I think a significant portion is that artists like leaving money on the table. being perceived as greedy can cause reputational harm significantly greater than the increased ticket revenues that the market will bear.
It's hilarious to read this discussion on HN, because the mentalities of artists and corporate business folks are so different. Artists aren't making a rational decision to reduce reputational damage by keeping ticket prices low. They're employing empathy to imagine themselves in the position of their audience - as music fans themselves first and foremost.
Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art.
Now while the industry certainly selects for people who do not think this way (i.e.: performers rather than artists), despite itself it's full of artists whose values are not aligned with whatever kind of homo econominicus maximal self interest, war of all against all that pervades here.
Source - I'm not a musician, but I am a writer and I've directed music videos for numerous artists over the years. The idea that they're all motivated by the same mechanics as faceless entities like ticket master is silly.
Artists charge what they get told to charge. And ticketmaster owns all the venues so if you want to play anywhere, you're going to list at whatever prices the venue lists artists of your level. Humans are all statistically similar for large cohorts. Artists want money as much as other people, specially the ones playing big venues.
First thing to help would be to break up the venue monopoly that ticketmaster created.
The vast majority, hard to quantify, but I'd guess well over 99% of professional musicians (certainly outside the US) never play a ticketmaster venue. They're not operating at that scale. When they tour it's at smaller venues - there are orders of magnitude more small bars and dedicated venues not owned by ticket master.
> Artists want money as much as other people, specially the ones playing big venues.
This is exactly the kind of projection I'm referring to. What makes you believe that most humans want as much money as possible - to the exclusion of all other values? Again, difficult to quantify, but I'd suggest a majority of people would put pure wealth lower down on their priority list than health, family connection, social connection, travel, time to spend on interests etc. This goes double for people who've chosen professions rooted in their own creative expression. All else being equal we'll all choose wealth - but if the cost is exploitation, all else will not be equal for most people.
It seems clear that you're conflating the microscopic numbers of 'major label' artists playing to vast audiences - effectively as employees of 360 label / marketing companies like Live Nation with the supermajority of professional touring musicians.
I'm reminded of the chap I attended college with who sold a salacious story about one of our mutual friends to a tabloid. When we found out this was happening I had a another mutual friend approach him to intervene, but heard back that it was 'too much money to turn down'. Fifteen or so years later this guy is a multi-millionaire who just lost a civil suit (and is under criminal investigation) for fraud and sexual misconduct. Most people do not operate like this - empathy is dimensional.
> What makes you believe that most humans want as much money as possible - to the exclusion of all other values?
Hardly anyone thinks that. But it's not controversial to believe most humans want enough money to not worry about affording the basics. The thing is, most art as a career doesn't even pay that by default.
> The vast majority, hard to quantify, but I'd guess well over 99% of professional musicians (certainly outside the US) never play a ticketmaster venue. They're not operating at that scale. When they tour it's at smaller venues - there are orders of magnitude more small bars and dedicated venues not owned by ticket master.
This is probably true, but I'm guessing smaller artists are also at much lower risk of scalpers (at least my anecdata backs that up) so probably much less applicable to the problem at hand.
> Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art.
It's worse. Creating seems to be an effective route to no income at all. Popular entertainment is a winners-take-all market; everyone who isn't one of the few popular artists or performers whose name alone brings in money, have to work hard to get anything at all from their work. The little I heard from various second-hand and third-hand reports from textbook authors, novelists, painters, musicians, etc. suggests that the royalties made from selling their output are laughably low. A big factor in that are the parties in between the artist and the buyers - publishers, labels. Those are some of the "faceless entities" you mention, and they're in a position of advantage over the artists, and they absolutely use it to capture all they can for themselves.
Because of that, to be able to dedicate yourself to your creativity, you have to either have a secondary stream of income (e.g. part-time artists with unrelated dayjob), give up most of control and autonomy (commission work, art-as-dayjob - think e.g. art for videogames), or seek any and all ways of indirectly monetizing your work further.
Focusing on that last part - for musicians, this is primarily live performances and merchandising (self-publishing is also easy today, but so is piracy). But per what I said above, most musicians are starved for money, and this - not greed - is forcing them to be less picky than they'd like. They can't afford to leave money on the table.
The paradox here is that most people - which includes the audience - think like you think, that artists are the opposite of corporate greed, that art is about humanity and not money, etc. Every artist knows that too, and that maintaining this reputation is critical to their income. Between two competing pressures, each artist has to find a point that's acceptable to them.
But this is where Ticketmaster comes in - they offer a way for artists to be more greedy without taking a reputational hit. Their Eternal War with Scalpers keeps the ticket prices up, while all the public outrage gets distributed between the Greedy Corporation and the Scalper Scoundrels.
Not all musicians engage in this on purpose, and for those who do, it's hard to prove. And of course it's just one slice through the complex relationship of artists, public, and countless commercial third parties in between them.
