Worse, they are all owned by the same company now. It’s all a multi-headed hydra of suck. Live Music has been completely monopolized.
Another interesting note: Weird Al is playing three venues within driving distance from me. Only one of them is selling tickets through TM.
I saw Metallica once, many moons ago, and it was at this big venue which of course was Live Nation/TM. It sucked ass. Sound was terrible, had to watch screens to see what was going on, beer was ridiculously priced and yet somehow long queues.
I decided then I wouldn't go to those venues anymore. If a band I like plays there, whatever, not worth it.
Meanwhile I've had many, many concert experiences that were 100x better than the Metallica concert for a fraction of the price of the Metallica ticket at small, local venues.
My buddy recently invited me to another such big-ass venue with some popular band, and it just cemented by view. So not worth it.
In fact I have not used ticketmaster in the last 2 years, the last time was a big ticket stadium-type thing. Most of the events I attend are doing it through resident advisor and I have about 40 tickets in my history there now. I'm glad the ecosystem hold by ticketmaster is being broken, at least here in Europe.
Though even there you do see some ticketmaster crap popping up like universe.com