some wise words from Tom Petty

Agree. I think SH was addressing a certain Hawaii resident...

 

I said room in THE world! not room in YOUR world.


You don't have to waste your short life listening to everything, Just don't waste time getting upset about stuff you don't care for. Ignore Beiber or Idol if you don't think you have time for it. But finding time to complain about how you think that stuff is ruining the world? Wasted energy, it seems to me.

 

And yet the world, and the art of music, survived. Imagine that!

 

Millions of people bought pet rocks and Beanie Babies, too.

 

And bought Britney Spears CDs because they liked the way she danced.

 

Miranda Lambert was young when she appeared on season one of Nashville Star. Even though she managed only a 3rd place finish, her talent was evident very early on. She already had some decent original songs too. One thing that was different with her though was that it seems like the record company gave her some time to develop a little more before putting out an album. She was on Nashville Star in 2003, but her debut album did not hit the streets until 2005. With these "Idol" shows these days, it seems like many of the contestants are thrust onto a tour immediately following the show and then an album is rushed out to strike while the iron is hot.

Here's one of those original songs she performed on there:

 

Tom Petty would have been big at anytime. Great songs and good musicians

 

Someone like Tom Petty has pretty large crew. The drivers, stage hands, boardman, and the merchandise person are just a few of the example of people
who get paid before Tom Petty gets any money. Try telling the driver he wont get paid, and you'll be looking for a new driver.

 

The Byrds made it in the 60s. Much of Toms work is an improved version of The Byrds.

 

Disagree heavily.

 

Artists do not directly set ticket prices.

 

No, but they set a minimum level of compensation.

 

So if Tom Petty said "I'm going to tour and I don't want to sell any tickets over $40", he wouldn't be able to do so?

 

After hearing that Tom Petty covered "So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star", Chris Hillman got in contact with Petty and told him: "I'm so thrilled that you did it! I always thought that if The Byrds could have gotten along better and stuck it out we could have been as big as you guys". Petty noted the conversation struck him as "strange" but also made note both Gene Glark and Roger McGuinn also contacted him thanking him for keeping The Byrds from being forgotten about.

In a strange coincidence, Jeff Lynne whose career has been very much associated with that of Petty's since the late eighties also received similar praise from I believe Paul McCartney who I've heard allegedly told him that "If The Beatles had managed to stick it out together, they would have eventually evolved into ELO".

 

Artists do not directly set ticket prices.

 

Well, it's not like Petty has to risk not being able to pay the driver because he didn't sell enough tickets. They can pretty well cost all this stuff out well ahead of time on a tour this big unless it completely flops which Petty's tour pretty certainly isn't going to do.

Whether his prices are as low as costs will effectively allow or not? Who knows. But a lot of artists tour for less. Roadies are pretty much getting the same rate whether they work for Petty or Godsmack.

 

If he did, the sound system would be really crappy.

 

Once again, let me see if I have this straight: Tom Petty - or whatever other major artist who can sell a lot of tickets - says he'll ONLY tour if tickets are $40 and under, and you believe that the promoters would say "tough luck, Tom - you're staying home"?

And then there's this:

"Last year, Kid Rock chose to charge $20 for his concerts in an effort to circumvent scalpers — and found himself playing to a crowd of 28,000 in Chicago, nearly double the 15,000 that came to see him in 2011. Tickets bought at Wal-Mart would actually be $20 — no extra fees. Inside the stadiums, beers were $4."

 

Exactly. It's not like every tour MUST have average ticket prices of $100 to get by...

 

Well, without getting into forbidden areas, let's just say that Livvy cried all the way to the bank over the 'cool people' rejecting her and her music. She was monster big in the 70s and has apparently managed her money very well.

And by the way, we called her Oblivious Neutron Bomb!

 

True, but to be fair, Petty's ticket prices seem pretty much in line with everyone else playing the same sized venues.

 

I'm probably echoing previous posts, but ... talent show contests are nothing new. They date back to [at least] the vaudeville / music hall days on stage and to the early days of radio. Elvis entered talent shows as a child and then in high school. As did Jerry Lee Lewis at some point in his career, and Little Richard, and Jimi Hendrix, and The Everly Brothers, and The Quarrymen ... etc. It's not uncommon.

Personally, I don't like the current TV talent shows and I do like Tom Petty, but sometimes he can be unbearably self righteous.

 

Shatner and Nimoy were laughed at because Shatner didn't try to sing and recited goofy pompous readings and Nimoy did sing, but really, really badly. Had any of the Star Trek cast actually been able to sing-well, Nichelle Nichols could, a little-and pursued the matter Star Trek would have been a good place to start from.

