a welcoming city to me and it’s been a while since I've played there, so to be able to finish off the college tour with such a great show is really special," Tiesto said in a statement announcing the 18-and-over show, for which tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster.

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L.A. scene inspires his sound

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-- Randy Lewis

Photo: DJ Tiesto. Credit: Stephanie Pistel

Ticketmaster, resellers and consumer advocates battle over paperless tickets

What could be more inoccuous than paperless tickets? It even has an environmentally friendly ring to it.

On the contrary, paperless tickets are  becoming the latest grounds for a skirmish between Live Nation Entertainment's Ticketmaster, ticket resellers and consumer advocates.

Backed by Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, a group of concert promoters and artist managers this week declared war on resellers who buy tickets in bulk and then resell them on sites such as StubHub, Craigslist and elsewhere.

"It erodes the heart of our business," said Randy Levy, an independent concert promoter who is a member of the group, dubbed the Fans First Coalition.

The solution: "paperless tickets" that are largely non-transferable. That means only the original buyer can claim the ticket on the day of the event.

Not so fast, says the Fan Freedom Project, backed by the National Consumers League and founded earlier this year by Jon Potter, former director of the Digital Media Assn.

Potter argues that the real agenda for promoters who back paperless tickets is to prevent consumers from selling or giving away tickets they have purchased.

"Consumers should have the right to determine what they can do with a ticket once they've purchased it," Potter said. "That means being able to sell it at both higher or lower than face value."

The controversy over paperless tickets is not new. Miley Cyrus and Bruce Springsteen both experimented with paperless ticketing back in 2009 for their concert tours.

Prince keeps things affordable at the Forum at $25, but how close does that get you?

Let's face it. The live music business is one that fans and media approach with a skeptical eye, albeit one that's deserved after years of increasing ticket fees, last-minute fire sales and ticketing systems that seemingly play into the hands of the secondary market. So, when artists and promoters do something right, such as Prince offering about 85% of the house at $25 a pop -- a figure that includes service fees -- a hearty well-done is in order. 

Three of Prince's 21 Los Angeles dates went on sale this morning, and if anyone was curious as to how a superstar such as Prince could price more than half the Forum at $25, the answer looked to be apparent as soon as one went to make a purchase. There were, of course, the $25 all-in tickets, but the next tier was a drastic hike. Those who wanted to guarantee a seat outside the Forum's upper deck (the colonnade section) would have to spring for a $205 ticket. 

What's more, those $205 tickets were running deep into the Forum's loge section. If one wanted to ensure one of the absolute best seats in the Forum, Ticketmaster directed you to its Platinum Ticket section, which offered premium loge seats for as high as $450.

But again, there is good news in all this, as Pop & Hiss is not interested here in criticizing an artist for pricing more than 80% of the house at $25. A spokeswoman for promoter Live Nation confirms that there are in fact loge seats available for $25, and those are, no doubt, among the first to go. So those who are gambling on snaring better seats for one of Prince's forthcoming 18 gigs, there is hope, although what percentage of the loge is selling for $25 is unknown.

Buffalo Springfield reunion will reach Los Angeles, Oakland in June* (Updated)

Buffalo Springfield is expanding its latter-day reunion from last fall into a limited tour this year that will include several shows in California, including stops June 4 and 5 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

The celebrated group featuring Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay will start its tour June 1 and 2 at the Fox Theater in Oakland, and will make a previously announced appearance June 11 at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

It’s very likely that more stops will be added, according to sources close to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band.

Update at 4:07 p.m.: True enough, the band's camp has just announced that the tour also will include performances June 7 and 8 at the County Bowl in Santa Barbara.

Buffalo Springfield formed in 1966 in Los Angeles and released only three studio albums before disbanding in 1968. Original members Young, Stills and Furay reconvened last fall for two performances at Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts in the Bay Area. Bassist Rick Rosas and drummer Joe Vitale, who will support the surviving members on the reunion tour, filled in at those shows for original Springfield members Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin, who died in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

Tickets go on sale Friday for the Los Angeles shows  and Sunday for the Oakland dates at Ticketmaster.

Related:

Buffalo Springfield just one of two tantalizing reunions slated for Bonnaroo 2011

More Buffalo Springfield reunion gigs on the way?

Buffalo Springfield to reunite for Bridge School benefit

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of reunited Buffalo Springfield (from left): Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Rick Rosas and Neil Young. Not pictured; drummer Joe Vitale. Credit: Ticketmaster.com.

