Musician, professor and artists’ rights campaigner David Lowery has raised the alarm about a draft bill in the US state of Georgia focusing on ticketing fees. “Simply a Trojan horse bill that seems to limit artist fan clubs, indie venues and others to sell face value non-transferable tickets to fans,” is how he described it in a blog post on The Trichordist. “Those pre-sales of tickets at face value by artists directly to their fans are technically resales, because artists generally buy them upfront from the concert promoters. This extraordinarily cynical bill would essentially end this long standing part of the artist-fan social contract.”
Lowery went on to criticise secondary ticketing firm StubHub specifically, pointing to links with lobbying organisation Fan Freedom, which has been active in Georgie and other states pushing for this kind of legislation. Lowery is not alone: Live Nation has also recently come out against some of the state-level bills focused on ticket resale. “Scalper lobbyists use terms like ‘fan freedom’ to sound like they are looking out for consumers – but unlimited resale protects scalpers more than fans,” claimed Live Nation last week, criticising these “runaway resale laws”.
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