For WXXI, this is connections filling in for Anderson.

I'm Gino finaly.

Today's connection was made in 2023 when Taylor Swift set out on her Eras Tour.

It was the Pop Star sixth headlining tour and would become the highest grossing musical tour of all time.

It was the first tour ever to clear $2 billion in revenue, and in fact, it was also the first tour to clear $1 billion in revenue.

And tickets weren't cheap.

While initial sales prices were in the several hundred dollars range, ticket sellers and markets like StubHub and played those prices into the thousands.

But a New York State bill introduced by Queen State Senator James Skoufis aims to change that.

The bill would play some limitations on online ticket reseller marketplaces.

So to discuss the bill and the role, outlets like StubHub play in the live music marketplace, I'm joined by Daniel Armbruster, lead singer and songwriter for Joy wave.

Thank you.

Hello.

Zach Mikita, owner and operator of anthology.

How's it going?

Jimmy.

Vigeland.

viele kind, New York state issues reporter for our partner station, WNYC.

How's it going?

doing good.

And, you know, to start here, I want to allow Jimmy to kind of explain the context of the bill and what it will do and what its purpose is.

So, you wrote written about this recently.

I just kind of want you to lay out what we're looking at right now.

Well, that's right.

So New York lifted most restrictions on ticket reselling or ticket scalping, to use the term that was in vogue when I was a kid in 2007.

So it used to be that there were very, very, very severe restrictions on how much you could resell where you could resell a ticket, to whom could you resell a ticket?

and it was demonstrated by actually former attorney general and former Governor Eliot Spitzer, that this was inefficient, that it was leading to problems, because what you had was a black market of people selling these tickets.

and sometimes they were legitimate, sometimes they were counterfeit.

Sometimes people got burned.

it really wasn't in a way that benefited the consumer.

under the new law, all those restrictions mostly went away.

And we saw with the rise of technology, these secondary marketplace platforms.

So people think about StubHub or Vivid Seats.

That means that if a venue you we is going to price a show at whatever the artist or the venue or the promoter, a combination of them set, you know, if there is excess demand, i.e.

if people are willing to pay more for the ticket, like was the case with the Taylor Swift Eras Tour or Bruce Springsteen's recent Stand on Broadway.

Then there are people who pay more, and the secondary markets, the StubHub of the world, essentially reap some kind of a service fee as they facilitate those transactions.

Sound like an economist?

Facilitate those transactions.

So into this space in jets, this legislation sponsored by James Skoufis, the state senator from the lower Hudson Valley, and Ron Kim, an Assembly member from Queens.

The bill would do a bunch of things, but there are three major components.

First, it would ban the sale of speculative tickets.

That is someone that is selling a ticket for an event that they don't yet possess.

if you were to go online right now, you could find hundreds of tickets for the World Cup next year, even though the actual tickets have not yet been released.

This bill would seek to end that practice of speculative ticket sales, which the sponsors of the bill say creates a bubble that artificially inflated prices.

The second main point in the legislation would be to put a cap on the fees that a marketplace or a secondary marketplace charge.

So right now, if I were to buy a ticket to a show, and often I would have to deal with Ticketmaster.

They are the largest ticketing platform that's used by lots of different venues.

They would charge a service fee to cover the costs of promotion, to cover the costs of the ticketing system, etc., etc., etc..

The current law says that those fees shall not be unreasonable, but the law doesn't define what unreasonable is.

So theoretically, the New York State Attorney General can bring lawsuits, but they haven't done that in the last several years.

One of the components of this current piece of legislation would be to define reasonable as about 25%.

The third big piece, and arguably the biggest piece of this proposal, would let an artist or a performer say that they don't want tickets to their show or concert to be available on the secondary market for profit.

Essentially, it would let them opt tickets to their show off of StubHub.

You could still sell tickets to a show for either the face value or slightly less, but there wouldn't be this bidding process that, again, we saw with popular acts like Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen or I. I'm sure there are some in Rochester that I'm just not cool enough to know about.

And I will turn it over to you folks to discuss kind of how you're living this.

Jimmy, you're thinking of joy, of concerts.

That's that's what you were looking for.

And let me ask.

Thank you.

let me ask you, Daniel, like, would you opt out of it?

If you have the option to not have your tickets go on sale on StubHub?

No.

And there's a couple good things this bill, is doing and a couple things that I think are probably a little bit goofy.

First of all, as far as opting out, look, I understand that people want to go to concerts.

They're fun.

They should be fun, right?

But this is kind of fundamentally looking at ticket resale sites and getting mad that secondary markets exist.

Secondary markets exist in our society like people were in line to buy Nintendo Switch TOS yesterday, and probably a bunch of them are being sold on eBay right now.

So why you're going to regulate concerts and not, I don't know, sports or eBay or they're all through our society.

That seems a little strange to me.

as far as people and artists opting out, I think fans are going to get hurt.

I mean, we see a large amount of messages from fans who are trying to buy tickets on Reddit or Facebook or outside of the secondary markets, and sometimes they get scammed and they're saying, hey, is there anything you can do to help me?

It's like, no, there isn't.

You know, the artist doesn't have your money.

That's not how it works.

if you're on StubHub or something like that, you know, you can report that as fraudulent and theoretically get your money back.

