233
‘A death sentence for music’: the battle for America’s last Live Nation-free city
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
233 points (98.3% liked)
News
23320 readers
1485 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Counterpoint:
I live in a smaller, but still relatively big, city in the Northwest. Similar vibe to Portland but smaller.
I searched and counted a total of 6 venues that use Live Nation.
(To be fair, it had more listed, but a couple have been closed since before COVID so Live Nation isn't exactly updating this list regularly. At least one of these venues has changed hands of ownership a few times in that time, so are they still contracted with Live Nation? Who the fuck knows, I'd have to ask in person to know for sure.)
Other than a Performing Arts Center, basically all of them have much weaker attendance for their shows than pretty much any other venue that isn't associated with Live Nation.
Literally, I can count, off the top of my head, more venues that don't have agreements with Live Nation. All these venues get tons of locals showing up, partially because of how cheap the shows are. We also still have a handful of weird houses that do punk shows.
Also, some of these Live Nation places are literally just fucking Old People places, like the local Elk's Lodge. Nobody is doing wild concerts at the fucking Elk's Lodge.
Live Nation can have a presence in your area and the local music scene can still be thriving outside of it.
Portland isn't the only city that still has a vibrant local music scene, with or without Live Nation.
You should really read up on how they operate.
Here's just one hypothetical based off available reporting, court cases, and leaked documents:
Artist A has a history of performing at independent Portland venues but also tours the country and therefore has to use LN venues and TM services.
When LN opens their Portland location, Artist A will have to either start using the LN venue, or find that the rest of their tour has suddenly run into financial issues with LN pricing and rebate schemes.
So Artist A switches to Portland LN venue, and magically those issues start to go away.
And that's just the artist side, LN pulls variations of this monopoly abuse with local venues who refuse to Ticket Master, or sign with LN.
I'm not even doing their criminal behavior justice and the real examples are significantly worse then what I quickly typed out. This will only harm artists, local venues, and Portland, if allowed.
I understand how they operate. I gave a personal example of how almost nobody goes to local Live Nation venues because of the expense when there's a bunch of cheap, local shows in similarly-sized venues.
Does it mean "Artist A" doesn't come to our city? Yeah, who gives a shit?
Losing one artist isn't the implication....it's losing all your independent venues because they won't financially survive being blacklisted by every artist that hopes to tour anywhere else because LN is a monopoly...
So goodbye independent venues and hello to exponentially higher prices, because that's what monopolies do...
Some of the best shows I've ever been to were at an Elks or VFW. Often they're the only venues available in suburban and rural areas. And they're usually priced reasonably.
I worked a number of punk & blues shows at Elks (Portland & surrounding Northwest).
One that will always love in heart & memory: Polkacide! Hardcore 2/4
They rolled up from California & played a gathering at the Elks Lodge. Perfect size & Elks are always ready for & expecting drunks. Thankfully, none of the shows had drunken outbursts. People are just happy to see the bands they love at their neighborhoods grandpa's lounge
Although I'm guessing places like the Elk's Lodge still take money at the door.
I wonder if they sometimes operate like Uber Eats where they buy the ticket on your behalf and charge you a premium for it even if they don't have a deal with the venue?
If you're renting the place, you sell tickets however you like. Just pay the Lodge for rented time.
Olympia?
Eugene?