You probably guessed this but: promoters often have deals whereby they get a cut of the ticketing agency fees, say in exchange for exclusivity. So really the distinction presented to the consumer between fees and the face price of the ticket is all a bit bogus.
And that's before you look into the sort of practices around tickets being released by the agency to a secondary ticket vendor (perhaps one which they own...) and sold on at great markup with a cut going back to the agency and perhaps even back to the promoter.
I suspect the problem is that while the author is happy to pay $60 all-inclusive with no questions asked, a lot of live music fans are young-ish and on the kind of budget where it isn't an easy decision to spend $60 on a night's entertainment. You might persuade them to pay, but harder if you put them off with a big upfront ticket price than if you spring it on them in hidden extras. I'm sure ticketmaster have done their research and wouldn't be doing it this way if it didn't increase their revenue, and that promoters wouldn't be using them if these tactics didn't improve theirs.
Also part of the problem is that there's this social pressure in the music industry around fans and ticket pricing and around artists 'selling out'. In the open market, tickets for big shows are usually worth a lot more than the face price, but promoters (or at least, artists) are reluctant to be seen to capture all that value because of the negative PR involved.
A lot of people have wanted to see Ticketmaster taken down a peg for a long time. It's probably easier to do if you limit yourself to small-to-mid-size gigs, independent artists etc, and there are already some great non-abusive ticketing agencies in this space for example http://www.wegottickets.com ...
And that's before you look into the sort of practices around tickets being released by the agency to a secondary ticket vendor (perhaps one which they own...) and sold on at great markup with a cut going back to the agency and perhaps even back to the promoter.
I suspect the problem is that while the author is happy to pay $60 all-inclusive with no questions asked, a lot of live music fans are young-ish and on the kind of budget where it isn't an easy decision to spend $60 on a night's entertainment. You might persuade them to pay, but harder if you put them off with a big upfront ticket price than if you spring it on them in hidden extras. I'm sure ticketmaster have done their research and wouldn't be doing it this way if it didn't increase their revenue, and that promoters wouldn't be using them if these tactics didn't improve theirs.
Also part of the problem is that there's this social pressure in the music industry around fans and ticket pricing and around artists 'selling out'. In the open market, tickets for big shows are usually worth a lot more than the face price, but promoters (or at least, artists) are reluctant to be seen to capture all that value because of the negative PR involved.
A lot of people have wanted to see Ticketmaster taken down a peg for a long time. It's probably easier to do if you limit yourself to small-to-mid-size gigs, independent artists etc, and there are already some great non-abusive ticketing agencies in this space for example http://www.wegottickets.com ...