Today's links
- Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress: The other gig economy.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress (permalink)
Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Monopolies are intrinsically destabilizing and inevitably implode…eventually. Guessing which of the loathsome monopolies that make us all miserable will be the first domino is a hard call, but Ticketmaster is definitely high on my list.
It's not that event tickets are the most consequential aspect of our lives. The monopolies over pharma, fuel, finance, tech, and even beer are all more important to our day-to-day. But while Ticketmaster – and its many ramified tentacles, like Live Nation – may not be the most destructive monopoly in our world, its monopoly pisses off people with giant megaphones and armies of rabid fans.
It's been a minute since Ticketmaster was last in the news, so let's recap. Ticketmaster bought out most of its ticketing rivals, then merged with Live Nation, the country's largest concert promoter, and bought out many of the country's largest music, stage, and sports venues. They used this iron grip on the entire supply chain for performances and events to pile innumerable junk fees on every ticket sold, while drastically eroding the wages of the creative workers they nominally represented. They created a secret secondary market for tickets and worked with ticket-touts to help them run bots that bought every ticket within an instant of the opening of ticket sales, then ran an auction marketplace that made them gigantic fees on every re-sold ticket – fees the performers were not entitled to share in.
The Ticketmaster/Live Nation/venue octopus is nearly impossible to escape. Independent venues can't book Live Nation acts unless they use Ticketmaster for their tickets. Acts can't get into the large venues owned by Ticketmaster unless they sign up to have Live Nation book their tour. And when Ticketmaster buys a venue, it creams off the most successful acts, starving competing venues of blockbuster shows. They also illegally colluded with their vendors to jack up the price of concerts across the board:
https://pascrell.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ful.pdf
When Rebecca Giblin and I were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how tech and entertainment monopolies impoverish all kinds of creative workers, we were able to get insiders to go on record about every kind of monopoly, from the labels to Spotify, Kindle to the Big Five publishers and the Google-Meta ad-tech duopoly. The only exception was Ticketmaster/Live Nation: everyone involved in live performance – performers, bookers, club owners – was palpably terrified about speaking out on the record about the conglomerate:
https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
No wonder. The company has a long and notorious history of using its market power to ruin anyone who challenges it. Remember Pearl Jam?
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/
But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Not only is Ticketmaster a rapacious, vindictive monopolist – it's also an incompetent monopolist, whose IT systems are optimized for rent-extraction first, with ticket sales as a distant afterthought. This is bad no matter which artist it affects, but when Ticketmaster totally, utterly fucked up Taylor Swift's first post-lockdown tour, they incurred the wrath of the Swifties:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2022/11/21/23471763/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-monopoly
All of which explains why I've always given good odds that Ticketmaster would be first up against the wall come the antitrust revolution. It may not be the most destructive monopolist, but it is absurdly evil, and the people who hate it most passionately are the most famous and beloved artists in the country.
For a while, it looked like I was right. Ticketmaster's colossal Taylor Swift fuckup prompted Senator Amy Klobuchar – a leading antitrust crusader – to hold hearings on the company's conduct, and led to the introduction of a raft of bills to rein in predatory ticketing practices. But as David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, Ticketmaster/Live Nation is spreading a fortune around on the Hill, hiring a deep bench of ex-Congressmen and ex-senior staffers (including Klobuchar's former chief of staff) and they've found a way to create the appearance of justice without having to suffer any consequences for their decades-long campaign of fraud and abuse:
https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-30-live-nation-strikes-up-band-washington/
Dayen opens his article with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is always bracketed by a week's worth of lavish parties for Congress and hill staffers. One of the fanciest of these parties was thrown by Axios – and sponsored by Live Nation, with a performance by Jelly Roll (whose touring contract is owned by Live Nation). Attendees at the Axios/Live Nation event were bombarded with messages about the essential goodness of Live Nation (they were even printed on the cocktail napkins) and exhortations to support the Fans First Act, co-sponsored by Klobuchar and Sen John Cornyn (R-TX):
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/arts/music/fans-first-act-ticket-bill.html
Ticketmaster/Live Nation loves the Fans First Act, because – unlike other bills – it focuses primarily on the secondary market for tickets, and its main measure is a requirement for ticketing companies to disclose their junk fees upfront. Neither of these represents a major challenge to Ticketmaster/Live Nation's control over the market, which gives it the ability to slash performers' wages while jacking up prices for fans.
Fans First represents the triumph of Ticketmaster/Live Nation's media strategy, which is to blame the entire problem on bottom-feeding ticket-touts (who are mostly scum!) instead of on the single monopoly that controls the entire industry and can't stop committing financial crimes.
