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Brian Lehrer: "I'm the problem, it's me. At teatime, everybody agrees," sings Taylor Swift from her new album. Here's the question, is Taylor Swift the problem? Maybe part of it, or is it Ticketmaster, that's the problem? As you may know, maybe you even got caught up in it. On Tuesday 2 million tickets to Taylor Swift's upcoming tour were sold via live nation's Ticketmaster, more than any other artist has ever sold on the site in a single day, 2 million tickets. Ticketmaster said there was a historically unprecedented demand, and asked folks to please hang tight while they tried to sort out its technical glitches, and get fans through the queues faster.

Well, according to The Wall Street Journal, Ticketmaster says its site received 3.5 billion requests on that day, quadruple the amount of its second-highest peak. While millions of people or maybe some of them were bots, got tickets, millions of people experienced technical difficulties, and Tuesday was just supposed to be the verified fan presale, as they call it, but that was the actual sale as it turns out. At three o'clock yesterday, Ticketmaster tweeted, "Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems, and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public sale for Taylor Swift," the real public sale, "has been canceled."

Now, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, just yesterday morning, StubHub, that's the ticket resale site, had Taylor Swift tickets for sale in Jersey, near the venue stage listed for $76,000. The public outcry from funs overall this, has caused politicians including Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Representatives AOC, and Ilhan Omar to speak out against the ticketing giant and talk about regulating them in new ways.

With me now is Ron Knox, senior researcher, and writer at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which, according to its website, is a national research and advocacy organization committed to building local power and fighting corporate control. Ron is also the author of the recent article in Slate, called Radicalized the Swifties. Welcome to WNYC, Ron.

Ron Knox: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer Show listeners who are also Swifties, were you one of the lucky ones or one of the unlucky ones when it came to Tuesday's supposed presale event? Give us a call and tell us about your Ticketmaster experience. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer, or you can talk about the whole Ticketmaster alleged monopoly, which we're going to get to as part of what Amy Klobuchar is talking about and AOC in general. 212-433-9692. I guess, Ron, the central question is, is what happened on Tuesday emblematic of what people commonly experience, even if in smaller ways on Ticketmaster?

Ron Knox: I think it is. Look, the situation with Taylor Swift's presale was clearly very bad, very bad for fans, probably very bad for Taylor as well. She's trying to sell those tickets. When Ticketmaster says that there was unprecedented demand, that's probably true. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star on the planet. I don't think it's even close, and she hasn't toured in four years, so there's going to be a ton of demand for those tickets.

The thing is, Ticketmaster has crashed before. It crashed during Harry Styles' ticket sale. It crashed during Bruce Springsteen ticket sales. This isn't the kind of thing that all of a sudden Ticketmaster is inundated with this demand and the site crashes and it's never happened before, this has happened over and over again with Ticketmaster. For me, it speaks to the company's lack of incentive to innovate, to make their product better, make their experience for fans better, and that's what Taylor Swift and saw this week.

Brian Lehrer: According to reporting by Bloomberg, Live Nation, and Ticketmaster together, it's one company, control over 70% of the ticketing and live venues market. I'm curious why Ticketmaster's merger with Live Nation which happened back in 2010, was allowed in the first place to set up this situation where things like this could happen, and then everybody shouts, "But it's a monopoly."

Ron Knox: Well, it's a great question. Yes, 2009 Live Nation announces it's going to acquire Ticketmaster. That merger combined the largest event ticket sales company in America with the largest concert promoter, the largest artists manager, and the second largest venue operator. That deal screamed monopoly from the very beginning, the Justice Department looks at the deal, and they basically agree with critics who said, this is going to be bad. The Justice Department said it is going to be bad.

What happens is that the Justice Department essentially says, "Look, it's going to be bad, but what we're going to do is, we're going to put these conditions on the deal, and we think that these conditions, we think these rules that we're going to set up for this combined company, are going to make the difference, and they're going to stop these bad things from happening," and so they let the deal go through. That's clearly not what happened, and the live music industry, fans, artists, venues, and so on, are living with that decision today.

