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Brigid Bergin: This is All Of It. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm so glad you're here. On today's show, we'll speak with a director of a new comedy that flips the script on the high school sex comedy genre. The San Francisco Bay Area was the epicenter of a musical movement that produced groups that would shape the future of rock, soul, and funk. We'll speak to the directors of the Sounds of San Francisco, a new docuseries, and we're talking baseball, in particular, the Yankees, and they're terrible. No good season so far, so Yankee fans get ready to call in the next hour.

Little catharsis coming your way, but first, getting tickets for concerts has become something like the Hunger Games or getting into high school in New York City. Let's talk about why just going to see your favorite artist has become so competitive and so expensive.

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Billy Joel has performed at Madison Square Garden once a month for the better part of the last decade. His next show is tomorrow night. If you go to StubHub right now, the cheapest ticket you'll find to any of those shows through February is around $150. Prices go all the way up to about $1,000, and the situation is no better if you buy directly from MSG's preferred distributor, Ticketmaster. You won't have any better luck, but best you'll do is in the neighborhood of $1,000. The point is tickets are expensive and hard to get.

This is a lesson many concertgoers have learned the hard way in recent years, especially fans of Taylor Swift, whose tickets for the Eras Tour have sold for an average of $250 globally and almost $4,000 on secondhand markets. The cost of concert tickets is the focus of a recent article from the reporters at Pitchfork titled "The Price of Pop Fandom." In it, the writer's chart prices over time and look at the issues with Ticketmaster scalpers and more, but at the heart is a question, can pop music still be considered populist for the public when most people can't afford to go see it?

Jill Mapes, features editor at Pitchfork, and Marc Hogan, senior staff writer, are co-authors of "The Price of Pop Fandom". They join me now to talk ticketing. Welcome to All Of It.

Jill Mapes: Thank you so much for having us.

Marc Hogan: Glad to be here.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Did you try to buy tickets to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, or maybe to Beyonce or to Bruce Springsteen, or maybe even to Lauryn Hill last week? Have you tried to buy tickets to any concert and been discouraged by high prices, technical errors, or just other issues? Give us a call or text at 212-433-9692 to share your experience. That's 212-433-WYNC. You can also send us a message on social media @AllOfItWNYC.

Marc, Jill, let's start with Taylor. Jill, your article opens with a story about a Taylor Swift fan who racked up $14,000 in credit charges after more than 40 failed attempts to buy tickets to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Why does it seem like so much of this conversation is about ticketing has come to a head with Taylor's tour this summer?

Jill Mapes: I think the demand obviously is extremely high there. I think you also have anecdotally that's a tour. Taylor has so many young fans, I think even more than Beyonce. I think you're getting a lot of parents who are encountering this and being very bewildered because maybe they haven't bought tickets and gone through all the gamification that has happened with the strategies since before the pandemic. I think that's inflation. It's the resellers on a different level. It's the demand, and to state the obvious, too, there was a meltdown on the Ticketmaster site, which I don't know if you want to hear the whole timeline. Marc Hogan is something of an expert on it.

Marc Hogan: You probably don't need the whole timeline, but this year they had this verified fan program for the Taylor Swift fans where in previous years she's had other different tricks. You had to use to try to get early access to tickets to get a boost and buying tickets. That's why it was fun talking to the Swift fan who had so much trouble getting, who racked up anyway, $14,000 because she basically was an investigative reporter in figuring out how to get these tickets. She knows way more about this than the average person, and then she couldn't do it, and she signed up for this verified fan program where you get registered with Ticketmaster as a fan.

Then she also had a backup plan of using this credit card presale and neither of those worked. She finally got in because a different friend had bought tickets and sold them to her for a more reasonable price. It's just definitely chaos.

