Bella DeVaan: Swift superfans may have struck blow against monopoly

Taylor Swift’s fans paid for the singer’s mansion — the white Colonial Revival structure at the top of the hill —- in the Watch Hill section of Westerly, R.I. The house, called High Watch, was formerly named Holiday House and also called the Harkness House (after a family enriched by Standard Oil who lived there for a time) by locals, is an 11,000-square-foot edifice on five acres that she bought for $17.75 million in 2013. The house was built in 1929-1930.

— Photo by JJBers - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjbers/33980495256/

Via OtherWords.org

As the cost of food, travel, and gifts complicate holiday plans across the country, millions of Americans have been awakened to the sinister power of monopolies.

But now there are exciting new possibilities to rein them in.

This November, legions of new anti-monopolists were born. They’re Taylor Swift’s superfans — and they just might be the reason the government breaks up Ticketmaster.

Hoping to get pre-sale tickets to their favorite pop star’s upcoming tour, millions of “Swifties” waited in endless electronic queues, only to be hit with sky-high prices and exorbitant fees — if they were able to snag a ticket at all.

“Ticket prices may fluctuate, upon demand, at any time,” read an ominous warning on the Ticketmaster website.

And they did: Under Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” system, fans reported ticket prices running up to thousands of dollars — not including hefty fees. Prices spiked even higher on the secondary resale market. On StubHub, ticket listings reached upwards of $95,000.

Finally, Ticketmaster threw in the towel and canceled subsequent presale windows. Their site crashed thousands of times. It was mayhem — and thanks to an unchecked monopoly, fans had no other option.

But the Swifties struck back. Hours after Taylor Swift released a statement apologizing to fans and chastising Ticketmaster, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an investigation of Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster.

While their investigation wasn’t prompted by Swift, reported the New York Times, Swifties’ wave of discontent was overwhelming enough to warrant the department’s public disclosure. Immediately after, the company that had been bragging about a record-smashing 2022 saw its stock plummet.

How did we get here? When it comes to antitrust issues, the U.S. government has essentially been asleep at the wheel, allowing Ticketmaster’s monopoly to crush its competition for over a decade.

In 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged into Live Nation Entertainment. The merger was subject to a relatively weak consent decree, which asked the merged companies not to abuse their live venue dominance. But it’s been easy for Live Nation Entertainment to intimidate their naysayers and flout guidelines.

“Ticketmaster bullies venues into not working with their competitors,” explains Chokepoint Capitalism author Cory Doctorow. “They bully smaller artists by denying them management. They bully big artists by controlling their ticket prices and letting their fans down. And they bully their customers into paying exorbitant prices for tickets.”

Well before the Swift fiasco, a coalition of research organizations and live event workers launched the Break Up Ticketmaster campaign asking the Department of Justice to “investigate and unwind” the live events monopoly. The campaign quickly gained ground, generating tens of thousands of signatures on an advocacy letter.

Policy makers are now echoing that call.

“Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior,” tweeted Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), punning off a song from Swift’s latest album, Midnights. 

And on MSNBC, Senate Antitrust Committee chair Amy Klobuchar (D.-Minn.) promised a Senate hearing. She’s also co-authored bills with Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to facilitate antitrust enforcement with new filing, funding, and state empowerment rules.

The attorney general of Tennessee — home to the “angriest Swifties” — opened an investigation into Ticketmaster’s misconduct, too.

President Biden recently directed his administration to “reduce or eliminate” junk fees like Ticketmasters’ infamous extra charges, which sometimes total up to 78 percent of the cost of a ticket. He’s also appointed a passel of antitrust enforcers and signed a robust, competition-oriented executive order in his first months in the Oval Office.

Monopolies aren’t just fleecing concert-goers. All of us experience the villainy of monopolies — in the high price of a tight seat on a plane, in the destruction of local journalism, in skyrocketing monthly rent and food prices, or in the marginalization of small online businesses.