Brian Lehrer: Well, does that consolidation in the industry somehow lead to the crash of the site on Tuesday? Or was it just like they say, billions of people trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets at the same time, which never happened before?

Ron Knox: It's both. Yes, there were billions of people who were trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets, but again, this is not the first time this has happened to Ticketmaster. The thing that you get with a monopolist like Ticketmaster, is you get a company that's willing to rake in the money, charge exorbitant fees to fans, and use their dominance in that way, where they realize that people, that's both fans and artists, don't have an alternative. They don't have any incentive to really innovate, to make their product better, to make their fan experience better, to build up their infrastructure to ensure that when there is this demand, and look, anybody could see this coming.

Taylor Swift, she is the first artist in history to hold every single slot in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 100. She did that two weeks ago. She is a star among stars. Yes, it was unprecedented, but it couldn't have been unforeseen if you're Ticketmaster, but instead of actually beefing up, make the experience good for fans, they didn't do that, because they don't have the incentive to because no one is out there pushing them to be better. There's no other ticketing company really that sells tickets for this level of show.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's hear some real-life stories from this week. Jennifer in South Orange, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hi, good morning, Brian. Long-time listener, first-time caller, thank you so much for taking my call. I'm here to share a little bit of good news. Tuesday was my daughter Dina's 15th birthday, and it was November 15. She had a very, very elaborate plan, so the only thing she wanted was her Taylor Swift tickets. The whole family went on, and a couple of us got presale codes.

She had multiple computers going, and we got five-floor tickets, actually, for Philly, not MetLife stadium, because that's what came through. We got our five-floor tickets, and then I got her back in school by eleven o'clock, and it just absolutely made her day. Certainly, I know that most people are not having the success that we did, and she's saying to me, "Mom, you can't flex that we got these tickets. You got to keep this on the download because [unintelligible 00:08:55] present."

Brian Lehrer: It [unintelligible 00:08:57] what it has come to, right? You had a normal ticket-buying experience, and your daughter's ashamed to talk about it because it's going to seem like loading. Thank you for that story. Here's another one. Stephanie in Pawling, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good, what happened to you?

Stephanie: Good. I wanted to talk about the sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats that resell the tickets. I'm assuming these are purchased by bots, and I don't really know how bots work. I see that that is the real problem with this situation because I, like your previous caller, have had the lucky fortune to buy tickets from Ticketmaster in a normal way and take my daughter to see Taylor Swift, which is great. I am so happy for that caller that she was able to get tickets the right way, but I think it's ridiculous that these resale sites like StubHub, and Vivid Seats, and SeatGeek, that they can resell these tickets for crazy prices. I don't know if you've seen them but they're selling for thousands of dollars.

Brian Lehrer: Ron, can you weigh in on this and talk about what's really behind it?

Ron Knox: Look, I agree completely. I think the secondary ticketing sites, the aftermarket sites are certainly to blame. I think that they're trying to continually sneak into the Ticketmaster's system to be at the front of the line. They use algorithms and software that make sure that that happens. That's what we call bots. The problem is that with Ticketmaster and with its unchecked power in the ticketing market, again, it's tried to fight this but its solution clearly isn't enough.

It knows that fans and that big artists, stadium-level artists, and arena artists, and so on don't really have another place to turn that's going to be better at fending off the bots and fending off the scalpers who know how to rig the system and to get those tickets in to hike up those prices. Instead, essentially what Ticketmaster has done is it's introduced this pricing system where it sees these secondary markets. It knows that people are willing to pay these prices if they really want to go see the show.

It has hiked up its own prices on a lot of these tickets through this dynamic pricing model that essentially makes sure that it's getting a cut of that very lucrative aftermarket money as well. Again, there could be a better experience out there but that's not the way the industry is structured at the moment. It's just Ticketmaster and really nobody else.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Waldo in Asbury Park. Where's Waldo? Asbury Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Waldo.

