Book Review: Ticket Masters
Katie 
When I saw Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped up for review on NetGalley, I knew I had to read it. Dean Budnick and Josh Baron do a great job with explaining the history of how tickets were sold, how Ticketmaster has become a monopoly and all the other ticket agents that had popped up along the way.
The book is a bit long, but never boring, jam packed with loads of information. It talks about all the different fan club sites out there (I think I’ve had accounts with pretty much all of them through the years) and how The Grateful Dead started it all by reserving half of the venue for their fans to buy directly from the band through the mail and how some venues gave them the back of the venue to sell versus the better seats. It explains how VIP tickets have become more popular over the year… and how a show is never really “sold out”.
There is talk about scalping and how brokers get tickets, and the creation of StubHub and its various site names before becoming StubHub.
Obviously for someone like me, this was full of great information – some of which I already knew but most of which I didn’t. How Hannah Montana’s tour created a huge riot with parents (I ended up with only 1 ticket to that show in stead of 2, ended up selling it on StubHub because I didn’t want to go alone!)
If you’ve ever bought a ticket to a show or are just interested in knowing how tour and ticketing work then I would definitely recommend you check out this book! Now I want the job setting up VIP Experiences for tours! haha.
I received a free e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
Your favorite band has just announced their nationwide tour. Should you pay to join their fan club and get in on the pre-sale? No, you decide to wait. But the on-sale date arrives, and the site is jammed. You can’t get on—and the concert is sold out in six minutes. What happened? What now?
Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more—and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox—Ticket Masters will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.