So, present day monopolists, steel yourselves and remember: When you provoke a superfan, they’ll come for you.Bella DeVaan

Bella DeVaan is a program associate at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org.

Sarah Anderson: The fox is still in the Postal Service henhouse

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, an historic building at 5 Post Office Square, in downtown Boston. The 22-story skyscraper was built in 1931-1933 with an Art Deco and Moderne structure. The building was renamed for the late Mr. McCormack, a long-time Massachusetts congressman who was U.S. House speaker in 1962-71. Its original name was the United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Federal Building.

Via OtherWords.org

Skyleigh Heinen, a U.S. Army veteran who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and anxiety, relies on the U.S. Postal Service for timely delivery of her meds to be able to function. She was one of thousands of Americans from all walks of life who spoke out recently to demand an end to a forced slowdown in mail delivery.

The level of public outcry in defense of the public Postal Service is historic — and it’s having an impact.

Shortly after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took the helm in June, it became clear that the fox had entered the henhouse. President Trump had gained a powerful ally in his efforts to decimate the public Postal Service.

Instead of supporting his frontline workforce, DeJoy has made it harder for them to do their job.

For example, he banned overtime, ordering employees to leave mail and packages behind if they could not deliver it during their regular schedule. Until this point, postal workers had been putting in extra hours to fill in for sick colleagues and handle a dramatic increase in package shipments.

As the mail delays worsened, more than 600 high-volume mail sorting machines disappeared from postal facilities. Blue collection boxes vanished from neighborhoods across the country. Postal managers faced a hiring freeze.

President Trump threw gas on the fire by gloating that without the emergency relief he opposes, USPS couldn’t handle the crisis-level demand for mail-in voting.

Outraged protestors converged outside DeJoy’s ornate Washington, D.C., condo building and North Carolina mansion, and they flooded congressional phone lines and social media. Political candidates held pop-up press conferences outside post offices.

At least 21 states filed lawsuits to block DeJoy’s actions, while Taylor Swift charged that Trump has “chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.”

After all this, DeJoy announced he’s suspending his “initiatives” until after the election.

This is a victory. But it’s not enough.

DeJoy’s temporary move does not address concerns about the threats to the essential, affordable delivery services that USPS provides to every U.S. home and business, or the decent postal jobs that support families in every U.S. community. These needs will continue long past November 3.

Second, DeJoy has made no commitment to undo the damage he’s already done. And he promised only to restore overtime “as needed.” Will he replace all the missing mail-sorting machines and blue boxes? Will he expand staff capacity to handle the backlog he’s created and restore delivery standards?

Third, DeJoy makes no mention of the need for pandemic-related financial relief. USPS has not received one dime of the type of emergency cash assistance that Congress has awarded the airlines, Amtrak, and thousands of other private corporations.

While the pandemic has been a temporary boon to USPS package business, the recession has caused a serious drop in first-class mail, their most profitable product. Postal economic forecasters predict that COVID-related losses could amount to $50 billion over the next decade.

DeJoy has proved he cannot be trusted to do the right thing on his own. Congress must step in and approve at least $25 billion in postal relief — and legally block actions that undercut the ability of the Postal Service to serve all Americans, both today and beyond the election.

For the American people, this is not a partisan fight. We will all be stronger if we can continue to rely on our public Postal Service for essential services, family-supporting jobs, and a fair and safe election.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. More research on the Postal Service can be found on IPS site Inequality.org.

James P. Freeman: Taylor Swift shows herself as a coldly calculating capitalist and techno tyrant

Taylor Swift

Fans of Taylor Swift (a part-time resident of Watch Hill, R.I.) should prepare themselves for despair. In youthful vernacular, Hundo P will dissolve to Sus and Salty AF. Girls will cry. Fingers will point. Ticketmaster will shrug … And Taylor Swift will need a bigger bank. A databank.

