Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped

“A clear, comprehensive look at a murky business.” —The Wall Street Journal 

Your favorite band has just announced their nationwide tour. Should you pay to join their fan club and get in on the pre-sale? No, you decide to wait. But the on-sale date arrives, and the site is jammed. You can’t get on—and the concert is sold out in six minutes. What happened? What now?

Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more—and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox—Ticket Masters will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.   

Dean Budnick has written seven books, including Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped. He is the co-author of concert promoter Peter Shapiro's The Music Never Stopped: What Putting on 10,000 Shows Has Taught Me About Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Magic and  Blues Traveler frontman John Popper's Suck & Blow: And Other Stories I'm Not Supposed to Tell. Budnick is the editor-in-chief of Relix and has reported on the live entertainment industry for Billboard, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. He directed the documentary Wetlands Preserved: The Story of An Activist Rock Club, which opened nationally before airing on the Sundance Channel. He also is the creator and host of the Long May They Run podcast, which reached #1 on the Apple Music Podcast charts.