Brigid Bergin: You could say that Taylor Swift is a much bigger star today than she was in 2019 or years before, but as you were saying, it's not just demand that seems to be making it so hard to get these tickets. There are all these other hoops and tricks and things that you need to jump through. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Marc Hogan: Sure. First of all, it's not like you're waiting in line anymore like in the olden days, or calling up the phone and you still would at least need to have a person on the phone waiting, and now, it's all online, and there's professional resellers who have more time to figure out how to do that than these parents or just regular people who maybe buy one or two major concert tickets a year. Then you're all competing at the same time. It's not just lining up and who wants it more. It's really just you're in this thunderdome of the internet and you're being forced to compete that way.

Then also there's this dynamic pricing that Ticketmaster uses now, which is for airline tickets which when I first started reporting on that a few years ago it was supposed to make things better because what you had was artists with price things too low. The resellers would come in and then they would take the extra profit. Then they'd be selling them for more with dynamic pricing which uses an algorithm and adjusts the prices based on what I guess the algorithm thinks is right.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Marc Hogan: Then the artist was supposed to actually keep more of that profit and it wouldn't go to the resellers, which is controversial but that's how we buy airline tickets. That's how you have Uber search pricing and all of that. There's all these different factors, everybody pointing different fingers. There's all these junk fees is another thing, all the extra fees you see tacked on.

Brigid Bergin: We'll get into more of the details of what you uncovered in all your reporting, but I want to bring in some of our listeners who are sharing their ticketing stories with us. Brian in Marlboro, New Jersey. Brian, thanks for calling.

Brian: Hi, thanks for having me. I've been going to concerts since 15 or so. I experienced that you go and get online thing, and now, of course, for the last 15 whatever years the internet, and I have read multiple studies about the resellers will not drop their prices. They would rather eat the tickets than drop their prices because they know that otherwise we'll all just wait until the last minute and get them for cheaper. I went to look for Peter Gabriel tickets, he's not exactly a pop star. They were $400 for a decent seat at Madison Square Garden. I know the Garden is different than other places because I understand artists have to rent it out and then it's across the board.

Wherever I've gone to see shows, it's cost-prohibitive for most of us who even can afford it. We're just choosing not to. I can't believe when I do go, the place is sold out, so people are just paying for it. Ultimately, isn't it just supply and demand?

Brigid Bergin: Brian, thanks for that call and that question. Jill, do you want to take any reaction to what Brian's saying there? As he said, Peter Gabriel, though extremely talented, is not burning out the charts right now necessarily, and yet really tough to get that ticket.

Jill Mapes: I think it is a matter of supply and demand in some ways, but you're not wrong that the resellers have taken over a large share of the market in knowing how to scoop them up quickly. I think milk that because I can't imagine what is Peter Gabriel's first primary market price. I have to imagine that's maybe tops 200 bucks. Maybe Peter Gabriel is very greedy these days, but I don't think so. I don't know.

I don't really understand why it's happening. You start to point to the things we don't know about like bots, and just things being scooped up very quickly, because again, it's not a Taylor level of demand. It's not like gamifying YouTube views on old Peter Gabriel music videos. I don't think it's that complicated, so it really doesn't add up.

Brigid Bergin: I'm speaking with Jill Mapes and Marc Hogan of Pitchfork magazine about their article, "The Price of Pop Fandom." You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart. Since we're talking Taylor Swift, I have to read a text that we got, which I think probably is a sentiment that a lot of people experienced in trying to get those tickets. Our listener writes, "Nobody has made me feel like more of a failure as a parent than Taylor Swift this summer. I'm exaggerating, but am I?" That I think speaks to the gamification and the challenges of getting those tickets.

Jill, your article also features these really eye-popping infographics, illustrating the costs of different artists, shows, and the way that prices have increased over time. When you chart that average cost of a ticket over the last 20 years, what stood out to you about that?

Jill Mapes: Well, I think that definitely doesn't surprise me that it is to look at how cheap tickets were in the year 2000 because I remember going to shows in the year 2000. If there was a show over $50, my dad was not going to be having that, that was extremely expensive then, and fees certainly seemed a lot less, so keep in mind this is without fees. I mean, when I looked at it comparative to inflation, and just how the growth of that in other sectors, it was striking to me the jump that we've had in between the last full year before the pandemic 2019 where it was around $70, now it's around $80. That feels like a big jump that stood out to me.

