State of the Arts

Some Ticketing Reform Bills Being Manipulated To Benefit Secondary/Speculative Market

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A nod to Erick Deshaun Dorris for the link to a Guardian article about how ticket resellers are leveraging the hatred being directed at Ticketmaster to manipulate legislation to their benefit.  The article mentions that a lot of legislatures only have a superficial understanding of the ticketing industry, mostly informed by complaints generated by big name artists like Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift.

The article quotes Kevin Erickson, Director of the Future of Music Coalition who discusses how the language of many proposed bills will actually benefit some of the larger secondary market players rather than consumers:

“Companies like StubHub, Vivid Seat, SeatGeek have been rather successful in appropriating legitimate public frustration with Ticketmaster to advance an unrelated policy agenda that’s mostly about maximising their access to inventory, to continue to be able to get as many tickets as possible and sell them at inflated prices,” he says. Erickson explains that BOSS SWIFT would eliminate legitimately helpful fan-to-fan resale sites and require “transparency of hold”, meaning that artists and venues have to disclose how many tickets will ultimately be available ahead of sale. “That sounds reasonable until you understand that that’s incredibly helpful to the brokers making their purchasing decisions,” he says. “It doesn’t benefit the individual family who just wants to buy a ticket to be able to attend the event.”

Erickson says BOSS SWIFT is unlikely to pass and fortunately a more artist and fan friendly bill, Fans First Act which mandates the full cost with fees be advertised and prevents speculative purchases, has more support and potential for passage. The article also cites efforts by individual states to provide protections through consumer protection laws. It mentions legislation in Maryland which is scheduled for a vote in the next week or so which requires price transparency, outlaws speculative ticketing, and limits price mark ups on the secondary market.

The article quotes MD State Senator Dawn Gile who says they spoke with a wide variety of venues and performing groups during the process of drafting this law. She cites experiences that many venues have faced, including my own and those of my colleagues, with regard to speculative ticketing and resale on smaller events:

“…even a local production of The Nutcracker was affected by secondary markups, while another venue found speculative tickets being sold for mezzanine and balcony seats “when the theatre doesn’t even have a mezzanine, nor a balcony”, says Gile. “The issue is pervasive. It’s been eclipsed by the topic of these really popular shows, but it’s not just Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé that are affected, it’s our smaller venues here.”

[…]

Additionally, says Gile, these companies are “suggesting that somehow if we move forward with this legislation, we’re not going to have any shows come to Maryland ever – that we’re effectively killing the live entertainment industry here.” The argument is disproved, she says, by the fact that several states already cap the secondary market – including the razzle-dazzle centre of Las Vegas – “but obviously the live entertainment industry continues to exist”. Her bill, she says, “just removes the incentive from brokers from being able to try to profit off the consumer”.

What I appreciated most was a final quote from Kevin Erickson about shifting how arts and cultural activities are framed:

“There is an opportunity here to accomplish a shift in how we think of music and the arts and live events as not just about something that has economic value, but to talk about the intrinsic value of live music as a vehicle by which communities form, a vehicle for historically marginalised voices to be heard, a way that communities define themselves. Policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to centre the voices of music communities who are imperilled by the rise of extractive business models.”

You only have to look at the photos coming out of each date on the Eras tour, in which thousands of teenage girls are having their first live music experiences, to see the vast potential for community activation: here are the roots of future lives spent in music…

No Knitting Backstage In Germany Please

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Rainer Glaap, an arts administrator working in Germany reached out with an update about the publication of his second book whose title translates as Knitting Forbidden! The book covers laws which applied to theater in Bremen from 1820 and for Leipzig from 1841. The bulk of the laws applied to the practice of theater in those places with a handful applying to the audience.

I’m not sure if it is the actors and technicians or audience members who weren’t permitted to knit. Maybe both. You gotta keep your eyes on those knitters!

Rainer notes that while some of the laws are somewhat humorous in the context of the present day, many remain very topical. He mentions that while there weren’t intimacy coordinators working in theater 200 years ago, there were laws to protect female actors that read like intimacy guidelines today:

“Apart from the author’s instructions, kissing is not allowed. – It must never happen that you lift a woman up and kiss her. – Under no circumstances must a man kiss a woman on the mouth; If the author has linked the kiss to the action, then kiss the cheek or forehead. – There are also special touches that you have to avoid, e.g. B. if a man comes too close to the breast while holding a woman. Anyone who trades against one of these points pays 8 gr. Punishment.”
(§105 of the Leipzig Theater Laws of 1841).

If you read German and want to buy the book, it can be found here – https://www.epubli.com/shop/stricken-verboten-9783758478505

According to the descriptions of the book there, it was the actors who weren’t permitted to knit during rehearsal. I still think there is probably some wisdom in watching audience members who bring pointy sticks into the theater though.

Music To Your Beers

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I was kinda thrilled to hear the melodious voice of conductor Bill Eddins on the Marketplace Morning Report this morning. Bill had written the Sticks and Drones blog here on Inside the Arts alongside Ron Spigelman for a number of years.

Bill was on Marketplace talking about MetroNOME, the brewery he started in St. Paul, MN. Their goal is to funnel proceeds from sales into local music education programs.

Eddins and his co-founder, Matt Engstrom, aspire to grow their business to the size of a small regional brewery. When their goal is realized, they plan to filter funding from the brewery toward local music education programs.

“We believe that we would be able to funnel as much as half a million or even maybe a million dollars a year into the local music education programs here in the Twin Cities metro,” said Eddins.

MetroNOME has already racked up close to 400 performances at their brewery, including a concert with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis. True to his music education philosophy, Eddins recruited a trio young musicians, two of whom were too young to drink his product, to play with Marsalis.

Eddins admits he and his partner don’t necessarily have the acumen and experience to take the organization to the level it needs to in order to generate the funds required to support local music education, but he believes there are people in the Twin Cities area that can help make it happen.

They do, however, have a secret ingredient that provides a competitive advantage. I encourage everyone to watch the video on their homepage. It starts out looking like a typical brewery video, but it takes an entertaining turn. My thanks to Drew McManus for nudging me to watch the video.

The Measurement Used Can Alter The Impact Of Your Work

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Long time readers know that I resist the use of economic impact as a measure of value for arts and culture for many reasons. The late potter-philosopher Carter Gillies was really effective in calling attention to the myriad ways in which using inappropriate measures of value would result in meaningless data and incorrect beliefs and assumptions.

Seth Godin recently made a post that illustrated that the measure you use shapes how you perceive the impact and value of the work you do. This brings the concept that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the result is meaningful to a more personal, relatable level.

Godin observes that we have long been indoctrinated to believe that completion of a task is a measure of productivity.  But, he asks, if “I did all my homework” is a measure of productivity, what has the practice of completing your homework ever done for you?

The actual measures of productivity that might be useful range quite a bit:

• I did enough to not get fired.
• I did enough to get promoted.
• I did enough to get hired by a better firm.
• I solved a problem for a customer who was frustrated.
• I changed the system and now my peers are far more productive.
• I invented something that creates new possibilities and new problems.
• I created new assets that I can use (and others can as well).
• I didn’t waste today.

Pick your measurement and the impact of your chores will change.

Just because you can measure productivity in terms of work completed, it doesn’t necessarily yield results that are meaningful–except perhaps to whomever is selling the work you have completed. But there are other measurements of value that can be applied to your work, some of them far more meaningful than others. The impact of that meaning could have–and I use this term intentionally–immeasurably more value than just units of work completed over time.