So it's kind of like, the double edged sword here, I think a little bit where, you know, one, if you're putting up a ticket for sale from the artist and say it's $50 and it sells out and ends up in a secondary marketplace for $150, while the consumers still have the opportunity to see the show, if they pay that amount of money.

But and the other hand, there's plenty of room for people that are speculative and and do want to buy up as many tickets as they can to, you know, reap a little profit off of the top from, yeah.

I mean, concerts are actually scarce, right?

Like there's not a good substitute like, if you wanted to go to the Taylor Swift show and it's sold out, I don't know that the Joy wave show is a good substitute, right?

To turn this, because it's such a subjective thing.

Imagine, I want I'm going to will this into existence.

I want Buffalo Bills Super Bowl tickets.

And Zach over here says, good news, buddy.

I got us, Cleveland Guardians baseball tickets.

That's not a good substitute.

I wanted to go to the Super Bowl.

Right.

So the real way to fix this is the way that people don't like at all, which is to price things correctly in the primary market to eliminate the secondary market.

And the only ways to do that are things like Ticketmaster introduced dynamic pricing, which people hated.

I mean, theoretically, if you're going to price things correctly in the primary market, you need to turn every ticket sale into an auction because that ticket will sell for whatever it's actually worth.

And that's a terrible thing for the consumers, right?

But that's the only way to, like, the concert is worth what people are willing to pay for it.

Right?

And only so many people can go see Taylor Swift or see Joy wave or whatever it is.

So, Zach, I think the thing the thing to add about that, if I may, you know.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Is that who who wins, right.

Theoretically, if you're the artist, the promoter of the venue doing that auction ticketing, capturing the full value of demand in the market, that money theoretically flows to the artist.

But if you're an artist, do you want to be the person associated with making your fans pay three times what they otherwise might have paid?

No.

If you put the tickets flow on the secondary market, someone else captures that excess demand.

They're benefiting off that scarcity.

And one of the arguments of artists who support this is that if the money goes to the artists, they'll reinvested in the act, they'll reinvest in the show, they'll give Josh Allen another misuse and another, you know, three cases of Super Juice so that he can finally get to that Super Bowl.

Even though I want to be clear, this doesn't apply to sports.

Jimmy, I saw that in your article.

I saw Randy Nichols said something about that, and I, I thought that was a little bit silly.

because, look, you could do something with the secondary markets where you say, okay, 50% of the profit from the sale on the secondary market goes back to the artist or the venue or the promoter or the main part of the event, right?

Not to the scalper.

And they're splitting the profits or, or something like that, which, you know, that theoretically, you know, sends the money back to what society probably deems like the good places for it to go to music or to the arts.

But when you set up a tour and you decide what the production looks like, and you decide how big the stages for the Taylor Swift concert, you're basing that based on, how much the tickets are, how many seats there are to sell.

If one seat randomly sells for $800 instead of $100, you aren't reinvesting that money.

You can't.

It's way too late to do so.

You are increasing the pot like you would be theoretically increasing revenue for artists or for venues or promoters or whatever, but it's way too late in the game to say, wow, we can have ten more backup dancers because of this.

Like, you know, the money's going where it's supposed to go.

So Zach, I mean you're in the position of starting up a venue in 20 2533 opening a venue.

and your anthology's kind of in that middle market space.

It's a lot of mid-range bands.

not Taylor Swift level, but not just yet.

Not yet.

but the on the way down, Taylor.

But not but not like, you know, small local band either.

You're right.

You're kind of in the middle there and even there, like I was looking just before we're going on the show of shows that are coming up and whether there are tickets already being sold on StubHub.

And, I found, you know, first show that I would actually like, was interested in when I found the website with, double mix three is coming in September.

Tickets, including fees, are about $40 on StubHub.

They're $98.

and you rolled your eyes at that, and I, you know, I when you're running a venue like that and you see that those prices are happening in the secondary market, do you think it deters people from coming out to shows or does it harm the venue at all in itself?

Yes, I think it harms the venue.

I don't think it's going to, stop anybody from coming to our to our venue to see our show, but we end up with the target on the back of our heads.

I'm thinking back to when we had, royal ODIs at Essex.

Right.

Because recently we had Essex that we closed to reopen.

Anthology.

the face value of those tickets were $25, $25 to see Royal orders.

And as we got closer to the show and it was sold out, there was tickets going for over $200 on StubHub, nor the artist or the venue saw any of that extra money.

But now there's an association with that.

That price to see that show.

And they're like basically, I think in the eyes of the consumer, somebody thinks that we're getting rich off the thing, when in actuality it's a scalper and a second, you know, second tier market.

so yeah, I definitely think that that hurts the venue or even possibly the artists when there's an association that somebody out there consumer is buying tickets, they're like, is that really necessary?

You know, I think there is one thing that this bill does that I'm very interested in.

I know Zach is interested in this too.

We were talking about it in the lobby, but it caps ticket fees at 25%.

That is still way too high.

And I think people don't understand what ticket fees are in general.

if I can explain that for for one second.

No.

Go ahead.

Yeah, sure.

So these ticketing companies do deals with venues and with promoters where they will pay in advance.

