Music journalist, author & The Cure biographer Simon Price recently claimed that the artists are aware of the polarizing ticket sales practices such as “dynamic pricing”, as they are allegedly offered a simple choice of having it “on” or “off”.
Simon Price opens up on the matter
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing recently grabbed the headlines as prices for Oasis reunion shows reportedly went from £150 ($201) to £350 ($470) and more, souring the mood following one of the biggest new developments in rock this year. The Gallagher brothers have stressed they had “at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used”, while this latest incident had some UK government officials stating that an investigation into the sales practice is due.
The Oasis situation came a couple of years after “dynamic pricing” reportedly inflated prices for Bruce Springsteen shows to as much as $5,000, and the controversy surrounding the pre-sale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.
Last year, The Cure’s Robert Smith had stopped Ticketmaster from applying “dynamic pricing” on tickets for The Cure’s 2023 US tour, and made the company issue small refunds after finding out they were charging fans “unduly high” transaction fees.
During an interview with the Irish Independent, music journalist, author, and The Cure biographer, Simon Price, argued that Smith standing up to Ticketmaster was “a really honorable thing to do”, adding that tickets for arena and stadium gigs gigs “are a murky, dirty, corrupt industry.”
Price referenced a 2012 documentary by the Channel 4 program “Dispatches”, which dealt with the artists’ complicity with ticketing companies’ practices, claiming that “it emerged the artists themselves were getting a nice kickback from the secondary selling market. Not a lot has changed.” Price added:
“Artists often like to pretend they know nothing about it. But they do. It’s a really simple question – when you sign up to sell a gig via Ticketmaster, do you want dynamic pricing on or off? On or off – it’s a simple switch.”
Price further claimed:
“There’s this idea that [dynamic ticketing] is pure free market capitalism, but it’s not – it’s a stitch-up, a de facto monopoly with the same companies wearing different masks. They ensure that the face value of the ticket is only ever nominal – you’re never going to get the ticket at that price.”
