PRESS RELEASE: “TICKET MASTERS: THE RISE OF THE CONCERT INDUSTRY AND HOW THE PUBLIC GOT SCALPED OUT JUNE 1 ON ECW PRESS”
New York, NY (ECW Press) May 24, 2011 – June 1 is the official release date of Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped. Based on first-person interviews with key players and meticulous research, Ticket Masters by Dean Budnick and Josh Baron is the first book-length exploration of the modern concert industry.
On Thursday night May 26 Budnick and Baron will host a panel in conjunction with the book release at 92YTribeca from 7-8:30PM. The pair will serve as moderators as four esteemed industry professionals who are featured in the book take the stage. John Scher is the renowned, longtime national promoter and the founder of Metropolitan Talent Presents. Eric Baker, co-founded StubHub in 2000 and subsequently opened the London-based secondary ticketing platform Viagogo. Mike Luba is the President of Global Music S2BN Entertainment and co-founder of Madison House where he managed the String Cheese Incident and its SCI Ticketing wing, which brought suit against Ticketmaster in 2003 (a story that is detailed for the first time in Ticket Masters). Andrew Dreskin was a principal in the TicketWeb ticketing service, which sold to Ticketmaster in 2000 and more recently founded Ticketfly, a ticketing company in competition with Ticketmaster. The four panelists will address questions from Budnick and Baron, as well as those posed by the audience.
Just in time for the summer concert season, Ticket Masters chronicles the as-yet-untold story of the live entertainment industry, revealing its origins, development and ongoing strategies of companies such as Ticketmaster, Live Nation and StubHub and the efforts of numerous independent competitors. With over 100 exclusive interviews and utilizing many previously unreleased documents, this character-driven book explores the actions and impact of the iconoclasts guiding these companies while folding in related tales of scalping syndicates, old school music promoters and would-be Internet tycoons along with the brash business decisions of such world-renowned groups as the Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam and The Rolling Stones.
Like no previous book, Ticket Masters sheds light upon the complex relationships between artists, promoters, ticketing agents and the public.
Beginning with the previously unreported details behind the rise and demise of the once-dominant Ticketron, Ticket Masters proceeds to share gripping accounts and analysis of Ticketmaster’s eventual market supremacy, SFX and Clear Channel’s promoter rollup, the cutthroat battle for secondary ticket sales and numerous other tales of the industry’s most significant architects. Whether it’s Michael Cohl nabbing the Stones from Bill Graham, Ticketmaster’s defeat of Pearl Jam or the silent efforts of music superstars to mark up their ticket prices for complicit websites, Budnick and Baron examine the pivotal developments that have shaped the industry as we know it.
Yet, Ticket Masters is also a personal story for the millions who purchase tickets, as it addresses the often-asked (but unanswered) questions: How and why do concerts sell out so fast? Why do service fees vary on tickets to the same event? Why isn’t Ticketmaster considered an illegal monopoly? Is it worth joining a band’s fan club to qualify for a pre-sale? How do ticket broker websites like StubHub get all their tickets-isn’t scalping illegal? Who is pocketing all this money? What happened to the time when real fans could get great seats for a reasonable price? And (deep breath), just how did ticket prices get so high, anyway?
Ticket Masters, a timely account of the multi-billion dollar concert industry, answers these questions and many more. This engrossing book shares a compelling story of the many ways in which the American public is being scalped.
Book release event at 92Y Tribeca
The New York City book launch event will take place May 26th at 92Y Tribeca from 7-8:30 PM. Authors Dean Budnick and Josh Baron will host a panel featuring the some of the industry leaders who appear in Ticket Masters. For more information on 92YTribeca, visit http://www.92ytribeca.org/
About the authors
Dean Budnick, the executive editor of Relix magazine, is the founder of Jambands.com, the cocreator of the Jammy Awards, and the director of the documentary film Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Rock Club. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard’s History of American Civilization program and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Josh Baron is the editor-in-chief of Relix magazine, a music-based publication where he has been on staff for more than a decade. Baron also contributes to a variety of media outlets including New York City-based radio station WFUV where he serves as a music reviewer. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
For more information, please contact:
Jim Walsh
Big Hassle Media
212-202-0272
[email protected]
