Senate Hearing On Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift Fiasco Set For Next Week

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Huffpost.com: “Senate Hearing On Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift Fiasco Set For Next Week”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

The Senate has scheduled a hearing to review issues with Ticketmaster that came to light during last year’s disastrous Taylor Swift ticket sales event, when a cacophony of system failures left hundreds of thousands of customers in the lurch.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee will take place Jan. 24, the panel announced late Tuesday, and address concerns that Ticketmaster’s market control over the ticketing industry has done a great disservice to consumers.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the subcommittee that initiated the hearing in November, said the company’s inability to adequately serve customers became “painfully obvious” during the Swift fiasco.

“For too long, consumers have faced high fees, long waits, and website failures, and Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company faces inadequate pressure to innovate and improve,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “At next week’s hearing, we will examine how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industries harms customers and artists alike. Without competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”

Ticketmaster has come to control a vast majority of the ticketing sales industry since getting approval from U.S. authorities to merge with Live Nation in 2010. Critics of company say its near-monopoly on the industry has allowed it to provide a subpar service to fans and price-gouge them on popular events.

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