Earlier this year, Merriweather Post Pavilion became the first major venue in the country to shift from using Live Nation/Ticketmaster for ticketing since the companies merged. As you might remember from April’s Phish onsales, MPP has started selling tickets through Ticketfly.com, just one of 50 venues that has signed on with the company since it was founded in 2008.Wired’s Epicenter blog profiled Ticketfly and it looks like this “david” may have a shot against the Live Nation/Ticketmaster “goliath.”

There are two groups that Ticketfly needs to win over – consumers and venue operators/promoters. By offering venue operators who are in competition with Live Nation a chance to keep business away from Live Nation, Ticketfly has been able to take advantage of the animosity surrounding the merger helping them to sign on the 9:30 Club, Brooklyn Bowl, Maxwell’s and the aforementioned Merriweather Post Pavilion as clients.  Live Nation/Ticketmaster contracts with venues expire all the time giving Ticketfly a chance to gain market share over the next few years.

Does using Ticketfly lead to lower prices for us ticket buying folk?  According to the AP, “Ticketfly boasts that its add-on fees are on average 40 percent lower than those charged by Ticketmaster, and that it has no charge for printing tickets at home.” One thing Ticketfly needs to work on is their ability to handle high-demand shows. We had a bitch of  a time getting on to the site when Phish tickets went on sale.

The ticketing landscape continues to evolve and despite what you might have heard, Ticketmaster/Live Nation isn’t the only player in the field. AEG and Comcast/Spectacor are in the ticket selling business, but unlike Ticketfly both of those companies own venues. Will Ticketfly’s focus on selling tickets and lowering service fees allow them to compete with the big boys? Reality says TM/LN has control of too many venues and has too much cash to lose much ground. Yet, if Ticketfly really cut fees by 40% without raising the base price, we sure hope more promoters and venues turn to them.

Remember when Ticketmaster and Live Nation promised that a merger of the two companies would lead to lower ticket prices? We’re only one quarter into LN/TM’s reign of terror & already the company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, has hinted in a conference call yesterday that increasing the face value of tickets is part of the company’s plan for the future. Anybody surprised?

Apparently, TicketsNow has lost tons of business because LN/TM can’t link to the ticket reselling site leading Rapino to try to get the artists themselves to increase the price of premium tickets moving forward.

Let’s take a quick peek at what else is goin’ on this hump day…

• List Time: Urlesque’s Top 11 Bluegrass Covers on YouTube
• Pitchfork shares pics of the Groening-curated ATP festival
• Gov’t Mule announces plans for its first-ever show in Israel
• The 2010 lineup for the XPoNential fest in Camden, NJ is out
• UM’s Andy Farag releases hip hop CD and barbecue rub
• Check out the comprehensive 2010 WSP Spring Tour Stats

Finally, we’ve been keeping tabs on Stones Week, but Jimmy Fallon isn’t the only late night host to book great bands this week. Last night, MGMT played a set at the Ed Sullivan Theatre as part of the Live on Letterman series. You can watch the entire performance below…

Say what you will about Apple, but it’s a company with great brand loyalty and integrity. On the complete other end of that spectrum you have Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Is Apple gearing up to take on the TM/LN monopoly in the ticketselling game? From the looks of the patent that Steve Jobs’ company is applying for, that seems to be the case.

“Concert Tickets+” appears to be a system in which tickets will be sold through iTunes and transferred to Apple devices as a paperless ticket. I’m sure we’ll hear much more on this story over the coming years.

Let’s take one final look at what else is happening…

• Volcanic Ash has led a few bands to cancel on Coachella
• You’ll soon be able to access the Rolling Stone Archives
• Spin Magazine lists America’s 15 Best Indie Record Stores
• The Disco Biscuits are set to appear on NPR, add SC dates
• Soundgarden will play their first show in 12 years tonight
• We hope to see lots of entries for Coventry’s Phish-araoke

Finally, the part of the UC at Santa Cruz library that will eventually hold the contents of the Grateful Dead Archive has been damaged by fire. No worries though, the contents of the vault are safe and sound at an undisclosed location and no one was hurt or injured at the scene of the fire.

Have a great weekend everybody and we’ll see you on Monday.

The Justice Department has approved the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger after a year-long investigation. While we’d usually greet such a seemingly anti-competitive decision with anger and animosity, the Justice Department has thrown in a few conditions to their approval which gives us a little hope that this won’t be the worst thing to ever happen to concertgoers.