Let's say it's like $1 million a year or something to the venue or to the promoter to be the exclusive ticketing provider for that place in turn, they get to charge whatever they want for fees, and that fee goes towards recouping the million dollar theoretical 0% interest loan that they got from Ticketmaster or whoever else.

And then once they've recouped the loan that they took, they get to keep that money.

That money never goes to the artist.

it rarely goes to the venue unless the venue is also the promoter that needs to be capped at like 10% or less.

It is completely arbitrary.

It's made up.

It affects people in the secondary market, but also the primary market.

it's fake and people need to, you know, everyone is so used to seeing like service fees on their phone bill or whatever, and they're like, oh yeah, those fees.

You can't do anything about them.

This one you can.

It needs to be legislated out of existence immediately.

When we did shows in Essex, there wasn't a an in-house, ticketing company.

So we used a company called Humanities and they took what, $1 or $2 and the fee actually went to, like nonprofit causes throughout the world, which is amazing.

And it's it was great to see that that can be done.

All you have to do is eliminate the backroom handshake between the promoters and the ticketing companies.

So I think that's a really great point.

And just to add a few things here, the question is, if you have it saying that a fee can't be unreasonable, that's squishy right?

And theoretically you're only going to find that if someone brings a lawsuit and if that lawsuit is successful or if it's not successful, the minute you say reasonable shall be defined as 25%.

Basically anybody who doesn't then set their fee at 24.99% is a sucker.

Yeah, right.

It will obviously immediately kind of push up the market.

And that's something I asked the bill sponsors about.

and they said that the average is about 35% on the secondary market and about 30% on the primary market.

So they said there would still be a savings.

The other thing that comes into this is, and I know this just because I took my family of four, it is fun to go to the circus.

When it was in Albany a few months back and I looked online.

I'm looking for all these tickets, and I could also see that this show wasn't going to sell out.

There's plenty of seats around the arena where we were going to go.

I was about to hit the checkout button when I clicked on the All in pricing to see what the fees were.

They were about 20%.

And I said, you know, what the heck with this, let's go to the box office.

We will pay a much smaller fee at the box office, get the tickets that way, and then theoretically that's going to go into the pocket of the venue and not the third party operator, which in this case, as in most cases, was Ticketmaster.

Yeah.

People are just used to it this way.

Look, there's so many other ways that you can do this and people might not like them.

I mean, the auction thing that I said is like, of course, absurd.

And I'm not suggesting that anyone actually do it, but it makes the primary market and secondary market fall in line.

what you were saying about, the circus, like, if you, you could do a thing where there are no tickets, right?

It's you show up, you pay $20 at the door, $30 of the door, $40 of the door.

It's a flat rate thing.

It's general admission now.

There's no ticketing fees.

And it's fair, theoretically, based on different socioeconomic brackets, the people who show up first are the ones who want to get in the most.

Right.

So you're paying with time instead of money.

You can do things that way, too.

That's how bars work on the weekend, right?

Or like a local concert would work more like that.

There are things just people are really used to this, like Ticketmaster system that we're in.

And look, I appreciate that 25% fees is a savings over 30.

But still it's it's made up like it needs to go away.

That scarcity mindset.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We I agree that we kind of live in a society right now that we're so numb to fees and everything.

Our next hour is on a tax lien tips.

And we're going to be talking about, you know, tipping to, but, you know, this is a you want me to stick around, I'll stay.

We're actually.

Well, I'm struggling to get gas, but we were a booked house now for it, so, but, you know, it's one of those things where, like, we, we are in this position.

that one, it is a a commodity that people want, and it's a commodity that has a finite amount that you can sell.

There's only so many tickets you can sell to an event given the size of the venue.

so there's always going to be that middleman in between that is going to be brokering how much a ticket costs, what fees are put on it.

But yeah, we've gotten to this point where they become so exorbitant and people are just kind of resigned to it and they've just accepted it.

So I kind of want to build on that a little bit of like what a better system does look like.

You're talking about kind of a first come, first serve operation.

Yeah.

would that be something exact that you'd be open to that?

at the door.

Whoever gets there first, they get in, they can see the show.

I mean, yeah, I think so long as people are able to come and enjoy something that they're looking forward to doing.

the, the two biggest days that ticket sales move or like what tickets will move for a first, concert the day you announce it in the day that the show happens in between there's really it's it's a trickle effect.

But that first day, we can sell any tickets there.

You know, the the percentage is, is astronomically larger than any other day.

You know, the following weeks, first come, first serve.

Sure.

I don't know if that works as you start like, I don't know if it's scalable.

Right.

As you get you don't want to do that at arena.

Everyone's give it 20 bucks.

That's crazy right?

Could you imagine?

so I think that there's there's limitations to that idea.

I'm, indifferent to the idea of whether or not, anthology, you know, would be a place to to try that.

I'm, I'm happy to see if people show up and people are paying a fair price to see the artist that they want to see.

I don't care how they got there, you know what I mean?

I have I have hundreds of solutions.

How much time do we have?

we got we got 35 more minutes left.

Okay, great.

I'll take them out.

so, one of the things I like in this bill is, the band speculative, ticket reselling.

So, like, if I buy a ticket for an event on Ticketmaster now, frequently it's the actual ticket is not released to me until 24 hours before.

So I think that's good.

Like, you have basically a ticket reservation if you can't sell that ticket.