In early November, Swift, America’s biggest and most influential pop sensation, announced a massive new world tour beginning next May (stopping at Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium on July 28). She is employing Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan, a new process to purchase tickets, where Swift and Ticketmaster are committed “to getting tickets in the hands of fans. Not scalpers or bots.” Their collaboration, they say, will help fans — mostly teenage girls — get the best access to tickets “in a really fun way.”

Those efforts will fail. Badly.

On Dec. 5, many Swift fans felt Swiftboated. That date marked the beginning of her Presale (a ticket-buying window usually limited to fan clubs and corporate sponsor clients, but prone to ticket-buying bots masquerading as humans). The date also marks the time when young fans will learn a bitter lesson in economics and literature that no school can teach. A date — an early Pearl Harbor Day for “Tay” fanatics — when dollars, disappointment, and Orwell collide. Even non-fans should take notice.

Ticketmaster, America’s largest primary ticket distributor, conceived Verified Fan last year after Adele’s 2016 world tour.

When tickets first went on sale, in December 2015, 10 million people initially attempted to purchase 750,000 tickets. The market acted supremely efficiently with this vicious demand-supply imbalance:  Prices rose dramatically (face value is not necessarily indicative of market value). Conveniently, though, Ticketmaster and ticketless fans blamed high-speed computer programs (called bots) and scalpers for market disruptions (price gouging). So, Ticketmaster created Verified Fan with this noble goal:  ensuring more so-called “true fans” secure valid tickets at reasonable prices.

But Verified Fan is troubling on a practical and philosophical level.

Just ask U2 and Bruce Springsteen fans.

Last August, Springsteen on Broadway, a limited engagement, used the new system that, in the words of observer.com, “wasn’t born to run properly.” Fans were subjected to a “confusing” and “complicated” process. To make matters worse, “Verified Fan didn’t stop bots and scalpers from reselling tickets.” In fact, seats were “listed on StubHub for $2,500 before tickets even went on sale to the general public.”

More recently, U2 fans (for whom, or perhaps against whom, Verified Fan is being used for the first time on a full-scale arena tour) expressed loud Irish stage whispers over the new process anticipating the band’s 2018 tour. Malfunctioning codes (read on) and miscommunication, among other problems, greeted Presale and General Sale participants seeking tickets for next year. So bad was the global reaction that U2’s manager felt compelled to respond to numerous fan sites. On Twitter, there is a thread #Verified Scam. It is sure to grow more active.

But Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster take “Taylor Swift Tix Powered by Ticketmaster Verified Fan” to a whole new devious and disingenuous level.

Unlike hyperventilating analog Beatles fans in 1964, hyperactive digital Swift fans in 2017 had to register on her official Web site and further register (linking) on Ticketmaster’s website to become a “verified fan” (and further register with a given concert venue).

It sounds simple enough. However, unlike U2 and Springsteen fans, Swift fans were encouraged to participate in “unique activities” to bolster their verified fan status. For unsuspecting young people, the euphemistic and purposely vague phrase “unique activities” (which sounds like it came straight out of a Cold War-era espionage enterprise) means, in ticket industry parlance, “boosting.”

This disturbing practice was explained on Swift’s Ticketmaster FAQ site. Boost activities “come in all shapes and sizes.” Her fans were implored to “watch the latest music video on the portal, purchase the album, post photos, and engage on social media to boost your opportunity to unlock access to tickets.”

Even before boosting began, there was reasonable skepticism about the entire initiative. Some accused the entertainer of scamming her most dedicated fans. Those sentiments gain credible strength given the preposterous activities fans were instructed to indulge.

There were music boosts, merchandise boosts, UPS boosts (where fans could spot and track — Seriously! — the exclusive Taylor Swift UPS Truck), friends and family boosts, video boosts, and social media boosts. Theoretically, more activity meant more opportunity to move up the virtual electronic line to get tickets. “While boosts are optional, we hope you’ll play along with the Taylor community and to help you unlock the best opportunity to access tickets!”

