By Ashley Wu

Good morning. One company controls a wide swath of the concert industry, and lawmakers say music fans are paying the price.

Facing the music

Ticketmaster has come under intense scrutiny since it botched the rollout of tickets to Taylor Swift's tour late last year. Though the company has long been accused of anti-consumer practices, the backlash to the Swift debacle brought a new level of public attention. This week, the Senate held a hearing that explored whether Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, have an unfair monopoly over the live music industry.

I spoke with Ben Sisario, who covers the music industry for The Times, about how Ticketmaster become so dominant.

Ashley: How did we get from Taylor Swift tickets to a Senate hearing?

Ben: It was a phenomenal pop-culture moment. Taylor Swift, the biggest artist in the world, announced that she was going on tour for the first time in years. When there are millions of people trying to get a limited supply of tickets, there are going to be a lot of people left unhappy.

But Ticketmaster's website also had a lot of problems. Ticketmaster said its system was overwhelmed by bots, which are used by scalpers to grab tickets ahead of real fans, and then sell those tickets back to them at inflated prices.When people logged on to purchase tickets, they were dumped into a digital queue with every other fan — and all the bots. Some fans said that even if they got through the line and added tickets to their shopping cart, by the time they went to check out, the tickets were gone.

It broke the internet. Huge numbers of people complained that they didn't get a ticket and said that Ticketmaster failed to do its job. That caught the attention of politicians. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Live Nation and Ticketmaster to be broken up, and Senator Amy Klobuchar announced a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The complaints from fans pointed to a longstanding criticism that Ticketmaster lacks any real competition. How did the industry come to be dominated by one company?

Live Nation Entertainment as we know it is the combination of two companies: Live Nation, the events promoter — which hires artists and puts on shows — and Ticketmaster, the ticket seller. These are usually separate jobs in the live music business.

The whole world of concert promotion had been small-scale and regional until the late 1990s, when it was all rolled up and Live Nation became the biggest concert company ever. Ticketmaster had been around for a long time, but it had never been in the business of hiring artists to play shows. The two companies were already dominant in their respective industries, and in 2010, they merged.

Usually with mergers that big, the government has to ensure that the new company will protect consumer interests. Were officials worried about a monopoly at the time?

To approve the merger, the Justice Department required that the combined company agree to certain rules. One was that Ticketmaster wasn't allowed to force venues to sign ticketing deals by threatening to deny them access to Live Nation tours. They couldn't say, "If you don't use Ticketmaster, you're not getting X-Y-Z tours next year."

But a few years ago, the Justice Department investigated and found that Ticketmaster had in fact done this a number of times.

And at the hearing this week, the C.E.O. of rival ticketing service SeatGeek testified that when they pitch their services, venues will be impressed with their proposal, but say that they're worried about losing concerts if they drop Ticketmaster. Senator Klobuchar said that this is the definition of monopoly — that Live Nation doesn't even need to exert pressure, and people just fall in line.

How do artists feel about this? Could they just sell their own tickets?

Nearly 30 years ago, Pearl Jam sued Ticketmaster, which the band said had a monopoly on concert tickets. They tried to book a tour without Ticketmaster, but it was a challenge for them to find venues to play outside the Ticketmaster ecosystem. They eventually abandoned the fight and came back to Ticketmaster.

For very large artists, it could be possible. Taylor Swift sells her own merch; maybe she could sell tickets too? But there is a status quo built into the marketplace for live music: An artist goes out and makes a deal with a promoter to put on a show, the promoter finds a venue for the show to happen, and the venue has a deal with a ticketing system for everyone who performs there. It's not easy to change, especially when one big player controls multiple parts of it.

Back in 2018, we reported that Ticketmaster handles 80 of the top 100 U.S. venues. The company's market share is a matter of debate, but it is still very high.

What might come after the Senate hearing?

It's unclear. If the Justice Department does seek to break up the company, it would be a very big deal. Even though the senators were united in their displeasure about the power that Live Nation Entertainment has, I think it's an uphill battle to change the system.

For now, those who argue that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are a monopoly say that the company's position in the market is so strong that they can fail Taylor Swift and other huge artists like Bad Bunny, and still not be fired. And when the next superstar artist goes on tour, they will have virtually no choice but to work with Ticketmaster.

Ben Sisario has written for The Times since 1998. His first live concert was Henry Mancini sometime in the early 1980s, with his parents.

For more

• Barclays Center in Brooklyn switched from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek in October 2021. This month, it switched back to Ticketmaster.
• Senators deployed a lot of Taylor Swift puns during the hearing. Here are the best ones, according to Slate.

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NEWS

• The Memphis Police Department disbanded the unit that included the five officers charged in Tyre Nichols's beating death.
• The department's relatively swift action reflects a national shift in how the authorities respond to police violence.
• Protesters marched in cities across the country. The race of the officers charged, all of whom are Black, redirected demonstrators' focus toward police culture.
• The Times critic A.O. Scott asks: Is it a civic duty to watch the video of police beating Tyre Nichols? Or a moral obligation not to?

• Violence continued to grip Jerusalem and the West Bank. Two Israelis were shot in East Jerusalem and a Palestinian man was killed in the West Bank.
• Two men facing Russia's draft used a small fishing boat to seek asylum in the U.S.

• A drug company made $114 billion by gaming the U.S. patent system at patients' expense.
• Both sides in the abortion fight are focused on influencing state supreme courts and constitutions.
• Donald Trump's social media posts became more extreme during his exile from Facebook and Twitter.

• Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open men's single title, a year after missing the tournament over his refusal to get a Covid vaccine.
• Tom Verlaine, whose band Television was a pioneer in the New York punk scene of the 1970s, died at 73.
• "Saturday Night Live" spoofed the government's hunt for classified documents.

FROM OPINION

There are ways to fire people while still respecting their dignity. Doing it by email isn't one of them, says Elizabeth Spiers.

Mass shootings in which Asian immigrants target other Asian immigrants are grim markers of assimilation, Jeff Yang argues.

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The Sunday question: Will tanks turn the tide in Ukraine?

Western-supplied tanks will help Ukraine repel Russia's next offensive and retake more territory, says The Financial Times's editorial board. But they could take years to arrive and risk prompting Russia to further escalate the war, Phyllis Bennis argues in The Guardian.

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BOOKS

Small-town affairs: These romance novels brim with coziness and cupcake bakeries.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

On the cover: Some college sports players are allowed to cut sponsorship deals — but at what cost to other teams?

Poetry: Read this piece by Adam Wolfond, a nonspeaking autistic artist.

Ethicist: They gave their relatives a house. Can they make them pay for the upkeep?

Read the full issue.

THE WEEK AHEAD

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank starting today to discuss the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• The N.F.L. conference championships are today. The Philadelphia Eagles play the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs face the Cincinnati Bengals.
• Federal Reserve officials are expected to announce a slowdown in interest rate increases on Wednesday.
• Black History Month begins on Wednesday.
• Groundhog Day is on Thursday.

When Emily Weinstein starts to cook dinner, she reflexively looks for something green to add. In her latest weeknight meals newsletter, she has recipes that hit that mark, including broiled salmon and asparagus, baked risotto with greens and peas and a lush saag paneer with a pound of spinach.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was upheaval. Here is today's puzzle.

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Take the news quiz to see how well you followed the week's headlines.

Here's today's Wordle.

And read today's front page.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Tom Wright-Piersanti contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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