Brigid Bergin: We have a lot more to talk about with Jill Mapes and Marc Hogan of Pitchfork magazine, their article, "The Price of Pop Fandom", and your stories about ticketing and trying to get those pop tickets coming up just after this break.

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You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart. My guests are Jill Mapes, features editor at Pitchfork, and Marc Hogan, senior staff writer at Pitchfork. They have an article, "The Price of Pop Fandom." That's about how crazy, and expensive, and hard it is to get tickets to some of your favorite pop concert artists. I want to go to the phones. Sherry in Brooklyn. Sherry, I understand that you are seeing that Billy Joel concert tomorrow night. Is that right?

Sherry: Hi. Yes, I am. Thank you so much for having me. My nephew just turned 13, and for his bar mitzvah, I got him tickets to the Billy Joel concert. By the time I was looking, which was right before he announced that he's ending the residency, the cheapest tickets were already $150, and I'm not, unfortunately, the rich cool, and so I'm like, "This is a big present for him." He's never been to such a big-scale concert, and given the prices of how things are, I'm not sure what his next time will be. We're really looking forward to tomorrow.

What I wanted to also talk about was that there seems to be such a big gap in these super, super high price tickets to see the biggest stars. Then there's also so few places, I feel like for people under 18, to be able to see more local bands aside from some house shows or different places, kids need to have access to venues where they can see talent closer up, face to face for $5, $10, and I just don't know if that exists anymore.

Brigid Bergin: Sherry, thanks so much for your call, for your question, and you're a great aunt. I think that your nephew is going to be really excited about the concert tomorrow.

Jill, Marc, this is an issue. Is it just an issue for the superstar ticket, or is it also an issue at those local venues where kids might be able to try to get access to see some of these up-and-coming performers?

Marc Hogan: I think she's the cool aunt, too, because that is the question. I talked to managers and artists all the time about how mid-level artists used to be how you made money was touring. Now they say that they're lucky even to break even so it's just the costs of being on the road or more, just everything's more expensive. Lots of people who used to maybe work in that industry left it during the pandemic. Touring for smaller bands is harder, and so I think it is harder to find local shows for young folks. We need more, all ages shows for sure, more all ages, community spaces, I'm all in favor of that, just building up the concert infrastructure from the ground up.

Jill Mapes: It's difficult I'll add to I think when the artists has to really demand to play the all ages, and also there'll be a venue in the town they're going to that is viable for them to make what they make. Live Nation controls such a vast amount of venues in this city and across the country. It doesn't behoove them to have a show that's filled with half 18 year olds who aren't buying anything at the bar. It is a real shame. I don't think Marc or I would be doing what we do if we hadn't been able to go to those things when we were young. I don't know what this--

Marc Hogan: It was hard when we were young, too. It was hard then. It'd be like, "Oh, I want to see this artist. Oh, okay, cool. Finally, they're coming back, and they're doing a matinee. It's definitely hard." It's always been hard, but I think with the price too, it's gotten even harder.

Brigid Bergin: I think you started to touch on something that we'll dive into a little bit more, Jill, which is the role of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in controlling these venues and controlling these tickets. There was a United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing with Ticketmaster in January of this year following the fallout of those Taylor Swift ticket sales, and the senators used it as an opportunity to mix in some Taylor Swift references to their remarks. Here's a little bit of a supercut from our friends at NBC News featuring Senators Richard Blumenthal, Mike Lee, and Amy Klobuchar.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal: "Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say, 'I'm the problem, it's me.'"

Sen. Mike Lee: "Along with Senator Klobuchar as chair, to be honest, I had hoped as of a few months ago to get the gavel back, but once again, she's chair captain and I'm on the bleachers."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar: "To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can't have too much consolidation. Something that, unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say, we know all too well."

Brigid Bergin: Marc, Jill, I did that just for you. A little levity to a very serious conversation, but in all seriousness, how has the government responded to the rising cost of concert tickets, Jill?

