Will all my homies still hate Ticketmaster even if they finally include fees in their ticket pricing? For years, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have made the ticket buying experience one full of dread and an inordinate amount of additional, secretive fees. It’s no secret that the ticket market for live events is all the way corrupt, though I’m hoping we’re slowly but surely on the right track to more straightforward ticket buying. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to buy a $45 ticket and when I go to checkout, it’s $145 after all of the services fees and transaction fees are tacked on. I’m the type of guy that always pulls out the Dad Joke of, “Convenience fee? That sure isn’t convenient for me.” There has long been a call for Ticketmaster, which is under the Live Nation Entertainment umbrella, to change their ways and do something about the excessive prices and their shell-game-esque fees. It’s a very complicated issue, and in short, the problem is that ticket sales are intertwined with booking and management and venues and promoters, which we broke down in way more detail here. But one step in the right direction for Ticketmaster happened today. If you were to go to their website, you’d see that the phrase “All In” is plastered all over the place. They’re proudly letting the world know that those pesky fees they used to be known for are no more, sharing this message: “You’ve probably noticed things look different. Now, you’ll see the cost of your ticket – including fees, before taxes – from the moment you start shopping. Find tickets within your budget right away, with no surprises at checkout.” Now to be clear, I’m not trying to paint Ticketmaster as a hero. A number of other ticket providers have long boasted “all-in” prices in an effort to prioritize the consumer. Ticketmaster only did so today because the Federal Trade Commission banned junk fees, and that ban went into effect on May 12. So Ticketmaster didn’t do this with consumers in mind… they did it because they had no other choice (and they still aren’t including local taxes or delivery fees until checkout). All in all though, it’s great to see the FTC bringing the hammer down on the ticket market. And I don’t want to bring “Swifties” into this when I don’t have to, but I think we all have to give some credit to Taylor Swift’s super fans for making this happen… or at the very least expediting the process. Ticketmaster embarrassingly botched Taylor Swift ticket sales in 2022, and it was after that fiasco that demands really started to pour in for Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster to be investigated for causing harm to consumers. But all the credit can’t go to Taylor Swift (please don’t be mad at me for saying that “Swifties”). There have been many artists that have been outspoken against Ticketmaster, from Kid Rock saying the ticket sellers were a monopoly, to Zach Bryan almost making it his life’s work to speak out against Ticketmaster. There was even a bombshell report that accused Ticketmaster of negotiating increased rates with vendors so that they didn’t have to pay as much out to artists. I’ve gotten this far into the story without saying it, but what Zach Bryan said is true: All my homies hate Ticketmaster, and now the “homies” at Ticketmaster are facing the music. Cue up Zach Bryan’s “Burn, Burn, Burn” from his All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster: Live From Red Rocks album: The post Ticketmaster Finally Caves & Will Include Fees In Their Pricing After The FTC Bans “Junk Fees” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.