And Jimmy, can you verify for me?

Is that what this bill is doing?

Like, if I don't get my ticket theoretically delivered, even though I bought it three months ahead?

the ticket doesn't show up on my Ticketmaster account until 24 hours before the event.

That's the point when I'm able to sell it under this bill.

My understanding is that that's still being negotiated.

As to the brass tax language, they weren't really concerned necessarily about people in that situation who have a reservation for a ticket, even if they don't have the physical QR code or we say the physical ticket, it's still digital.

But if you don't have the QR code or the PDF or the whatever, it's more along the lines of people selling tickets with the idea that they will get them later.

and this really looks not necessarily at StubHub, but at these concierge services where I'm sure I could go right now and try to buy tickets for the Super Bowl next year.

even though those tickets haven't been created, they don't exist, right?

You could get tickets to the Olympics.

again, when these tickets don't exist, it's really looking at that.

Because if you already start to set demand for this product before the product is even released and you're saying, oh, wow, well, Jimmy's most excellent ticketing company will get me to the Super Bowl for $10,000.

That's a signal that has the potential to inflate the prices even before they're set.

So I don't believe it would apply in the fact pattern that you just mentioned, Dan.

But I have to be honest, I made some calls this morning to people who are following the final negotiations about this legislation.

It doesn't sound like it's going to pass as it was proposed last week, but we will not really know for sure until kind of the middle of next week, when the state legislature sets to wrap up its work for the year here in Albany.

Gotcha.

Okay.

wait, I know that they already, like, there's a lot of issues with botnets and stuff buying, like, a massive chunk of tickets.

I think Ticketmaster and satellite sites like that are doing a lot better of recognizing patterns now and refunding stuff when that happens.

And the state did take some action on that in 2022, I signed a bill to try to limit the bots and some of the hidden fees.

Yeah, so there has been some movement made on that.

So I wonder if you can even, you know, take that further and say you need, need to buy tickets, right.

Of if this is limited to four tickets or something, you already need an ID to purchase, you know, a plane ticket or things like that.

I'm not suggesting like the TSA for concerts, but, something like that could prove you're human.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Only a human would have a driver's license.

I think that limiting the resale prices on secondary sites.

So in Ireland, they actually cap resale tickets, at face value.

So you can't sell them for a for a profit.

There.

I don't know if you can actually do that in the US.

I would imagine you would probably face a bunch of lawsuits for trying to, you know, that's a that's a price control.

Right.

but you could do something like I was saying earlier of having, like a percentage of it, 50% or something, kick back to the artist, to the venue, to the promoter, to the people actually putting it on.

that might not make a difference to consumers as far as like prices, but maybe people would feel better knowing that the money is going to the people doing the event instead of a third party that's basically using concerts as a speculative asset.

one thing to think about with that, Dan, is, you know, will you ever stop the black market?

If the demand is there, won't the goods somehow flow regardless of what the law is?

Yes.

For most of my life, marijuana was not legal to purchase in New York.

And yet, from age 14 on, I and anyone in my high school would have no problem purchasing marijuana for what we felt was a reasonable price.

Because that's the way the capitalist market works, regardless of what the law is.

And so you even said this earlier, you get into a place where people are looking to maybe not regulated marketplaces like StubHub or Vivid Seats, but they're looking to Reddit, they're looking to Facebook or to recall the the old vision, some guy in the trenchcoat kind of two blocks away from the concert is whispering tickets, tickets, tickets while people are walking toward the show.

Right.

Buying tickets by buying tickets and you know, that begs the question, too, that, you obviously you can't outlaw something out of existence.

I mean, scalping itself, they did try to do that.

And, in the 2007, they decided that was not the way to go.

and, but how you do tamp down on it and keep prices under control is finding a way to decentralize it.

What does that look like?

How do you encourage consumers and the people that are actually selling the tickets and the artists to be able to sell live music performances in a way that discourage a second hand marketplace?

What does that look like, if that's even possible?

I mean, I think that realistically, it's already happening.

I don't know how you going back to what you're talking about.

I don't know how you police these second, you know, secondary markets.

I don't think you can I don't think you can.

But realistically the, the incentive to buy from you know, we were talking about human tax earlier, right.

Or buy a ticket to go see a joy wave show at face value is going to be so much cheaper than going to these second, second tier markets, right?

Like buying a ticket from us as the venue.

is going to be $30 to go see Joy wave versus on a second tier market where it might be a $150, $200, whatever the incentive is, just buy tickets early, I guess, you know, and buy it from us.

Yeah.

I mean, look, we as a band deal with this with, vinyl and stuff, right?

Like, we did this really cool, run of liquid vinyl two years ago that was super limited.

They cost so much money to make.

We were only able to have the person who made them manufacturers like 150 and like a month, like this person was working every day to make this happen.

And of course, we ended up with some people on there who were treating it as a speculative asset.

Right?

They got in, they bought it in the first, like they all sold out in like one minute.

And of course you end up with a few of them on eBay.

That's just how our system works.

You know, that's fives on on eBay, right?

But I think if you include something in the terms of service, like on Ticketmaster, where it's like, you know, if you resell this ticket, you know, 50% of the resale because it's all trackable.

