| Tim's Twitter Listening Party... plays to the great enduring strength of Twitter: its ability to create a moment of communal experience, happening in real time. We gather, and listen to music, and talk about it. To hell with all the blue-tick drama. | |  |  | | Guitar army: Lucia de la Garza, Eloise Wong and Bela Salazar (l to r) of the Linda Lindas at Coachella, Indio, Calif., April 22, 2023. | | (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | Speculative Legislating
Three months after TICKETMASTER was comped a premium seat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first bills trying to rein in the excesses of concert (and sports) ticketing have been formally introduced in the US Senate. More bills are on the way from the same senators—the Washington version, you might say, of the extra fees tacked on at the end of the standard ticket-buying process. You come in looking to lobby Senators on two bills but by the time you walk out of the office you've got four or more pieces of legislation in your hands. And those last ones might be the ones that sting.
Here are the three main proposals in the two bills introduced Wednesday, along with three thoughts for what Sens. AMY KLOBUCHAR and RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, sponsors of the UNLOCK TICKETING MARKETS ACT, and Sens. MARIA CANTWELL and TED CRUZ, authors of the TRANSPARENCY IN CHARGES FOR KEY EVENTS TICKETING act, might consider doing for a followup.
Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Cruz (R-Texas) have the most user-friendly, easy-to-grasp proposal in their bill, which will be more familiarly known as the Ticket Act. It would mandate all-in pricing, meaning ticket sellers would have to disclose the full and final price of a ticket, including all extra fees, at the beginning of any transaction, rather than adding surprise costs at the last minute. If the ad says $50 a ticket and the first page of the website says $50 a ticket, then the last page of the site, after you've filled in all your info and clicked and clicked and clicked some more, will also have to say $50 a ticket. Great. There isn't a consumer in the world who doesn't want that. Even the ticket companies are generally supportive of that regulation.
But what isn't addressed in the Ticket Act is the part consumers really, really hate: the very existence of service fees. If that $50 ticket is going to balloon to $80 before the transaction is complete, the second thing consumers want is to know about the $80 price right away, but the first thing they want is for that $50 ticket to actually cost $50. PRESIDENT BIDEN has called for a "junk fee prevention act" to limit such fees, and Cantwell and Cruz could do a whole lot worse than taking the president up on that. Cantwell has in fact suggested they will. The Ticket Act, she said Wednesday, "is one part of comprehensive legislation I plan to introduce to rein in deceptive junk fees driving up costs for consumers."
She and Cruz are also seeking to require ticket resellers to disclose when they don't have the seats they're offering to resell to you, a common practice known as speculative listings. It's a foul practice—someone is literally selling you tickets that don't exist, sometimes at enormous premiums over face value, on the assumption they'll be able to get them eventually.
Disclosure is great, but here's an even better followup: Make the practice illegal.
Where Cantwell and Cruz have their eyes on the transaction, Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are zooming out to the business itself. Their bill would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to cap "excessively long" exclusive contracts between venues and ticketing companies, which, the senators say, reduce competition in ticketing and ultimately hurt consumers in numerous ways, from higher prices and fees to worse products and features to TAYLOR SWIFT on-sale-day disasters. The bill sets a maximum length for an exclusive contract at four years but invites the FTC to set an even shorter limit if it sees fit. (Ticketmaster and its parent, LIVE NATION, have argued that it gets those exclusive deals because it has the best product available, and that the market is already getting increasingly competitive on its own, without government intervention.)
If the senators want to zoom out even further on the business, they might try going for the heart of what they say is a Ticketmaster/Live Nation monopoly by looking for a way to decouple the two giants that merged in 2010. That would be the nuclear option, and in the current environment it would find at least some bipartisan support in Washington. "Controlling that much of the industry is basically a license to be bullies," KEVIN ERICKSON, director of the FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION, told Pitchfork in March. If senators read Pitchfork, there would be members on both sides of the aisle nodding in agreement.
Dot Dot Dot (Special $100m Edition)
Is LUCIAN GRAINGE's $100 million supermax extension a little rich? Um, yes? Also answering in the affirmative are two major UMG shareholders who spoke to the Financial Times (paywall) and two top shareholder advisory services who are advising stockholders to reject the package, echoing a wider revolt against excessive executive pay in the media business. My favorite line in the FT piece: "Grainge is also paid a $5mn salary, as well as annual and long-term bonuses." Meditate on that "also" for as long as you need, perhaps while listening to one of the six TAYLOR SWIFT albums currently in the top 25 on the BILLBOARD 200, all of them released or distributed by UMG... UMG's stock price has struggled in the past year but its revenues are up 11.5%, according to its Q1 earnings call. Grainge used Wednesday's call to continue his attack on generative AI content that's flooding streaming services and much of which, he says, is "trained on copyrighted material, which clearly violates artists' and labels' rights"... The FUGEES' PRAS MICHÉL was found guilty in federal court Wednesday of 10 counts for his part in an international money laundering, campaign contribution and illegal lobbying scheme from which prosecutors said he made more than $100 million. The complicated case was based on Michél's association with fugitive billionaire LOW TAEK JHO, who, among other things, paid him $20m to arrange a single photo with PRESIDENT OBAMA. Michél testified at length during a monthlong trial whose witnesses also included LEONARDO DICAPRIO... With the death of HARRY BELAFONTE, there are now only four artists alive who had chart-topping albums in the US before the BEATLES arrived here in 1964. Can you name them? Answers here. (Hint: One of them is a comedian.)
Rest in Peace
Up-and-coming Southern California rapper MONEYSIGN SUEDE, who was stabbed to death Tuesday night in a prison in Soledad, Calif., where he had recently begun serving a 32-month sentence for felony gun possession. The Mexican American rapper, often compared to Kodak Black, released his debut album, "Parkside Baby," on Atlantic Records in September... '50s and '60s pop-rock singer APRIL STEVENS, best known for the version of the standard "Deep Purple" she recorded with her brother, Nino Tempo, which hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963 and won the Grammy for Best Rock & Roll Recording in 1964... PAT DEASEY, co-owner of Roselle, Ill., record store Record Wonderland. He died on Record Store Day.
| | - Matty Karas, curator | |
| |  | | The Blog Era |
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| | Fugees rapper Pras Michél guilty in sprawling corruption trial | | By Paul Duggan | | Michél has been in D.C. federal court defending himself against allegations of money laundering, campaign-finance violations and other charges in a sprawling criminal case arising from one of the world's biggest financial scandals. | | |  | | The New Yorker |
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| | Copyright Office Authorized a Star Chamber at the MLC to Hold Your Money | | We knew this would happen. The Copyright Office has empowered the Mechanical Licensing Collective to decide whether a song (or a sound recording) can be copyrighted all under the guise of AI. If the MLC -not the Copyright Office-decides that your song is not capable of being registered for copyright, the MLC can hold your money essentially forever. | | | | | | | | | |  | | VAN Magazine |
| | An Imperfect Cassandra | | By Olivia Giovetti | | What we got wrong about Blair Tindall's "Mozart in the Jungle." | | | | | | |  | | Vulture |
| | The Best and Funniest of Warren Zevon, According to David Letterman | | By Devon Ivie | | David Letterman and I are trying to grasp not only why Warren Zevon isn't in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but why, until this year, he had never even been nominated. Is he too misunderstood? Does the novelty humor of "Werewolves of London" thwart his reputation? Are critics biased against rockers who play the piano? | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "Stop the Bleeding" | | Baby Rose | | "Love shouldn't be this hard." From her second album, "Through and Through," out Friday on Secretly Canadian. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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