This is why I don't go to concerts

I listen to a lot of music. I don't pay for it. I am one of those guys who remembers what it was like to pay $25 in 1998 for an Offspring CD. $25 in the 90's could have bought me a lifetime's supply of pogs, a Voltron T-shirt and a box full of Vanilla Ice albums.

For years we were ripped off when it came to getting access to our favourtie band's music. The music industry claimed that it was all about supply and demand and there was no harm in making money. Not to mention, the industry offered lots of free access to music, such as MTV. For every moment I had to sit through Billy Ray Cyrus or Whitney Housten music videos just to catch a glimps of the Foo Fighters, I cried tears of frustrations. Enter the internet. I've never looked back since.

People say that downloading hurts the artists. I would say, however, that cheating fans out of their money hurts the artists ever more. Ticketmaster is now the defendent in a $50 million dollar class-action suit. After all of this time spent complaining, the industry and their middlemen can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar.

Ticketmaster has recently recieve hundreds of complaints that when they attempted to purchase tickets online, they were redirected to TicketNow (recently purchased by Ticketmaster) where they were made to pay up to hundreds more than the face value. Those Smashing Pumpkins tickets you paid $500 for? They were only supposed to be $130! Oops! Apparently, Bruce Springsteen is fucking furious.

I pity those poor ticket sellers. As screwed as Universal was when Morpheus first sprouted, that is nothing in comparison to the wrath of the Boss.