Like, you know, StubHub has the information from Ticketmaster, 50% of the realized profits when you sell this are going to go back to the main event.

Like that would discourage people, from, I think buying tickets a as a speculative asset like you, like, if you're only going to get half of what you make, I don't know if.

I mean, it's still worth it for like the tour, but I don't know if it's worth it for the Joy Wave Tour or the Royal Otis Tour or whatever.

At that point.

So, if you could just, like, lay out a little bit because I think there is a little bit of, absence of knowledge to the general public about how a musician makes their money.

whether it's through touring, whether it's through merch, or whether through streaming, all of it.

Yeah.

Where does live music fit into it?

As far as, like, a income driver?

extremely high.

but probably, like merchandise and things like that are probably higher than, like, I mean, you have to, like, do the tours right to, to sell all that stuff.

But generally you look at the tour, you say, okay, we're going to make X amount of dollars.

And that's how you base your production and how, what does the lighting rig look like?

Right.

Are you are we going to have a big inflatable cat on stage or not?

Right.

Man, I hope so.

The answer is yes, but you have to like do the math to look at what you can spend on production.

Right?

So typically something like people buying tickets or whatever gets reinvested into the production.

I think that's what Randy Nichols was trying to say in, in his article.

But you know, if you're including resale value and it's happening late in the game or something, again, you can't like base your tour production around that.

but yeah, basically you're you're scaling your tour based on tickets and ticket sales, and then you are probably making money on merchandise and, and for music.

I mean, logistically when you're trying to get bands to come here, I mean, what's the, the offer proposition of like, how many people can you get into the door to get a band to come there?

What does that process look like for actually booking shows in a place like anthology, which is, you know, mid-sized venue in Rochester?

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, like, it's it's a logistical nightmare a lot of times, you know, trying to figure out we're talking to bands that will be playing anthology in spring of next year.

You know, it's like and trying to, like, do the dance and figure out, you know what?

What the offer looks like.

You're never really talking directly to the band, right?

You're talking to somebody that represents the band as the booking agent.

up until you get closer, and then you start talking to the tour manager and you start advancing them and so on, so forth.

but the question was, how do I like what?

What is the process or what does it look like to.

Yeah, I mean, what is the, Rochester, I think has that problem of being a city of our size where we're located, where one bands keep us over a lot.

but, you know, if a band is going to come here, they have to have some kind of idea that they're going to be able to sell enough tickets to make it worth it.

Totally.

So, how is that kind of negotiated of that?

So typically it's a, you know, rarely with, with touring bands, are you going to be able to do a door deal, make some sort of like 80, 20, right.

90, ten, 90, ten.

Right.

Something the 95 five, typically speaking.

I mean, we need to make some, some amount of money to keep the lights on, right?

And yeah, we can do a lot of that over the bar, but, I think everyone kind of has their hand out, right?

When, when the, when the, when the show's about to go on.

and there's the minimum guarantee typically.

Right.

The band is, is going to get paid.

So as opposed to a door deal, you know, joy wave will come by and they'll say, I want X amount of dollars or their booking agent that represents them.

and I'm not sure how much the booking agent takes.

There's, there's so many tears and I'm not sure where like, you know, kind of where it ends before it reaches Daniel over here.

Right?

I don't know personally, but I know that there's a lot of people that are getting involved before they ever step foot in the door.

Yes.

Right.

And it trickles down to eventually maybe they get some fraction of that money that was initially proposed as a minimum guarantee for them to play inside of our space.

anyway, the if a band is coming through, they're going to want to see it regardless of how many tickets are sold, a certain amount of money, and then you got to get into you know, worlds where, like, we were about to have Matisyahu back at Essex, and, we had to cancel the show because ticket sales were really, really low because he decided that it was going to be a, a solo acoustic show versus having his whole band.

And, the guarantee that he asked for didn't reflect a solo show, so we had to pay him a kill fee, essentially to to end that show.

that way more money than you would want to.

But sometimes you have to do that too.

Sometimes you have to spend thousands of dollars just to say, actually, we're good.

You know?

yeah, there's there's a minimum guarantee that to answer your question, the artist will come when there's a minimum guarantee that is negotiated and contractually bound.

and regardless of how many tickets are sold and the reason I like, ask these questions and for you to have to explain it, it's like to emphasize the point that this is very complicated.

There's a lot of there's a lot of middlemen in between.

And these, reselling sites are just one example of the middlemen that exist in the music industry for, for live music.

so kind of demonstrating that point of, you know, where we're at and that system that exists.

I think that there's a lot of ways to talk about it.

what benefits the venue the most?

What benefits the artist the most?

I think those are very critical parts of this.

But then I think for the general public, the biggest one is what benefits the consumer the most.

what what, what system would make it so the average person who doesn't have, you know, who is Taylor Swift's, like biggest audience is probably teenage girls, young 20s, maybe.

I don't know if that's changed now.

My daughter's.

Yeah.

I'm trusting you that.

Yeah, I what do I know?

and can they or their parents afford thousands of dollars for a ticket to see the eras tour?

Some of them can.

Some of them.

Right.

That's that's the problem.

So it's it one way.

It depends where you are on the societal ladder.

Right.

If you have a bunch of money, the best system is the one we have now where you just go to StubHub and you go, yeah, these tickets are $5,000 each.

