Welcome to the New York Times podcast, you're get a fun pass of music news and criticism.

I'm your host, John Caramonica.

An anti-hero, what's the opposite of the opposite of the

opposite of a hero? That's Taylor, not singing about ticket master, necessarily, but there

have been a number of issues in the ticketing world recently, and it is starting, I think,

maybe to force artists to think a little bit harder about the choices that they are making

in regards to ticketing and ticket prices and accommodating fans at a price point that

is not bank breaking. Now, this has happened time and again. This feels very cyclical in

that marketplace, but there does seem to be a sort of critical mass of negative energy

directed at the ticket master live nation ecosystem right now. If something is going wrong

in a venue, you know Ben Siserio is documenting and paying attention to it. Ben, what's up,

man? Welcome. Thank you. Ben is our music business reporter, as you know. And this week

I wanted to get under the hood to the best degree possible of everything that has been

going on with ticketing lately. And also put this in a little bit of historical context,

because as I mentioned, this is not by no means the first time that this has happened.

This is a Pearl Jam thing, this is a Springsteen thing. It comes up over and over again.

But then it does seem like the last, let's say three, four months, the action around

ticket master and ticketing and people complaining openly about it seems to be vibrating at a

pretty high frequency. You have the Taylor tour issues with the roll out for the stadium

tour coming up this year. You have the bad bunny, Mexico City debacle. You've got Zach

Brian rising country adjacent star making whooping on ticket masters heads like part of his own

marketing campaign. I guess the first question is a symbol on which is, is anything actually

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