Ticketmaster of puppets in line for huge 'incident' with auction

For an avid concertgoer like me, Ticketmaster is a greatly appreciated service. Sometimes, the only distance I have to travel to purchase concert tickets for a show hundreds of miles away is from my couch to my phone. \nIn January 1995, I purchased tickets for an R.E.M concert five months hence in Rosemont, Ill., at the IMU Outfitters Store. Rosemont is a suburb of Chicago, and I could only have imagined how difficult it might have been to wait in line somewhere in the Chicago area to get tickets to see a band at the top of its popularity. Instead, I only had to compete with a few people in line in Bloomington, and as I recall, we all walked away with tickets.\nSometimes, though, Ticketmaster can be too much. Their naked greed and unapologetic anti-consumerism has continued to reach such levels that for the first time since Pearl Jam challenged Ticketmaster in Congressional hearings in the early-to-mid '90s, a band has dared to challenge the golden ticket-spitting goose for exactly what plagues it and thereby music fans who want to buy concert tickets.\nThat is to say, Ticketmaster has no competition.\nThe Los Angeles-based ticketing giant, who sold 95 million tickets in 2002, has plans to try out a newly notorious stunt, according to the Sept. 3 Chicago Sun-Times. They plan on auctioning off the best seats at some of the company's most popular concerts at its www.ticketmaster.com Web site. \nWhile the article didn't say the auctions would take place in the Bloomington or Indianapolis areas, Ticketmaster president John Pleasants indicated that Chicago, a city with readily available tickets available for purchase by the Bloomington audience and a city readily accessible by car for IU students, would be a likely candidate for ticket auctions. "Chicago would be a good market for this," Pleasants says.\nBy having the auctions, Ticketmaster is claiming that illegal ticket scalpers and legal ticket brokers are stealing their audience and competing with them unfairly for top dollar for the top seats. Even during a so-so summer concert season where the closest thing to a phenomenon involved Bruce Springsteen playing unusual venues like Fenway Park or U.S. Cellular Field, Ticketmaster realizes that they can draw in the white-collar worker who maybe goes to only one show a year but goes all out: limo, lots of wine coolers, babysitter, fancy dinner, tongue piercing. (Okay, maybe not the latter.)\nOne of the fun aspects of buying concert tickets was the luck factor. In an attempt to deter loiterers, people with nothing better to do, and according to urban legend, homeless people hired by scalpers and brokers to squat in line and buy tickets, Ticketmaster ended its first-come, first-serve ticketing policies and instituted lotteries where a ticket buyer would get a number about 30-60 minutes prior to tickets going on sale and if that person's number got called, then he or she would proceed first in line.\nThe luck factor is now out the window. \nMeanwhile, the Colorado-based jam band The String Cheese Incident looks to challenge Ticketmaster's more traditional means of audience thievery -- its incomprehensible service and handling charges.\nThe String Cheese Incident, through a ticket-sharing agreement with Ticketmaster first pioneered by the Grateful Dead, has gained possession of some of its tickets and charged only $4 in service charges on a $32.50 ticket through SCI Ticketing, the band's own service, while Ticketmaster has charged fees of $10.10 on a ticket of equal value, according to the Sept. 18 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The band has also sued Ticketmaster for antitrust violations. The desire to compete with Ticketmaster's prices is an essential part of capitalism and finally a chance at relief from Ticketmaster's overbearing and unaccounted ticketing fees.\nThe band, though, claims that fewer and fewer bands are being given access to their tickets, and continues to ratchet up ticket prices further.\nThis is the first massive call-to-arms against Ticketmaster since Pearl Jam's endeavors forced it off the road for awhile, and then into the few venues -- approximately only ten to fifteen percent of all venues nationwide, according to Rolling Stone -- without exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster in 1995. Now, it's the big boys' turn to take over on behalf of music fans everywhere.\nA major artist or band is going to have to come along and demand that Ticketmaster give them a large percentage of their tickets. That artist or band will then sell the tickets at a reduced service charge and list the amount of service charges on the face of the ticket, something Ticketmaster currently does not do.\nAnd as an avid concertgoer who can only hope that somebody can compete with Ticketmaster, I only have one last question.\nAre you listening, Dave Matthews?