But my kid wants him, so that's fine, right.

And then the city and then the, the system that I described of showing up at the door with $20 with no tickets, and the person who gets their first in line is the person who wants it the most.

That's the most egalitarian.

And then you'd have people can't just what you think of I was going to say what, what do you make Dan and Zach of kind of verified fan programs.

You know Dan you talked about that limited run of liquid vinyl.

How did if at all, you decide who the 150 people who were able to pay that price would be?

Do you you know, with the increasing sophistication of social media, you can tell who the people are, who are, you know, consuming all your content, who are engaging with you in these very different ways.

And if you can kind of identify these people through some digital avatar, then you can consider targeting them and giving them first dibs on the tickets, because, you know, as you were talking, it really struck me that talking to the lawmakers, and one thing that is also was interesting is that, I said there was big millennial energy over this entire issue.

All the lawmakers are between about 35 and 45, which is not the average age of a state lawmaker in Albany who are engaged on this issue.

And basically, they're just frustrated and angry and pissed that they can't get tickets to show shows on primary sales, at really any time.

So because of one lawmaker even said that she lost her email that she gave to Ticketmaster like 20 years ago and is now somehow blocked from presales forever.

so curious what you think about the verified fan programs or some kind of idea where you could figure out who gets the first dibs based on the people that you, as an artist, you as a venue want to cultivate as your most loyal or devoted, or interested customers.

Yeah.

So we we have that.

so when Joy puts a tour on sale, will send an email out to our email list, and, it will include a presale access code.

So what you do is for the first week or whatever, actually, I guess is before the official public on sale date for tickets.

it's password protected.

If you're on the email list, you got an email with that code.

You enter the code, then you are able to buy tickets.

Of course, if I'm a Taylor Swift tour level scammer, I can probably just be on that email list, right?

And then have the code.

But, for us, I mean, that works really, really well to make sure that, our fans are first in line and getting tickets at face value.

and venues typically do the same thing where you say that tickets go on sale Friday.

Okay.

The artist presale is on Tuesday.

there's like a Spotify presale thing that sometimes happens where you're able to target the top 10% of listeners, right?

The people who listen to you the most on streaming services.

And they will get the invitation then, to purchase things.

And that's something that you I don't know if there's a way to fake that.

Right.

Like you would have to have your botnet streaming, right?

That's like showing people that or showing the service that you really love the band.

You're in the top 10% of listeners.

So then you have the opportunity to purchase tickets next, then usually there's a venue presale that's on Thursday, right.

And that goes out to the venues list.

And you can, get it because you've been to shows at anthology before, and then Friday's the public on sale.

That has worked really well for us, and I think it works well for most artists.

It might not work for an air tour, but for a lot of other things it does.

we are going to take our first break of the hour, and when we come back, we'll talk more about ticket resellers.

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No tax on tips is the refrain.

Economists don't like this plan for a number of reasons, and you're going to hear why the number of workers who work primarily for tipped wages do like it.

It's pretty popular in Washington and with a lot of Americans, so we'll talk about it next hour.

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And we are back on connections.

I'm Gino, finally filling in for Evan Dawson.

We are talking about ticket reseller scalpers, whatever you want to call them.

price gouging, whatever kind of words we want to use to describe people that do this, but that have become a pivotal, if not parasitic part of the music industry.

before we went to break, Dan, you were talking about, some of the I was talking a lot.

You were talking a lot.

You went through a lot of things there, brother.

Okay.

Sing.

you're talking a lot about some of the verified fan programs, how people can get access to tickets, and, you know, one of the ways that I think a lot of people discover bands that they love is through live music.

Yeah.

The of, ICS, being able to go to shows and see bands you haven't seen before.

If a venue has a band coming that.

No, you can just go buy a ticket, go in.

if we were to go that route of, focusing on like, well, the first ones to buy the tickets have to be the ones that are, you know, have a certain amount of listens on Spotify or whatever that might be.

Does that some of that get lost that people might not that might not know?

Joy wave might not be able to find them through a live show that, you know, it has been specifically geared towards people that aren't right, because you're saying the big fans are already the big fans.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe.

I mean, for us, like, you know, we we have some shows sell out, we have some that don't.

Right?

I, I back to what Jimmy was saying about the lawmakers like and some of the presale programs and stuff.

I think that most artists do offer those things.

And if you are paying attention because you are a really big fan of that artist, you are probably taking advantage of those programs.

I think the people who are really feeling the StubHub stuff and the reseller stuff are the people who are going, let me see what's going on in Albany this weekend.

And they look at their phone last minute and they're really paying for that.

Or maybe they're a casual fan of the artist and go, oh, that's too much.

I don't want to go.

And like, that does suck.

But like, I think in a lot of these cases, by paying attention and taking advantage of the programs that like almost all tours and artists, do what I was describing with the presale program, like if you are a big fan, you are getting that ticket.

Yeah.

I don't think you were, some special case there.

I've seen many bands do that.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, so some of the frustration I feel like is people who are maybe a little bit paying less attention and like that does suck, right.

But but like, I don't know, I think a lot of this is just getting mad at secondary markets for existing, which is part of the issue there though, wouldn't you also though, Dan, if you were it wouldn't you never want to sell out a show?

