What Next: Ticketmaster's Swift Meltdown

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So Jason, first question, do you have my Taylor Swift tickets?
0:15.0	I do not have any, I do not have any Taylor Swift tickets.
0:17.7	I didn't try to buy them outside of just clicking around ticket master to see some of the chaos.
0:24.8	But no, I mean there was a part of me where I was like, you know, should I go?
0:28.0	I went for one last job and tried to buy Taylor Swift tickets and resell them.
0:33.5	Like, I did think about it sort of, but then I was just like, you know what, I'm too busy for this.
0:43.0	Jason Kebler is a journalist now.
0:45.5	But back in college, he made a little money by reselling concert tickets with jacked up prices.
0:52.0	He's not exactly proud of this history, but it did teach him a whole lot about ticket master.
0:57.4	The live events giant in charge of sales for Taylor Swift's era's tour.
1:03.1	Like a lot of people I wanted tickets to one of these concerts.
1:06.4	Like a lot of people I did not get them.
1:09.1	So I asked Jason, what would he have done in my shoes?
1:13.7	He said scoring tickets starts months even years ahead of time.
1:18.6	You need a credit card that gives you pre-sale access.
1:21.8	You need to become a verified fan.
1:23.8	Join Taylor Swift's fan club, have a history of buying Taylor Swift tickets.
1:29.3	And then you settle in in front of your computer and you wait.
1:32.8	The tickets go on sale at 10 a.m.
1:35.3	local time at each place.
1:37.3	And so what I used to do would be I would log on at like 9.45 a.m.
1:43.6	And I would open up tabs for each of the places that I thought I wanted to buy tickets.
	...

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