Trivia: Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand) was in the girl band in Some Like it Hot.

 

Did Elvis go anywhere after appearing on Louisiana Hayride or Steve Allen program, and sure Beatles were popular even before becoming NME_ Poll Winner??

I've listened to enough Petty so far...

 

Even Sinatra got a big boost from the old Major Bowes Amateur Hour. It's no big deal.

As far as ticket prices go, overall I think the market sets the prices. If you think the price is too high don't go, and if enough people do that it will come down. Indeed, there is a very plausible theory that the desirable tickets to major shows are _underpriced on purpose_. One writer put this forth:

In a previous century, I got into an email argument with Paul Krugman over the economics of the concert ticket business. Krugman announced that he was working on explaining how oddities of the concert ticket business could be accommodated to microeconomic theory. For example, why are concert tickets priced at X, but routinely a huge fraction of them end up at third party resellers being sold for say 2X? Why don't the artists charge 2X in the first place? (Krugman is most celebrated today for his opinions on macroeconomics, but back then he didn't seem very interested in macro.) Before he published his theoretical breakthrough, however, he wanted to know if anybody else had any theories.

So, I wrote to Krugman to explain my theory: The Ticketmaster monopoly is a big skim-scam. Either the corporate bosses are themselves skimming tickets for resale before the public can buy them, or they are letting employees skim as a form of untaxed compensation. The result has been a game of cat and mouse between the company and the bots. “As with hackers, you can solve it today, and they’re rewriting code tomorrow,” said Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s chief executive. “Thus the arms race.” On a recent Thursday afternoon, the screen showed that the red visitors were making 600 times more ticket requests than those the system identified as being most likely human. ...Bots are not kicked off the system, but rather “speedbumped” — slowed down, sent to the end of the line or given some other means of interference, to allow a regular customer through. “We’re not trying to stop anybody from buying tickets,” Mr. Carnahan said. “We’re just trying to make sure that a fan can buy the tickets.” ...Live Nation will not say how many of the 148 million tickets it sells each year are bought using bots, and in many cases it may not know. Few ever admit to using the programs; official groups like the National Association of Ticket Brokers, which represents many of the biggest resellers, condemn them and say they supports anti-bot measures. But people at nearly every level of the concert business blame bots for wreaking all kinds of economic havoc.

“There are sold-out shows in reserved-seat houses in New York City where we will have 20 percent no-show, and that 20 percent will be down in the front of the house,” said Jim Glancy of The Bowery Presents, an independent concert promoter in New York. “It’s speculators who bought a bunch of seats and didn’t get the price they wanted.”

Concert promoters, artist managers and ticketing services say that bots are now an ever-present force, not only during the high-traffic moments when a big show officially goes on sale, but also at the odd moments when a promoter releases a few dozen extra seats with no announcement.

Three years ago, four men connected with a company called Wiseguy Tickets were indicted on conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges, for apparently using bots to get tickets to Bruce Springsteen, Hannah Montana and other concerts.
I'd be more sympathetic toward this story of Ticketmaster being plagued by bots if Bruce Springsteen tickets hadn't been notoriously skimmed before the Internet existed. In my 1999 discussion with Krugman I pointed out my friend Kevin's experience in 1980 camping out on the sidewalk in front of a Ticketmaster window (or perhaps Ticketron, back then which was later bought by Ticketmaster, anti-trust laws be damned) to be first in line so he could get front row tickets for one of Bruce Springsteen's four shows at the L.A. Forum. At 9:00:00 AM he tried to buy front row seats ... and all that was available was something like the 37th row.

Springsteen, who back then would set moderate ticket prices that he thought would affordable by working class folks, was publicly outraged by the vast amount of skimming for his 1980 Los Angeles shows. (It would be really interesting to have a frank discussion with Springsteen -- a well-intentioned, intelligent, and not naturally cynical man -- about what he's learned over the decades about the theory and practice of the music industry.)

The NYT article eventually gets around to a red pill perspective:

Not everyone is convinced that bots are the primary villain of the everyday concertgoer. The Fan Freedom Project, a nonprofit group financed by StubHub, has pushed for anti-bot laws around the country, and Jon Potter, its president, praised Ticketmaster for filing its lawsuit last month.

But he also criticized the industry practice of “holds,” in which sometimes large blocks of tickets are reserved for sponsors, fan club members and industry contacts, and never go on sale to the general public.
In other words, the ticket-selling industry is skimming tickets, just like Springsteen said in 1980.​

​

​