Word: springsteen
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...Tell that to the Boss, Mr. A. "The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you," Bruce Springsteen said after a ticket fiasco in New Jersey in February steered buyers to a secondary market the company owns where tickets were being hawked at up to five times face value. The Boss was so ticked off, he went on to cast his vote against the merger, fearing a music monopoly. (Read a brief history of Ticketmaster...
...musician, for example, would find the options limited. "A young artist coming up who wanted to play in the buildings owned and managed by Live Nation could be told they need to use Live Nation's management company. What would be the restriction on that?" asked Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen's manager. "It puts too much power into the hands of too few people in our profession...
...didn't help Ticketmaster's merger prospects when it found itself in hot water over the Springsteen ticketing controversy in February. Basically, fans were told that tickets were sold out minutes after they went on sale and were automatically diverted to Ticketmaster's resale company, TicketsNow, where they were forced to pay scalper prices for the tickets. "That was just an outrageous event," said Landau. The Boss himself rallied fans against the Ticketmaster merger. "The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming...
...this puts a cloud over Ticketmaster's merger plans. "I think [the merger] would be a catastrophe for the entertainment business," said Representative Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat who demanded congressional hearings into the matter. "Given Ticketmaster's recent mishandling of Bruce Springsteen's tour and other shows, it is clear that this company's questionable business practices warrant sharper scrutiny." Earlier this week, the Congressman introduced a bill, named the Boss Act, that calls for ticketing companies to disclose how many tickets are being withheld in primary public ticket sales and a 48-hour waiting period before tickets...
...Aside from Springsteen, most artists are reluctant to bad-mouth the merger. Experts speculate artists fear retaliation and recall the losing battle Pearl Jam fought against Ticketmaster in the mid-1990s. But Ticketmaster has its fans - Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan sent Congress a letter gushing support for the proposed merger. The letter was an about-face for Corgan, who in the past was critical of Ticketmaster's system and opted to use Jam Productions instead of Live Nation for some of his tours. However, Corgan is now a client of Azoff's Front Line artist-management company within Ticketmaster...