Wouldn't you always want there to be about 99% capacity?

Because that would mean that people who were casual fans, who wanted to experience it could essentially get a ticket.

And if you were consistently selling out your shows, wouldn't that be a sign that like, hey, maybe we should be playing bigger venues, right?

I mean, economically, yes, you're right.

I mean that you want to sell 100% and not have any, like, leftover demand.

I, I know that a lot of artists like to do underplays because you, you know, for so for a band like us, we played at the Bug Jar in like 2015 or 2016 when we were too big to play there.

And, but we wanted to do something that, you know, paid tribute to earlier times in the band.

When we would play there, we were like, it'd be really fun to go back into the bug jar and do a 200 cap show.

And we did it as I described, have just like $10 at the door.

So no tickets or rent or anything like that.

there is some kind of magic to that.

I think that artists want to feel like, there's been a couple cases where, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic would do like, you know, Nirvana underplays and have a guest singer in the past few years where they would play at a dive bar in Brooklyn or something.

Right.

Because they want to feel that cool energy.

there's a lot of things in, in DC at the 930 club, they just opened a small venue called, the Atlantis, where it's like, you know, the idea is that it's 1992 again, and you're seeing the bigger band on the smaller stage without production, and there is something magical to that.

but that is when you end up in reseller hell.

Yeah.

And, Yeah, it again, this is kind of like one of those things where it's like a necessary evil almost.

Yeah.

The resellers exist.

You you will never get rid of them.

But, you know, a question that comes up to me as we're talking about this is like we're talking about the Taylor Swift Eras tour and thousand dollar tickets.

And like, this is the biggest tour that's happened in the world.

World, modern world history.

probably world history.

I don't think anyone traveled for music been like, any time in the past at that level.

But, you know, it begs the question of like, what should be the reasonable cap and how much a live concert should sell for?

I mean, there can't be a cap.

There can't be.

There cannot be a cap.

Are you going to cap Super Bowl tickets?

This is what I'm saying, is that like this, this bowl this and it again, it sucks for fans I understand that.

But but like the market determines what these things are worth.

And Jimi you were saying this bill only pertains to concert tickets right?

Yeah.

That's right.

One of the reasons is that with sports teams, you have the notion of season ticket holders.

And to get back to your point on scarcity, you know, think about football is one thing that's about eight home games per year.

But think about a baseball team.

Right.

You've got just a bunch broader, a much broader supply of goods.

So perhaps a substitute for my local Tri-City Valley cats, versus the New England Knockouts would be the tri city Valley cats playing against the, the Binghamton Mets.

I frankly wouldn't care, so that would work.

So because of those dynamics, it is restricted to performance acts.

Though as I read the legislation, I was wondering, well, what counts as a performance act?

It's not very, very strictly defined.

And I think that's something that they're still going to be working on in the law.

Yeah, I mean, I would consider sports in a lot of ways a performance act.

and I certainly would have seen Josh Allen's performances.

They're brilliant.

Yeah.

They, they call them performances.

so, I think that's a whole other conversation to begin with.

is it Jim?

Is it in the bill is, reasonably defined, as a performance?

Is that the language you know, I looked at I looked at the language and it was just they just said it and I thought, oh, man, that would've been a hell of a thing to try and define.

so, you know, the I think the, the one thing that we haven't talked about here is, the only way you're probably going to avoid the reseller market is, supporting local bands.

Go see live local music, please.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, absolutely.

so, Zach and Thorgy, how much live, local music are you, supporting there?

I don't know, I've seen a couple shows there.

sure.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, and we just reopened, our doors back in March after closing Essex and, and moving into the anthology, and we're, you know, we're activating, like, 1 or 2 shows a week, a lot of local stuff right now.

We actually just had an event yesterday with Rochester Cocktail Revival and some awesome local musicians.

you know, I would love to see 3 to 4 shows there a week with local and regional and national talent.

You know, I think that would be that's that's the move.

every day, much like a tour, every day that we're not open, we're losing money.

Every day that, you know, Dan and enjoy wave are on tour and they're not playing a show.

They're losing money.

You know, it's it's really important, for the metrics of, of the thing to work to, to get people in there, see, see some music, drink some, drink some drinks, and have a rockin, rockin good time.

So, Rochester, if you're listening, please come and see live music and also Joy wave.

Absolutely.

I mean, there's so many talented local artists here.

Clovis is one of my favorite local bands.

and cops, one of my favorite local bands.

Cami Amaro is here, and she's awesome.

Like, there's so much local talent here.

Yeah.

I mean, any night of the week, you can find something happening in the city, whether you know, Three heads, Bug Jar or whatever it might be.

the, Psychic Garden is one place I've been going to a lot to kind of a DIY venue, have some great local acts there all the time.

So, you know, if you are exhausted with just having to pay double or triple prices for tickets to see one of your favorite bands, go see a band that you haven't seen yet.

You might like them.

that's that's the way I've been.

Kind of, rationalizing all of this.

over complicated music industry stuff this entire hour.

So.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Opt out, show up with a $10 bill at a local venue.

You'll have a great time.

So, with a little time in there when we talk about what you guys have going on.

So, Dan, I'll start with you.

What's going on with Joy wave?

we just got home from, a tour.