Axios isn't Live Nation's only partner in selling this distraction tactic. Over the past five years, the company has flushed gigantic sums of money through Washington. Its lobbying spend rose from $240k in 2018 to $1.1m in 2022, and $2.38m in 2023:
The company has 37 paid lobbyists selling Congress on its behalf. 25 of them are former congressional staffers. Two are former Congressmen: Ed Whitfield (R-KY), a 21 year veteran of the House, and Mark Pryor (D-AR), a two-term senator:
https://www.bhfs.com/people/attorneys/p-s/mark-pryor
But perhaps the most galling celebrant in this lavish hymn to Citizen United is Jonathan Becker, Amy Klobuchar's former chief of staff. Becker jumped ship to lobby Congress on behalf of monopolists like Live Nation, who paid him $120k last year to sell their story to the Hill:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyists?cycle=2023&id=D000053134
Not everyone hates Fans First: it's been endorsed by the Nix the Tix coalition, largely on the strength of its regulation of secondary ticket sales. But the largest secondary seller in America by far is Live Nation itself, with a $4.5b market in reselling the tickets it sold in the first place. Fans First shifts focus from this sleazy self-dealing to competitors like Stubhub.
Fans First can be seen as an opening salvo in the long war against Ticketmaster/Live Nation. But compared to more muscular bills – like Klobuchar's stalled-out Unlock Ticketing Markets Act, it's pretty weaksauce. The Unlocking act will "prevent exclusive contracts between ticketing services and venues" – hitting Ticketmaster/Live Nation where it hurts, right in the bank-account:
It's not all gloom. Dayen reports that Ticketmaster's active lobbying in favor of Fans First has made many in Congress more skeptical of the bill, not less. And Congress isn't the only – or even the best – way to smash Ticketmaster's criminal empire. That's something the DoJ's antitrust division could power through with a lot less exposure to the legalized bribery that dominates Congress.
(Image: Matt Biddulph, CC BY-SA 2.0; Flying Logos, CC BY-SA 4.0; modified)
Hey look at this (permalink)
- The Rambo Academy Wayward Wormhole – New Mexico 2024 https://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/the-wayward-wormhole-new-mexico-2024/
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The Disenshittify Project https://deshittify.us/index.html
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Whistleblower Laws That Protect Lawbreakers https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/
This day in history (permalink)
#20yrsago Charlie Stross’s future-rant https://web.archive.org/web/20040515161445/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2004/Apr/29
#20yrsago Apple’s new DRM reneges on your purchase conditions, picks your pocket https://web.archive.org/web/20040624182851/http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/04/meet_the_new_it.html
#15yrsago Solitary confinement is torture: psych expert https://web.archive.org/web/20090501235955/https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/solitaryconfinement/
#15yrsago The Doctor Will Sue You Now: the missing chapter of Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science” about the selling of vitamin therapy instead of anti-virals to AIDS patients in South Africa https://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/
#10yrsago Rob Ford’s mayoral career considered as a reality TV show – straining suspension of disbelief https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/the-ford-show-is-riveting-but-soon-well-stop-believing-it/article18232290/
#10yrsago Email considered harmful https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/smartphone-addiction-research-work-email/
#10yrsago WIPO sends criminal prosecution threats over publication of internal docs about its Director General’s corruption https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/28/shameful-wipo-threatens-blogger-with-criminal-charges-accurately-reporting-wipo-directors-alleged-misconduct/
#5yrsago Jimmy Fallon played a video game on air, meaning that streaming your own game gets you taken down as a pirate, thanks to NBC https://old.reddit.com/r/beatsaber/comments/bi9cp5/beat_saber_stream_blocked_by_jimmy_fallon_show/
#5yrsago Thanks to the 2008 foreclosure crisis, a Kuwaiti ponzi schemer was able to single-handedly blight cities across America https://buffalonews.com/news/local/how-a-kuwaitis-ponzi-scheme-left-a-trail-of-blight-in-buffalo/article_7d39e12a-495f-5bba-b7f4-87d07eefa496.html
#5yrsago Uber drivers across America are going on strike https://philly.curbed.com/2019/4/25/18516670/uber-drivers-shutdown-strike-protest-philly
#5yrsago Facebook never delivered its “Clear History” feature https://www.tomsguide.com/us/facebook-privacy-problems,news-29944.html
#1yrago The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337 -
Wordfest (Calgary), May 3
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/ -
Massy Arts (Vancouver), May 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207 -
Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival, May 5-11
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/ -
Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow on “Enshittification” and the Future of AI, May 14
https://www.oreilly.com/live-events/tim-oreilly-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification-and-the-future-of-ai/0642572001651/ -
"Finding the Money" screening (LA), May 15
https://www.laemmle.com/film/finding-money?date=2024-05-15 -
Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9
https://media-ecology.org/convention -
American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Come sfuggire al “Merdocene” e costruire un Internet migliore (Torino Biennale Tecnologia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5NC2EZCYBg -
Show Me The Money Club (The Rideshare Guy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCETi3XqSds -
NUOVO BARETTO UTOPIA
https://videoteca.kenobit.it/w/azRmQBCenVwjSRz9WCp8JS
Latest books (permalink)
- The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
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"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
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"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
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"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
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"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books (permalink)
- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
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Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
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Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
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Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: Precaratize Bosses https://craphound.com/news/2024/04/28/precaratize-bosses/
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