Not only does the new company have to sell one of its ticketing divisions but it must license its software to a competitor. It’s quite possible these divestitures will ensure that there are two formidable competitors to Live Nation/TM’s throne. Also, LN/TM will be subject to “tough anti retaliation provisions” for the next 10 years that “aim to prevent abuse of its powers over concert tours, artist management, ticketing and theaters.” [NYT]

These conditions seem like a good start, but we’ve got a few others we’d like to see the Department of Justice make the new company observe…

• Ticketmaster/Live Nation promises not to refer to exorbitant fees as “convenience charges” anymore
• Ticketmaster/Live Nation promises not to re-direct customers to one of their in-house scalpers for instantly sold-out shows
• TM/LN promises not to sell any more Creed or Nickelback tickets
• TM/LN promises to entertain customers with a joke while we wait 15 minutes to see if tickets are available to a high-demand event
• TM/LN promises not to add “Oxygen Usage Fee” to ticket prices
• TM/LN promises to make water bottle caps available at all venues
• TM/LN promises to stop charging for “the right” to print your own tickets
• TM/LN promises to print the actual price you paid on the ticket
• TM/LN promises to stop killing puppies & pushing seniors down stairs

Thanks to Ace for the assist. What other conditions do you think should be added to the agreement? Let us know by leaving a comment…

Following the bold footsteps of UK regulators who earlier this month issued a preliminary challenge to the Ticketmaster-Live Nation proposed merger, US anti-trust regulators are following suit, not going as far as to rule out the merger entirely, but making it quite clear that in its current form the deal will not likely go through. According to an article in Bloomberg, the vertical integration of the various segments of the music industry pose a direct threat in affording a competitive marketplace for ticket sales.

Regulators are concerned the combined company’s presence in nearly every piece of live entertainment — including artist management, venue operation, concert promotion and ticketing — will undermine the ability for rivals to emerge and create competition that would bring down ticket prices, another person said.

Among concessions under consideration may be finding a way to allow a viable competitor in primary ticketing, one of the people said.

Now, in order to make concessions and ease some of the concerns regarding the concentration of power with regard to the ticketing element of the deal, reports show that the two companies are weighing their options with regard to possible divestitures, the leading candidate being a sale of Pacolian – a Ticketmaster acquisition from 2007 aimed to beef up the Ticketmaster client base. READ ON for more…

The Black Crowes announced the second and third legs of their Stuck Inside Utopia Tour and I can’t remember the last list of tour dates I’ve seen as ambitious as this one. The Crowes hit the road on August 25 and pretty much tour straight through the beginning of December when they rap things up with a five night stand at The Fillmore in San Francisco.

In other Crowes news, the band is offering a free MP3 download of a track from their latest album, Before The Frost…, which hits stores on September 1. The song, I Ain’t Hidin’, has a bit of a Disco feel to it while still kicking ass like any good Crowes’ rocker should. Check it out.

Here’s some other links of interest to help you get over the hump…

• TicketsNow has to shell out $50,000 over deceptive practices
• Bruce Hornsby’s new album contains a song by Robert Hunter
• Topper Headon talks about just how he got fired from The Clash
• Fark.com users discuss and list their 10 Most Hated Music Genres
• Here’s six lessons the Grateful Dead can teach us about writing
• Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet team up for an album of covers

Finally, Dave Anderson pointed us in the direction of the New York Times’ profile on the brand-spanking-new Brooklyn Bowl venue that Relix Publisher and former Wetlands owner Peter Shapiro is about to open. The space sounds and looks amazing and we’re almost more excited to bowl and watch The Last Waltz on a powerful audio/visual system than to see a show.

Last week, Ticketmaster took some major heat for an unplanned and accidental presale for tickets for Phish’s four performances at Red Rocks this summer. Fans that thought they had stumbled onto a surprise jackpot had their orders canceled and received an email from David Butler, President of Ticketmaster North America, explaining why.

In an exclusive Q&A with Hidden Track, Luke Sacks spoke with Butler, who is responsible for Ticketmaster’s primary ticketing business in the US and Canada, via phone about the cause of the error, how Ticketmaster is working to thwart scalpers, what band he has seen nearly 50 times himself and more.