We were out for five weeks in the US.

yeah, we were in Europe in the fall, and we did a big, like, swing of the major markets, back in the fall as well.

we did the Rochester Christmas show, in December.

I think we're going to do that again this year is the idea, but there's no nothing to announce on that front right now.

All right.

Cool.

And, Zach, how is anthology going?

This, really cool venue in a very, right on right in the east and very cool part of the city to have a venue like that hundred percent.

Yeah.

Unneeded space in that area, I think.

So, tell us, how things are going there and, what you guys got coming up.

You know, things are great, man.

you know, obviously, prior to reopening anthology, we opened S6 initially because of that, that gap in the market.

Right.

Like there was that that midsize thousand ish capacity music venue in Rochester, didn't exist after anthology closed.

which is a really it's a sweet spot for Rochester in particular.

and not having that was, was doing us a disservice.

A lot of bands like you said, we're passing over, going to Buffalo, going for major markets that, they just skip right over Rochester.

So, you know, we opened A6 and then we had the opportunity after actually, the Joy wave show was kind of what, you know, bring our ringer ears a little bit.

Ring, ring the bell for us to start looking at that space because we're like, oh that's right.

And follows you like it didn't go anywhere.

You know, like it was it was ready to to to put a show on a massive production like a joy wave show.

almost, you know, at a few months notice.

we're like, oh, it's still around.

So, you know, we were able to, talk with Phil Fitzsimmons and, get the opportunity to reopen that.

So we were able to basically close.

Essex closed one.

No, reopen the the one that everyone's been missing.

which has been awesome.

And and, and the shows are starting to pile up by the end of the year of like, fourth quarter for us is, is it's booming.

It's great.

So yeah, for for people who haven't been to anthology before, it's, great venue.

I think it's the best one that we have had in Rochester in my adult life.

And it is something you would see in a much larger city.

you can put on a great show there.

I'm really glad that you guys reopened the space and, very glad that it's in town.

So I highly recommend a concert at anthology.

Well, thank you.

It is a great venue, and I kind of liken it to, like, what town ballroom kind of size in Buffalo?

very.

And it is, to your point, a very strange thing that Rochester, a city of its size, kind of is lacking in a venue of that size.

That is the level of band that we are attracting here, whether we like it or not.

Tell us what's not coming here right.

but, you know, a lot of mid-sized bands are, would be willing to.

But the bug jar sometimes too small.

Kodak Theater is probably too big.

So, this is a gap that has existed for a long time.

The question of why is, a whole other thing, but it's nice that you guys are open again, really nice and, you know, love to see you guys there.

yeah.

For sure.

Who do you have coming up soon?

man, I mean, a couple, a couple that, I mean, double makes three is a, I'm very excited about that.

silver Sun pickups in August with great band.

Oh.

Good friends.

Yeah.

Dude, what what a what a killer band.

Yeah, that'll be awesome.

Oh, definitely going to go to that.

Yeah.

So we got we got some really fun stuff I mean check out, you know, all the listings are on our website, on Instagram.

So, you know, any, any listing out there that wants to see what's coming up in the future?

Please check out those.

Those two right there.

Jimmy, can you tell the lawmakers to cap the fees at 10% and that I, Daniel Armbruster, their constituent, is very passionate about it.

Why go ten?

Why not do five?

Jimmy, that is the best idea you've had all day.

Jimmy.

Yeah, it's, Sorry.

Go ahead.

It's.

No, it's it's, you know, what's going on in Albany for the next week is going to be kind of late nights at the Capitol.

They're going to hash out deals on a lot of these things to the people I talked to today, said that they were going to be having kind of the final go no go decisions about this very issue today.

basically this idea of fans being able to excuse me of, acts being able to knock their tickets off the secondary market, that one might not make it.

That provision might get killed.

It does sound like there's there's going to be restrictions on speculative ticket ticketing, if not an outright ban.

And that fee conversation is is really up in the air.

I think the other question, Dan, is why aren't people enforcing the rule that we have now and maybe pushing the bounds of what is reasonable?

I know that, like I said, when I bought those circus tickets, when I buy tickets and look at those fees, I, I'm ready to sometimes grab a pitchfork in March.

The problem is, I just don't know exactly where I need to go.

Yeah.

To Albany tonight.

Well, and for that, it's an important point.

Like, it is frustrating, but they wouldn't be that high if people didn't buy them.

That's right.

So when you see a $5,000 ticket and say that's ridiculous, no one will pay for that.

Yeah they will.

That's why at $5,000.

so that's a, that's another, complicated dynamic of it.

When you, when it comes to anything, sneakers play stations, everything, anything for a minute.

Right.

Finite commodity.

Yeah.

Anything that's a finite commodity.

You can, that's the system maybe.

Yeah.

Good old capitalism.

And that's what we have here, and that's what this show has been about.

So, I mean, real quick to I just want to, Jimmy, earlier, you use the word squishy as an adjective, and kudos for that.

Thank you.

Happy to do it.

well, thank you all for being here.

Danny Brewster from, Joy wave.

good to actually meet in person.

And nice to meet him.

Zach Mikita from, anthology and, again, Jimmy Buchanan, who I also I've never actually met before, but I, great talking to you.

Thanks.

I'll come to Rochester.

We'll go to a show at, anthology that come out okay.

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