Waldo: Hi, how are you? I just want to throw out an idea that I think probably a lot of listeners are thinking of as we're listening to you is that Ticketmaster is totally doing this on purpose and then they generate a tremendous amount of press. Frankly, I would imagine, just at my imagination, that they'd charge Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, the two biggest acts in America or in the Western world perhaps a premium to do that.

The double platinum package includes we will crash our site so you get tremendous press. Brian Lehrer will be talking about it on NPR even. Everybody knows where Taylor Swift is going on tour. I don't think I would know if it hadn't have actually trashed but now I know and I know that that resolved, that's odd too.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting. Some Taylor Swift fans last I saw, maybe she has since spoken out but last I saw some Taylor Swift fans were unhappy with her because she's not saying anything against Ticketmaster. That lends fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theory that Waldo is talking about, where it's in both of their interests, Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift to create this kind of thing, you think?

Ron Knox: It's interesting. I know that there's no such thing as bad press but I'm not sure that Ticketmaster wants to be rigged through the calls like it is at the moment. I've honestly never seen a company take this kind of heat online from fans, from lawmakers. I'm not sure that that's something that they welcome but as far as Taylor goes, she's making money off of this deal as well and that's fine. She's just trying to get paid for her art and her labor and get what it's worth.

I understand that but I don't think Taylor Swift wants to end up like Pearl Jam in the '90s where she's having to book her own mega tours and play in cornfields and wherever else because she's not willing to deal with Ticketmaster. She knows that Ticketmaster runs the show. They have exclusive rights to all the NFL stadiums and the vast majority of arenas, and she's got to play by the rules here too.

Brian Lehrer: They have exclusive rights to a lot of concert venues, you're saying? Exclusive rights.

Ron Knox: That's right. They're the official ticketing partner of the NFL. If you're the official ticketing partner of the NFL, that means you are the official ticketing partner of those stadiums as well. It's shocking how little choice artists, even artists at Taylor Swift's level and Harry Styles and Beyoncé and so on, how little say they have in who actually sells their concert tickets.

Brian Lehrer: Now, the Pearl Jam experience from the '90s that you mentioned, they tried to boycott Ticketmaster over monopolistic practices and high surcharges that were passed on to fans. There's the ticket price and then at the end, "Oh, that price is much higher than it said." Why? Because there's a service charge on top of the ticket fee and they canceled their--

We were reading up on this history, canceled their 1994 summer tour to avoid working with Ticketmaster, and even testified alongside members of R.E.M in front of the House Government Operations Information subcommittee. In 1995, the next year, Pearl Jam decided to once again sell tickets through Ticketmaster because of these exclusive agreements you were just describing. Boy, that's a pretty deterring lesson from a big band that really tried.

Ron Knox: It's important to understand how big Pearl Jam was at that time, in 1994, it just released an album called Vitalogy and it sold about a million copies in a week. Pearl Jam was the world biggest rock stars on the planet at that time but they didn't want to work with Ticketmaster. They said, "You know what? We're going to try to do this on our own."

They ended up in a situation where Eddie Vedder, the very famous lead singer of Pearl Jam was fielding calls about how to book porta potties and chain link fences for these shows that they were having to play out in the middle of nowhere because they wouldn't work with Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster had almost sole control of all of the venues that they could fit them.

Pearl Jam filed a lawsuit. They lost in court. They asked the Justice Department to do an antitrust, a monopoly investigation of Ticketmaster. The Justice Department said, "No, not interested." It was this sobering lesson both in the power of Ticketmaster, the regulatory system, and the policies behind it that just didn't really care about monopoly power at that time.

Brian Lehrer: I have to jump in and close.

Ron Knox: Even the biggest artists in the world can't really push back in that way.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see if there's any new successful pushback after this. Listener tweets, "A guy in the UK started an app called Twickets, where the tickets cannot be sold for more than face value." Maybe things like that will emerge but maybe not right away. Ron Knox, senior researcher, and writer at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an author of the article on Slate called Radicalize the Swifties. Thanks a lot, Ron.

Ron Knox: It was great to be here, Brian. Thanks.

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