 

SXSW 2011: Live Nation Entertainment's Nathan Hubbard to face critics in Austin

When ticketing and promotion giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster pledged to merge in 2009, the companies promised a fan-friendly operation with greater transparency. Yet when it came to addressing industry concerns at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas -- the largest music biz gathering in the country -- top executives from the newly christened Live Nation Entertainment were no shows. 

That changes in 2011, when Nathan Hubbard, the CEO of Live Nation Entertainment's Ticketmaster outfit, will appear on a Friday morning panel dubbed "Indie Davids Take On Goliath Ticketmaster-Live Nation."

Related: SXSW 2011: The music stories to watch

The conversation will be moderated by Andrew Dreskin, CEO of the ticketing upstart Ticketfly. Those slated to speak include Spaceland Productions head Mitchell Frank, John Read of the Department of Justice, Boche Billions of independent booker the Billions Corporation and Andrew Kaplan, the talent buyer for Chicago-based JAM Productions.

 

Gigswiz goes after concert ticket business, lures bands with cash bonuses

Money talks. That's what Gigswiz, an online ticketing startup that launched this week at the New Music Seminar in Los Angeles, is counting on.

The Finnish company is promising to give bands one-third of its 15% service fee for each ticket that the bands help to sell via a Gigswiz widget embedded on the band's fan site. On a $10 ticket with a $1.50 fee, for example, the band would get 50 cents.

Gigswiz is betting that bands will sign up and promote their concerts better if they see hard dollars coming back.

Ticketmaster's new blog: 'We get it -- you don't like service fees'

 

Ticketmaster is the company everyone loves to hate, and today it acknowledged as much. Quietly, the ticketing behemoth that's now part of Live Nation Entertainment launched a blog, making a very real effort to finally put a consumer-friendly face on the largely automated, fee-heavy operation. 

In a post attributed to CEO Nathan Hubbard, the company admitted the following: "We get it -- you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for." Hubbard doesn't totally break down the allotment of the fees, but reiterates some of what is already known. He wrote, "Most of the parties in the live event value chain participate in these service fees either directly or indirectly -- promoters, venues, teams, artists and, yes, ticketing companies."

So fees are not going to go away, but Ticketmaster is making an effort to let customers know what kind of financial commitment they'll be making the moment they come to the site. For years, Ticketmaster waited until a potential concertgoer was nearly done with purchasing a ticket before unveiling the fees, which typically add a minimum of $10-$15 to the price. 

Now, at least for most events, prospective buyers will see a portion of the fees as soon as they select the tickets. So, for example, let's say you want to see Nick Cave's Grinderman at the Music Box @ Fonda (you should). A drop-down menu tells you that the $30 is actually $40.30. It's not until one clicks through the site that the fees are broken down, with a $2.50 facility charge, which goes to the venue operator, and a $7.80 "convenience charge," some of which goes to Ticketmaster, the promoter, credit card companies and artists. 

Yet the actual cost of the ticket still isn't $40.30. 

The final price comes to $47.30, thanks to an additional "order processing fee" and the $2.50 charge to print your own ticket. All told, fees add $17.30 to a single $30 ticket. In instances where the promoter owns the venue, the latter is double-dipping of a sort. The Goldenvoice-run Fonda comes with a $2.50 faculty fee, and Live Nation's own Palladium tacks on $1. 

Company chief Irving Azoff acknowledged some of the shortcomings of the new features on his Twitter page. He wrote, "can’t boil all fees down to a per ticket fee until we know how many tix are bought and shipping method chosen, so it has to happen later."

OMG! Ticketmaster head Irving Azoff throws down a Twitter gauntlet at Billboard journalist

 

Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino has already accused the press of "scaring" artists from touring. Now the company's executive chairman, Irving Azoff, has gone so far as to call Billboard journalist-commentator Glenn Peoples a "jerk." 

Azoff's Twitter went live Tuesday. A spokesperson confirmed that the Twitter feed is indeed run by the famed industry executive and artist manager (the Eagles, Christina Aguilera and more). One of his first tweets, however, drew some criticism. Wrote Azoff: "So if you want ticket prices to go down stop stealing music."

Many, including Perez Hilton, took the comment as a direct attack on music consumers, implying that the tweet was instantly putting a Big Giant Corporation in one corner, and recession-addled fans in another. Writing his morning column on industry news on Billboard.biz, Peoples contended that "Twitter is hardly the place to reveal a company’s strategy for dealing with the competing forces of rising artist demands and consumer demands for cheaper tickets, but blaming high ticket prices solely on piracy is disappointing."