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Ticketmaster's Swift Meltdown

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

News, Society & Culture, Business

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When presale tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour effectively broke the internet last week, Ticketmaster emerged as the villain…again. The media behemoth has been reviled since the ‘90s, but it has continued to grow, through a merger with Live Nation. What can a Department of Justice antitrust investigation, buoyed by Swifties, actually do? 


Guest: Jason Koebler, editor-in-chief of Motherboard at Vice.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by Seven Up Zero Sugar.

0:04.0

Picture this. You're looking at the camera rolling your phone.

0:08.0

You see an old picture of you and your mates grinning hard into the camera.

0:11.0

And you sit around a dinner table. The food and vibes were perfect.

0:15.0

Infuse your joyful moments with Seven Up.

0:18.0

It brings up liftment to everyday moments of the food.

0:21.0

With its refreshing lemon and lime taste, it lifts you up.

0:24.0

Seven Up. Taste that lifts you up.

0:27.0

Grab a Seven Up Zero Sugar today.

0:36.0

So, Jason, first question.

0:38.0

Do you have my Taylor Swift tickets?

0:45.0

I do not have any, I do not have any Taylor Swift tickets.

0:48.0

I didn't try to buy them outside of just clicking around ticket master to see some of the chaos.

0:54.0

But, no, I mean, there was a part of me where I was like, you know, should I go?

0:58.0

Should I go on for one last job and try to buy Taylor Swift tickets and resell them?

1:03.0

Like, I did think about it sort of, but then I was just like, you know what?

1:07.0

I'm too busy for this.

1:13.0

Jason Kebler is a journalist now.

1:15.0

But back in college, he made a little money by reselling concert tickets with jacked up prices.

1:22.0

He's not exactly proud of this history, but it did teach him a whole lot about ticket master,

1:27.0

the live events giant in charge of sales for Taylor Swift's era's tour.

1:33.0

Like a lot of people I wanted tickets to one of these concerts.

...

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