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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Senate's Ticketmaster hearing featured plenty of Taylor Swift puns and protesters
The Senate Judiciary Committee held its much-anticipated hearing into Live Nation and the lack of competition in the ticketing industry on Tuesday.
While lawmakers grilled2 entertainment executives and antitrust experts, some of Ticketmaster's most vocal3 critics protested just steps away on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol: Taylor Swift fans.
"As I was driving up this morning I couldn't help but notice I had never seen more smiling and happy demonstrators than I saw today," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said during the hearing. "I think Swifties have figured something out, they're very good at getting their message across."
During the hearing, several lawmakers credited the Swift debacle — and her vocal fanbase — with putting Ticketmaster back in the spotlight4, though acknowledged that the problem is much bigger than any one artist.
Critics long have accused Ticketmaster of being a monopoly, especially after its controversial merger5 with Live Nation (now its parent company) in 2010. But outrage6 reached a new pitch after its botched presale process for Swift's The Eras Tour in November, when long wait times, exorbitant7 fees and website outages left thousands of fans frustrated8 and empty-handed.
After years of complaints about high fees, murky9 resale practices and other issues, the incident seemed to galvanize fans and lawmakers alike. Attorneys general of several states launched consumer protection investigations10, many Democratic lawmakers called for Ticketmaster to be broken up and dozens of Swift fans sued the company for fraud and antitrust violations11.
The company did not respond to NPR's request for comment for this story. In a public apology to Swift and her fans at the time, Ticketmaster blamed overwhelming demand for crashing its site.
"The biggest venues13 and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world – that doesn't mean it's perfect, and clearly for Taylor Swift The Eras Tour onsale it wasn't," it said at the time. "But we're always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand onsales, which continue to test new limits."
Entertainment and industry experts blame Ticketmaster
Tuesday's hearing, which stretched on for more than three hours, included probing questions, defiant14 statements and more than a few Swift references.
Many of lawmakers' questions were aimed at Joe Berchtold, the president and chief financial officer of Live Nation Entertainment, who acknowledged issues in the industry (mostly having to do with bots) but sought to downplay Ticketmaster's dominance in the market.
The other witnesses used their opening statements to describe Ticketmaster's detrimental15 effects, either on their own business or the economy in general.
Jack16 Groetzinger, the CEO of SeatGeek, Inc., said major U.S. venues know that if they move their primary ticketing business away from Ticketmaster they risk losing the revenue they earn from Live Nation concerts, and alleged17 that the company has retaliated18 against those venues in the past.
The committee also heard from two antitrust experts: Sal Nuzzo, senior vice19 president of the James Madison Institute, and Kathleen Bradish, vice president for legal advocacy at the American Antitrust Institute.
A lack of competition over time has "corroded20 innovation and distorted the market," Nuzzo said.
"Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an example of, on one hand, a very traditional monopoly in the mode of Standard Oil, on the other a 21st century digital player, like other online platforms, dominating an ever-widening swath of its industry," Bradish said.
Bradish pointed21 out that in 2020 the Justice Department found that the company violated requirements of the consent decree governing its merger, but rather than seeking a broader structural22 remedy the agency extended it for another five and a half years.
She advocated for the Justice Department to take new enforcement action against the company and for Congress to consider passing legislation that would do things like clarify and strengthen U.S. antitrust laws, or require codes of conduct for digital ticketing platforms.
Frustration23 for artists and fans
Swift herself was not among the witnesses, but lawmakers and the public did get to hear from one musician: Clyde Lawrence, the singer-songwriter behind the soul-pop group Lawrence, which he acknowledged is much less famous but has used its platform to speak out against Ticketmaster in the past.
Lawrence said most problems stem from the fact that Ticketmaster simultaneously24 serves as the promoter, venue12 and ticketing company for tours.
He called for more transparency, especially into how Ticketmaster decides services fees — saying they are never told to artists in advance and have been as high as 82% in his band's case.
Berchtold later responded that Live Nation doesn't set those fees, the venues do. When a lawmaker pushed back that Live Nation either owns or has long-term contracts with many venues, Berchtold said it was a relatively25 small percentage of all of them in the U.S.
Lawrence said his band has had positive experiences with parts of Live Nation, like the hardworking venue employees and the fact that all of their venues share a single Wifi password.
"We truly do not see Live Nation as the enemy," he said. "They're just the largest player in a game that feels stacked against us as artists, and often our fans as well."
Protesters say this is an issue everyone can get behind
Jennifer Kinder, the Dallas-based attorney representing Swift fans in their lawsuit26, helped organize a protest outside the hearing Tuesday to send a message to leaders of both the company and the committee probing it.
She flew in from Dallas to particpate, and told NPR afterward27 that 40-50 people had showed up outside the Capitol, while another 700 attendees tuned28 into her firm's live TikTok stream. "Ticketmaster" was a trending topic on Twitter during the hearing.