Jill Mapes: Well, I think there's a lot of fanfare. Clearly, in session a lot of trying to get attention. One thing that I think I will say that the Public Theater of it, which if you can call it that, because it's a very minor issue compared to the other things happening in politics at the moment, but is Ticketmaster, I think in wanting to look better the optics of it. They pledged to start showing full ticket pricing and eliminate hidden fees in the middle of June, and it has not seemingly implemented yet, but--

Marc Hogan: It was November start date that is coming up. I mean, that's one thing that the Biden administration has been pushing against what they call junk fees all year, not just in tickets, but in other spaces of the economy as well. Ticketmaster and their rivals are saying that they're going to implement that and have full transparency of all the fees, which is one step forward.

Then since all that Public Theater, there has been some legislation moving along, and there's different issues, there's different groups fighting back and forth over what they think the best way is to fix this because it is really complicated. It lends itself to these glib statements and these clerical quotes, but most of this is not stuff that the average-- the most of us really want to get into the weeds. It's really technical stuff.

Speculative ticketing is one of the issues, which is, I guess, isn't that technical. It's just not as much fun as Taylor Swift quotes where it's like, speculative ticketing is where these resale sites sell tickets they haven't even bought yet. You might go online and Google the tickets for this concert you want to buy tickets for your kid, and you'll see this price, and it turns out that the person you tried to buy it from they don't even have it yet. You could have bought it cheaper, perhaps, just on the primary site. There's all these things that are being fought over in Congress, and we'll see what happens.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Scott in Brooklyn. Scott, thanks for calling All Of It.

Scott: Hi, thank you for having me. I just wanted to point out that not only just Ticketmaster basically control the price of ticket sales when they go on sale, but they also have now gotten involved in the secondary resale market which we used to call scalping. Through their verified ticket sales or resales, you can basically buy a ticket, and then post it onto their platform, sell it for whatever you want. They'll tell you a range where they're typically selling for on resale, and then they get probably a slice of the fee from that.

They're basically encouraging this secondary market of sales for prices well above face value. I just encourage anybody who's going to buy a secondary market ticket to get it from a service that you could only buy for face value, like capture trade or one of these fan-driven platforms.

Brigid Bergin: Scott, thanks so much-

Scott: Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: -for that call. Marc, talk a little bit more about that resell market that Scott was talking about.

Marc Hogan: What he said was great. That's something that I've heard a lot from people who seem to have some good answers for this is that for artists who don't want to have tickets be sold for exorbitant fees to have these face value fan-to-fan marketplaces, where fans still have the option of selling their ticket if it turns out they can't get a babysitter or they get sick or whatever but without this profit motive.

Not everything has to be about how much we can flip this for. It could be actually you love music, and if you can't make it, you want another fan to be able to go, but you're not trying to make a living off of it. I think that's certainly fair. It is interesting that Ticketmaster has it both ways on this. They are involved on the primary market, but then also in the secondary market.

That Taylor Swift fan that I talked to who was suing, it was wild because she even though she was suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation, she ended up being routed through StubHub to get her tickets, which the lawsuit alleges is part of-- part of all the allegations is that Ticketmaster was routing some of the purchases through StubHub to make it look like they were less dominant over the market. It all boggles the mind. It's just like, "Wait, I thought this was a Ticketmaster presale, but they sent you to StubHub." It's really convoluted. It makes sense that Congress is looking at it and just hopefully they actually make a difference. I'm skeptical of that they-- We'll see what they can achieve.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Marc Hogan: The grandstanding and the lyric quotes might not get us there.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs] I couldn't resist sharing that just because you know how much time their staff put into pulling all those lyrics for their remarks.

Marc Hogan: Look what they made you do, yes. [laughs]

Brigid Bergin: Exactly. There's a Swift intern on Klobuchar staff that is just like their day in the sun, for sure.

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Let's go to Eric in Asbury Park. Eric, thanks for calling All Of It.

