Taylor Swift Needs To Listen To Pearl Jam — And Not Just Their Music
Throughout the last couple of weeks, the latest thing that people were griping about on social media was the cluster of trying to get Taylor Swift tickets.Now, depending on what story you see and what side is writing it (welcome to modern journalism, where the facts never get in the way of an agenda), the fault for people getting screwed out of reasonably priced tickets was either Ticketmaster or Taylor Swift.
Of course, if this was a situation where someone named Ticketmaster was dating Taylor Swift and they broke up, I’d blame Taylor Swift. She really doesn’t have a great track record there, although that’s for the best given that it provides her best material. But since this is not a situation where Taylor should’ve swiped left on someone with an incredibly unusual name, I’m going to blame the greedy, gigantic monopoly of Ticketmaster, especially since they’ve given us so much to blame them for over the past several decades.
However it is interesting to see Taylor Swift, undeniably the biggest touring act in music right now, seemingly so helpless about the whole thing.
It’s also reminiscent of another time, about three decades ago, when the biggest touring act in music found themselves in a similar circumstance — and told Ticketmaster to go screw themselves.
That band, of course, was Pearl Jam, an act that we really should’ve listened to — and not just their music.
Back in 1994, Pearl Jam was without a doubt the hottest act on the planet. Their first album, “Ten,” sold about 10 million copies, and their second, “Vs,” sold more than a million copies in its first week, en route to selling another 10 million. Their shows were selling out in seconds. They were on the cover of every magazine. And, after the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, they had no rivals as not just the biggest rock band on the planet, but the biggest and most influential band in the world.
Now, most other bands would’ve just sold out and soaked in a pool of money. After all, that’s what all the boomer bands were doing at that time in the ’90s, gouging customers and coasting. Groups like the Eagles were soaking folks for outrageous ticket prices to listen to them creak out on stage and croak out the greatest hits.
But Pearl Jam wasn’t going to go that way.
Pearl Jam
Some of the moves Pearl Jam took had been made before: announcing shows at the last minute to thwart scalpers, selling a limited number of tickets per person, doing fan-club-only shows at small clubs so that die-hard fans get dibs. Bruce Springsteen and a few others had done them before.
But some measures Pearl Jam took were groundbreaking.
They included:
Charging a reasonable service charge. “Pearl Jam feels if they’re doing a cheap ticket under $20, it should be a cheap service charge,” band manager Kelly Curtis said in an interview at the time, explaining that the band’s idea of a reasonable charge would be no more than 10 percent of the ticket price. The band also had an itemized breakdown of costs printed on each ticket to show what that service charge was going towards and why it was there.
Allowing no advertising on the backs of tickets. “The band would rather put an inspirational message on the back of the tickets,” said Curtis.
Putting an end to sharing the revenue from T-shirts and other merchandise, helping to keep prices down. “In the venues that have merchandising deals, 40 percent of the profits go to somebody, not the band,” Curtis said. “We’re refusing to play those venues, and in return we’ve been able to sell $18 shirts.”
The restructuring of long-entrenched ticket policies was an uphill battle. But Curtis said the band’s goal was to alert fans to these policies and ultimately to change the way tickets were bought and sold.
“The band just wants to explore doing things in a different way,” Curtis said. “If that means not playing some markets or scouting out open fields, that’s fine.”
Now, at the time, many cynical folks made fun of Pearl Jam. They said there was no way they were going to break the monopoly of Ticketmaster, and that they were just grandstanding. But Pearl Jam stuck to their guns, and they made a dent in Ticketmaster’s monopoly, paving the way for competitors to come along.
However, much as Pearl Jam’s popularity faded with the changing times, so did those competitors’. Before long, attrition set in, and Ticketmaster became a monopoly again years later.
But there’s a way that Taylor Swift could break them, and it’s not by listening to Pearl Jam, but by taking their message to heart and doing things in a thoroughly clever and modern way.
Taylor Swift’s mom never told her not to play with fire. Also, she just broke up with Beavis so she’s mulling over her next song.
The only thing that’s going to stop Ticketmaster is if Washington politicians finally do their job and use anti-trust laws to break up the Ticketmaster monopoly and enforce its breakup. And who better to bring about a breakup and make it last than Taylor Swift? And, oddly enough, she could have the power to do that.
See, nowadays, politicians are little more than celebrities, sucking up to other rich and famous people. For God’s sake, how else do you explain Kanye West being entertained by anyone other than a psychiatric ward? And Joe Biden meeting with Kim Kardashian? Please.
Someone like Taylor Swift doesn’t have to be a genius in politics or the law, she just has to be famous and determined — determined to make her voice heard and make the rounds in Washington to get it heard by the right people. If Taylor took some time off for a different tour, to go and chat up the right politicians on both sides of the aisle in D.C., to get them to break up the Ticketmaster monopoly, and used her social media and mainstream media pulpits to make her cause known, and to have her supporters flood the emails of politicians to help her, then she could get it done, or at the very least make it very difficult for politicians and put some real pressure on them to get it done.
The question is, will Taylor Swift attempt to do that? She could. And, she should. Not just for her fans, but for herself, to be able to have greater control over her own destiny when it comes to touring, and to make more money when she does tour by not having to deal with Ticketmaster.
So, will she finally say to Ticketmaster “I knew you were trouble when I walked in,” take action to take on their monopoly, and kiss them off by singing, “we will never ever ever get back together?”
I don’t know. But if her mind’s a “blank slate” on the matter, she could always call Eddie Vedder for some advice.
