For any of you who don't go to Backstreets news regularly, here's their response to this fiasco.
http://www.backstreets.com/news.html
FREEZE-OUT
Lord won't you tell us, tell us what does it mean?
It's four in the morning and raining. We're feeling old, listening to the outcries of fans feeling similarly betrayed by last week's ticket sales, and remembering that things were different a decade ago.
Because we know our audience, the fans, and count ourselves among them, it feels unnecessary to recap here what transpired on Wednesday when Ticketmaster's first U.S. onsales for the 2023 Tour left many Bruce Springsteen fans in a state of shocked disbelief.
But if you need a catch-up we can point you to Variety, industry observer Bob Lefsetz, or to practically any news outlet of your choice to get the broad strokes of what happened. Call it what you like: market pricing, dynamic pricing, surge pricing, Platinum pricing. Just don't call it The New Normal.
Please.
From our point of view, this so-called premium, algorithm-driven model violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans, one in which the audience side of the equation appeared to truly matter — and in fact was crucial. We believed it because he told us repeatedly it was true. We can imagine Lefsetz and others, perhaps, snickering here, but we still know our audience: we've all been made to feel we're part of an ongoing conversation, one in which we were all "in conce a vital element of the formula: "If you're here, and we're here… they're here.”
If you're not here… where does that leave them?
This past week, too many Springsteen fans got thrown to the wolves, pushed aside in a way that seems as unfathomable as it was avoidable. The artist has maintained that he understands the essential role of his audience. How, then, did we end up facing, in far too many instances, prices for tickets that exceeded normalcy, then departed from reality entirely by orders of magnitude?
One might cite inflation, market value, or any number of factors; we'd argue that it can't be "market forces” when supply is purposefully obfuscated, then manipulated by the platform of distribution. But from our point of view, it boils down to the stark difference between inside and outside. So many fans who have always gone to the shows, who have always been part of This Thing of Ours, now can't go, will not be inside, will not be part of the conversation, purely because they can't pay the cost to see the Boss.
Bruce Springsteen tickets have been historically and notoriously difficult to obtain. That's the nature of the beast, with so many wanting to witness the power and the glory of rock 'n' roll, and relatively few seats to hold them. But the issue has rarely been the money.
Over many years, there have been continuous, clear efforts made by the Springsteen camp to keep things fair and as fan-centric as possible, to foil scalpers, to give average concert-goers and fans the best shot at a reasonable price in a world where bots run rampant and scalpers rule.
For decades, Springsteen kept his ticket prices significantly lower than what the market might bear, which felt in keeping with his brand, his stated philosophies, his belief in community, and his clear view of what a concert was supposed to be, as for three hours or so — and sometimes more — he and the band gave us a glimpse of a better world.
The tent over E Street has always been big, inviting, and open, but what about the question he began to ask in 2012… are we missing anybody? After this week, it sure appears the answer has changed.
What were we to think when we made it through the queue on Wednesday morning to find that tickets — initial sales, not resales — were on offer for thousands of dollars? In the past, no matter how difficult tickets were to score, persistence paid off. Now, it seems, persistence just ratchets the algorithm up another notch. Or four.
Surely, these multi-thousand-dollar prices were not intended or anticipated, many of us thought. Some assert the algorithm got out of control — are we sure that it was ever in control? We'd never expect Ticketmaster to balk at making money, but surely, many believed, Springsteen would put a stop to it and demand adjustments to the system, if not an overhaul, before the next onsale. Friday came with a general repeat of circumstances and even more fans in disbelief.
As recently as last month's European offering, we've seen Ticketmaster cancel an onsale when conditions called for it and reschedule for the following day. So if these prices were unintentional, it's hard to imagine a good reason for the second onsale, let alone a third. For the ticketsellers, the end result of dynamic pricing must be a feature and not a bug.
And that is a foundation-breaking, worldview-shaking notion.
Wait a minute. We thought it was raining. Is it not raining? That might be a takeaway from data Ticketmaster just shared with us, suggesting that the rain is an illusion. Variety reports these Ticketmaster-provided stats, a series of figures that don't quite add up, that obscure more than clarify. If nothing else, the data shared say nothing about outrageously priced tickets fans declined in horror, only telling us what did sell. In the end, these numbers only leave us with more questions. The biggest one being, if it's not raining, why are we getting soaked?
At a time when we needed to feel hope and promise — when the world seems on fire, when we've suffered through escalating deception, greed, fear, isolation, racial strife, violence, "alternative facts,” democracy literally under threat, and an ongoing global pandemic — we're left feeling further disillusioned, downhearted, and dispirited.
But the ideals Springsteen's music puts forward — they're still alive, aren't they? Whether in the grooves or in concert, wherever those guitars ring out? In our shared spirit? If one can't say yes — if only for a few hours every so often — then maybe the magic really is just tricks.
Springsteen has been paid a king's ransom, and we've never begrudged him that, either. Not the reported $500 million sale of his life's work, which hardly fazed us, not the Broadway prices, not the Jeep commercial. We believe in the value of his music, his work; those other transactions and the arenas in which they take place feel beyond our purview.
What happens in the actual physical arenas, where every few years Springsteen and his audience come together to create something bigger than all of us — and everybody has a decent shot to be part of it, at a reasonable price — that's something that remains worth fighting for. Because in rock 'n' roll, as we've come to believe, one plus one does equal three.
It still does, doesn't it?
- By the Editors - July 24, 2022