Ticketmaster isn’t Sesame Street. But it still wanted you to “come on down …” A series of Swift-sanctioned YouTube videos — examples of strategic marketing — targeted her young fan base with animated kitten cartoons. One tells fans Ticketmaster’s new approach is “better” and “fun.” In another, the female announcer says, “you’re the best fans” “doing the best things” “to get the best seats possible.” And, the voice continues with sinister serenity, “it was easy to do, because who doesn’t love boosting their faith?”

Place not your faith in boosts.

Throughout the entire marketing campaign Swift and Ticketmaster strongly implied that all the boosting aerobics would result in true fans actually purchasing face value tickets. They won’t. And many fail to understand this crucial point. Just like popsugar.com. It mistakenly asserted on a Nov. 18 posting, “dedicated fans will be able to purchase tickets in advance through the Ticketmaster …” Potentially millions won’t. Simply registering for Verified Fan guaranteed fans absolutely nothing. Fans only had the opportunity for access. They are guaranteed neither access nor tickets.

This all smacks of false advertising. And pay to play. Or, more precisely, pay to prey.

More dangerous is that while fans are paying Swift for swag, they are also unwittingly paying both Ticketmaster and Swift for the privilege of obtaining lots of their personal information (cell phone, email, credit card, and social media — Twitter and Facebook). They are not only custodians of this information, but they actively monitor and track that sensitive information. And they determine if you are a true fan or even a living human.

Even if this strategy is a “brilliant scheme,” Elana Fishman writes in racked.com, “challenging fans (and their parents) to assert their loyalty by spending the most money possible feels problematic, particularly considering how expensive concert tickets are in the first place.”

For Ticketmaster and Swift, Big Brother and Big Sister, the new thought police of entertainment, big fan data collection is more important than ticket distribution and fan satisfaction. What happens to all this data? Who will have access to this data, after the last song is sung? Will tracking continue indefinitely? The tour begins in Arizona but will likely end in Oceania.

For now, though, Ticketmaster will use “data science technology,” a software program, to determine winners and losers. Boosting activities for the Swift tour closed on Nov. 28, the last day for fans to register as Verified Fans. Afterwards, recode.com explains, “Ticketmaster [will] take time to figure out if [you’re] human, looking for clues like past ticket-buying history and social posts, and lets ticket-buyers know if they’ve made the cut.”

After all this, inquisitive young minds will be asking this question: “When will I know my final spot in line?”

The answer is inadequate:  Sometime after the 28th. Certain fans (not all) who are certified as “verified” will receive an email message with further instructions about the Presale. Early on Tuesday, Dec. 5 (the start of the Presale, “T-Day”), verified fans got a text message with a link to search for tickets and a second text message with a unique code to access tickets. Even with access, tickets are not guaranteed. Remember, fans will never be told where their final spot in line lies. If anyone knows, it’s Ticketmaster.

Verified Fan and boosting have never been used in tandem on something as big as Swift’s new stadium tour. Dave Brooks, executive editor of the concert-industry trade magazine Amplify, estimated in August that demand for Swift tickets is at five to 10 times the amount of available seats. And boosting probably created added levels of artificial demand. December 5 promises mountainous chaos.

All entertainers want to capture hearts and minds. Now they want to capture data.

Swift’s cuddly embrace of Verified Fan and Boosting means she has shed her quirky, feel-good, girl-power persona. In its place is a new calculating capitalist and tenacious technologist. A cold character.

Legions of disappointed fans will learn a painful lesson. At school, everyone gets an award. At Taylor Swift Presale, not everyone gets a ticket. Ticketmaster and Swift will eventually learn a lesson, too. Passion is an emotion, not a metric, and devotion can not be measured by bits and bytes. True fans are humans, not data points.

This piece first appeared in The New Boston Post. James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and  a former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His wortk