LUKE SACKS: Let’s start with the incident last week when tickets for the Red Rocks shows went on sale early. Speculation among fans has ranged from a simple computer glitch to Ticketmaster secretly activating that link so scalpers could get in and do their thing. From your perspective, can you walk me through what happened?

DAVID BUTLER: Absolutely. It was fundamentally human error by an employee of Ticketmaster in our Rocky Mountain region. An experienced person, who has been with us for years, accidentally, in releasing the show to be visible on the website that the on-sale was coming, accidentally made it appear to be on sale against the desires of the promoter or the artist. It was really just human error. She was trying to set it up so the show would be apparent with the future on-sale date so the fans would know it was coming. She just goofed.

LS: So that happened, all these orders were filled and eventually the decision was made to cancel these orders. Who made the decision to cancel the orders and subsequently to send out the $50 credit? Were those solely Ticketmaster decisions? Was the band or their management involved?

DB: To be clear, the mistake was totally ours at Ticketmaster and that’s why we sent out the gift certificates. Our policy is, if there is ever an error and the event goes on sale prior to the on-sale date, even if its on our website, that we will invalidate all the orders and if any money is taken we will refund it because we have to protect the integrity of the artist and the promoter that the show goes on sale as announced to the fans. So that’s exactly what we did.

READ ON for more of our exclusive interview with David Butler…

Here’s the latest installment in the Ticketmaster Red Rocks ticket debacle. Everyone who made a purchase last night just received the following e-mail.

Dear Phish fan:
Unfortunately, the tickets that you ordered from Ticketmaster for performances of Phish scheduled at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre between the dates of July 30th and August 2nd, 2009 were put on sale inadvertently, allowing you to order tickets before they were supposed to have been released for sale to the general public. The sale of these tickets prior to the scheduled onsale date was the result of an inadvertent error on the part of Ticketmaster. While we strive to be perfect, errors do occur, albeit rarely. Per our stated policy and our practice Ticketmaster refunds purchases in such situations and cancels the tickets. In this case, while we asked the credit card companies for an authorization code at order time, we did not and will not charge your card for the purchase price and have canceled your order for tickets.

In addition, we’d like to show our sincere regret for this error by providing you with a gift certificate in the amount of $50.00 that is redeemable for any purchase for tickets to qualifying events on Ticketmaster.com or through our call centers as long as your order was in accordance with our standard order guidelines. You should receive this gift certificate in the next two weeks.

We are sorry that we were not able to provide you with the tickets you ordered and hope that we will have the chance to serve you better in the future. We encourage you to visit Ticketmaster at the scheduled onsale for Phish at Red Rocks currently scheduled for Thursday March 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm MT.

Sincerely,
David Butler
President
Ticketmaster North America

A press release issued today by Show Clix, a ticketing company based out of Pittsburgh, stated that they will be establishing what they call a ‘Fair Ticketing Fund’ which is a:

Multi-million dollar [fund] to help venues and event promoters become independent of the company being created through the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. Through the fund, ShowClix will provide venues and promoters who want to operate independent of Ticketmaster/Live Nation with tens of thousands of dollars in funding; a new ticketing system, at no cost; and a significant reduction in service fees for their ticket buyers.

We, the fans, have been waiting for a miracle. Perhaps this is it? One can only hope that promoters and venues who want to offer their customers an alternative to Ticketmaster will look to this as a viable option.

• HeadCount Blog: Phish Fans Caught In Perfect Ticketing Storm

In a story that will affect music-loving consumers for many years to come, ticketing giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster have confirmed their intention to merge. Both companies have come under scrutiny lately for their mishandling of Phish and Bruce Springsteen onsales, but no one really saw this merger coming before last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal article.

Luckily, this merger isn’t fait acompli yet. We’ve got anti-trust regulations in this country and we hope the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t allow the #1 and #2 ticket sellers in the nation to merge. New York’s senior Senator Chuck Schumer is already on the case:

“This merger would give a giant, new entity unrivaled power over concertgoers and the prices they pay to see their favorite artists and bands,” the senator said in an e-mailed statement. “It must be viewed skeptically and scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.” [NYT]

I’ve never voiced an objection to a merger before, but I’ll be writing Senator Schumer about this deal that is sure to lead to even more exorbitant ticket prices. I don’t see a scenario where the consumer doesn’t get the shaft coming out of this merger regardless of what the CEOs of Ticketmaster and Live Nation may say. Bruce Springsteen agrees with me, do you?