Demonstrators got their message across with T-shirts and banners bearing all sorts of slogans: Ticketswindle, Ticketmonopoly, Stay Mad Swifties, a Ticketmaster logo with a line through it.
One sign tells Ticketmaster "your reputation has never been worse," referring to a Swift song. Another quotes a different Swift lyric29: "If it feels like a trap, you're already in one," and a big photo referencing the thousands-long online queue fans found themselves stuck in.
Kinder said protesters were also streaming the hearing and loved what they were hearing. "I think that we can sort of uniformly agree that the Senate's gonna make some changes," she said. "They are gonna do some things to Ticketmaster."
And, she stresses, she really wants to make sure that those changes actually protect consumers.
"What we'd like to see is that all consumers that want to participate in live entertainment are protected ... I think until that happens, we really can't be happy," she said. "If an artist is getting screwed, if a consumer is getting screwed, then the system still doesn't work."
Klobuchar, D-Minn., the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, told Morning Edition before the hearing that while bands have tried to take on Ticketmaster for decades, the picture looks different in 2023.
"What's different right now is that this isn't a singular problem," she explains. "We've seen consolidation30 in 75% of the industries in this country, and people are catching31 on. Taylor Swift fans sure caught on. I will get whatever allies I have to take on this case.'"
Klobuchar sees three main issues with Ticketmaster, as she explained in both the interview and her opening statement at the hearing: It controls more than 70% of the market for ticketing and live events, it controls much of the promotion32 of those events, and it either owns or has yearslong exclusive contracts with many large venues.
"So that is a trio of problems that leads to two things," she says. "One is what you see — it's not just Taylor Swift, it's Bad Bunny, BTS, Bruce Springsteen, Harry33 Styles, all of these artists have issues with ticketing, because there's no incentive34 when you're a monopoly. Secondly35, fees, hidden fees. One recent government study found 27% of the ticket price was fees that you can't even figure out what they are from this company."
Klobuchar hoped the hearing would give the public a chance to see what's going on, create under-oath evidence that could be useful in any future investigations (like a reported one from the Department of Justice that's said to have been launched before the Swift ticket sales), and educate lawmakers who could create legislation to address the issues.
Does Ticketmaster Have A Monopoly On Live Events?
"There are Republicans interested in this right now, on fees, on the fact that they try to lock in these multi-year contracts," she says. "All of those things are ripe for legislation."
Tuesday's protest won't be the last
Kinder says Swift deserves a lot of credit for bringing the movement together.
"At the end of the day, without Taylor Swift, we don't all find each other ... We're sitting at lunch today, we're trading friendship bracelets36, because that's what she inspired: a sense of community, empathy, individuality ..." she said. "All the things that she really fosters in her music [have] created a community, and without her we wouldn't be the community that we are."
Kinder had help in organizing the protests — including from activists37 associated with Free Britney, the movement that called for the end of Britney Spears' conservatorship.
One of those advocates, Melanie Carlson, has been researching the issue for years and alleges38 that Live Nation profited directly from Spears' conservatorship.
"It's shocking that she could perform for thousands of people and everyone in the industry knew about it, and yet no one said anything," Carlson told NPR in a Monday phone interview. "And that is the level of power that should be broken up. And that's our fight against Ticketmaster and Live Nation."
Carlson has seen a number of fandoms take issue with Ticketmaster's practices over the years and has long been trying to unite them. And she isn't surprised that it took an artist of Swift's stature39 to finally do it — even as Carlson has seen disappointed Swifties widely mocked as "just privileged young women that need to get a life."
"People tend to ridicule40 interests that are predominantly female ... And what people need to step back and see is that: Don't they have a favorite band? And aren't some of those concerts the best moments of their lives?" Carlson says. "So if we come together, we can all enjoy music more freely and the artists will have more freedom too."
Kinder is encouraging people to turn out to protest again in March in Los Angeles, when plaintiffs have their first court hearing in their Ticketmaster lawsuit.
"We're gonna be a persistent41 presence until all the changes that need to be made are made," she said.
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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grilled
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| adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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spotlight
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| n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目 | |
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merger
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| n.企业合并，并吞 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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violations
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| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
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venue
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| n.犯罪地点，审判地，管辖地，发生地点，集合地点 | |
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venues
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| n.聚集地点( venue的名词复数 )；会场；（尤指）体育比赛场所；犯罪地点 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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detrimental
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| adj.损害的，造成伤害的 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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retaliated
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| v.报复，反击( retaliate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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corroded
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| 已被腐蚀的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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lawsuit
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| n.诉讼，控诉 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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lyric
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| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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consolidation
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| n.合并,巩固 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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bracelets
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| n.手镯，臂镯( bracelet的名词复数 ) | |
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activists
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| n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 ) | |
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alleges
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| 断言，宣称，辩解( allege的第三人称单数 ) | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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