Eric: Thanks so much for having me. About 20 years ago there was this great documentary called All We Are Saying where they interviewed all these different prominent the state of the music industry and especially focusing on digital music. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith really hit the nail on the head when he said, "I used to be worth my catalog, but now all I'm worth is my hard ticket."

I think it really speaks to the fact that we as consumers used to be willing to go out and spend $10, $15, $18 on an album, and that was just part of our spending habits, and now with the rise of streaming music, we want to get music for free or a very low monthly subscription cost, and the artists aren't getting any of that. I think that's also part of why artists are increasing the cost of their tickets beyond all the fees that Ticketmaster is adding onto it is because we used to go on tour to promote an album, but now we put out an album as a reason to go on tour. Maybe people's budgets for music that used to include recorded music and live music is now all going toward live music. While one thing has gone down, the others come up, and maybe we're not spending that much more than we used to.

Brigid Bergin: That is an interesting theory. Eric, thank you so much for that call from Asbury Park. Jill, Marc, what are your thoughts on that? Is it possible that potentially people maybe because they're not putting out the money for all the albums themselves, that their music budgets maybe haven't changed as much as we think?

Jill: I'm going to counter this and say that the casual fan, I don't know that they would be buying more than 25 CDs in a year. That feels generous to go to the record store twice a month or their Best Buy, or whatever. That's just me, but for a person like myself that's obsessive, yes. I used to spend a lot more money, but I also still spend money on vinyl and records.

I like that theory, but I don't think it holds that much water because you're talking about a person that maybe bought 10 CDs a year, they're spending $120 a year on Spotify. They were probably spending $120 a year at Best Buy, and now they're spending instead of $70 on a ticket to see Shania Twain or something back in 1996, they're spending $225 to see Taylor.

I'm going to say I really loved that caller's quote from Steven Tyler. The irony that I think is there is that now actually Legacy artists like Aerosmith are getting money from their catalog, in that they are selling their entire catalogs to be used in visual work to be adapted and made into a brand. The management of Legacy is a huge money maker where these artists they outgrow touring because they retire from it or it's just not sustainable with the changes to it. Anyway, I just couldn't resist with that quote because it's a little bit flipped now.

Brigid Bergin: Before I let you go, I have two more questions. I want to circle back. We started with Taylor, we got to wrap up with Taylor, which is there is that lawsuit that was filed that you wrote about, Marc. Just really briefly, tell us the premise of it, and where it stands now.

Marc Hogan: Well, last I checked it was ongoing. Live Nation moved it to federal court. It had been in state court, and they were trying to get it back. The plaintiffs were trying to get back in state court. I think it is still in the federal court. Basically, it was alleging fraud and other unlawful conduct. It was a class action. The woman that I spoke with, Julie Barfuss, was the lead plaintiff, but there's a bunch of different plaintiffs. As you know, there are so many Swifties who are struggling to get tickets.

Brigid Bergin: Then for you both, there are fans who are figuring out ways around this. What are some of the resources that are out there for fans who are trying to figure out a way to get those tickets but dealing with the fact that they're maybe prohibitively high priced, but working the angles, so to speak?

Marc Hogan: I think if you're able to go to a smaller market, I did happen to talk to somebody in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which we're not all on Tulsa, Oklahoma, but if you happen to be traveling, this guy got tickets for Springsteen for $17, and he was like, "I'm not even the biggest fan." He had a great time, and it was a wonderful show. I don't know, Jill, what other ways did we talk about?

Jill: I wanted to mention the site that he used called TickPick. It goes back to the, I think, the listener's name was Scott pointing out the fan-driven platforms. I really feel like, again, this all takes so much research. It's a lot of work, but I do think if you can seek out those notoriously no-fee or more fan exchange platforms, you might have a little bit of a better chance.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we will leave it there for now. Jill Mapes is the features editor at Pitchfork, and Marc Hogan is a senior staff writer. We've been talking about their story headlined, "The Price of Pop Fandom." Thank you both so much for joining me.

Marc Hogan: Thank you.

Jill Mapes: Thank you for having us.

Marc Hogan: It was fun.

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