Live Nation and Ticketmaster has been the subject of headlines and investigations in the past few months. The merger, which has been criticized largely by fans and people from congress alike, ruled over the live music scene in the past decade.
Ticketmaster has been put under the microscope after its disastrous Taylor Swift "The Eras" tour presale. The crashing of website and hours-long virtual queue escalated to a national conversation and issue, prompting the senate and the Department of Justice to launch separate investigations.
Meanwhile, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino gave his two cents about how the company should be charging more than what they already had.
Live Nation CEO Wants To Charge More
In an interview at The Bob Lefsetz Podcast, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino doubled down on the company's heavily-criticized decision to charge more on concert tickets.
In the past few months, Live Nation and Ticketmaster's merger has been subject to fans' and artists' outrage because of their unreasonably high prices of tickets. The Dynamic Pricing and Platinum Tickets Scheme saw basic seats on some concert venues ballooning up to a thousand dollars.
The effort was said to be done to thwart scalpers and curb the secondary market. The move was also reported to be more beneficial to artists because the cost that would be added on secondary market, would instead go to them, thanks to the Dynamic Pricing program.
"I'm not saying [prices need to be raised] excessively, but it's a great two-hour performance," he justified. "That happens once every three, four years... You don't have to underprice yourself."
For him, artists should charge a "bit more" for their performances. He even likened going to concerts as buying a luxury bag.
"This is a great, great product that people will buy, as they're gonna buy the Gucci bag. They're gonna buy moments in life where they will step up, and spoil themselves - the big screen TV and or whatever it may be," he further elaborated.
Live Nation Addresses The Cure Robert Smith Issue
In the past few months, The Cure vocalist Robert Smith made his grieveances public against Ticketmaster. He complained about the exorbitant amount of fees and pricing that his tickets cost which is impairing their fans to buy.
In the same interview, Rapino stood by Ticketmaster's decision.
"We were proud of Ticketmaster's side. We did a ton of work with Robert, making sure [tickets] were non-transferable, that it would be a face value [ticket] exchange and verified, doing all we could to put all the roadblocks to deliver his ticket prices to the fans," he pointed out.
Smith has since called the ticket selling a "greedy scam."
Listen to the full interview below:
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