At the Palais Theatre in Melbourne, operated by music behemoth Live Nation, tickets over $65 are more than they appear.

Inside that ticket is: A hidden service fee of $3.18.

A hidden booking fee of $6.77.

A hidden infrastructure fee of $0.13.

That’s roughly $10 of fees you aren’t told about, according to documents seen by Four Corners.

Live Nation-owned company Ticketmaster then charges you a transaction fee of more than $7 — this one is made public to fans.

If it’s a Ticketmaster resale, that fee jumps to around $17.

And you can opt to pay up to $11 for ticket insurance, depending on the gig.

That’s around $30–$40 all up in fees alone.

Before even getting to the artist’s cut.

Live Nation is the world’s largest live entertainment company, behind some of the biggest concerts globally.

Artists like Coldplay, Harry Styles, and Pink.

The company has been raking in record revenue — in 2023, it earned nearly $US23 billion ($34 billion), and its chief executive is among the highest-paid in America.

After dominating the United States, Live Nation is now increasing its power in Australia, where small venues and music festivals are fighting for survival.

A Four Corners investigation has found Live Nation has expanded its reach to every part of the Australian music industry and its practices are angering some of the country’s most talented musicians.

This investigation is unprecedented in its scope, with industry insiders and artists coming forward in a last-ditch effort to protect Australia’s unique live music culture.

Driving up the prices

Live music now often involves paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to see a superstar in a stadium or arena.

In Australia, the average ticket price is now $105: 20 years ago it was just $65. It’s increased thanks to COVID-19, inflation, and the rising costs of putting on gigs.

With VIP packages and ticket scalping today, some people are paying thousands to see their favourite artists.

Ticket breakdowns seen by Four Corners show consumers aren’t being told by Ticketmaster, and its main competitor Ticketek, about a range of hidden fees.

“They’re called transaction fees, booking fees, service fees, infrastructure fees,” booking agent Paul Sloan said.

“There’s like about 10 names that have come out of nowhere.”

Sloan works with artists like Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, and Amyl and the Sniffers.

There’s also a fee called the “inside charge” which consumers aren’t told about.

He and several other industry figures who spoke to Four Corners want to know what an “inside charge” actually means.

“I say all the time, what is the inside charge for? And they say, you know, it’s the inside charge,” he said.

“I used to run a ticket business and I used to have a booking fee, [the fee had] one name and it was cheap, and I still made money.”

Live Nation did not say what the “inside charge” was for.

Ticketmaster has said that “tickets are actually priced by artists and teams”.

“Ticketmaster complies fully with Australian Consumer Law by incorporating per ticket or percentage fees into the price of the ticket paid by fans, and prominently disclosing any optional or transaction level fees,” Live Nation said in a statement.

“These fees support essential services, including tech development and innovation, customer service, security, and compliance, all of which require significant investment.”

Live Nation added that Ticketmaster didn’t set fees and they were decided by venues to “cover costs for both the venue and the ticketing company”.

Ticketmaster’s main competitor, Ticketek, said fees support “Ticketek’s investment in services, innovation, and venue and technology infrastructure, to provide e-commerce and access control technology”.

Many artists said they’re not getting a cut of those extra fees.

“The artist does set a range of ticket price to where it is, the artist doesn’t set the booking fee, doesn’t set any other hidden fees that exist within that ticket price, of which there are plenty of examples,” Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett told Four Corners.

“The artist is not receiving that amount that’s reflected in the ticket price.”

Inside the behemoth

There are a lot of people that go into putting on any live concert: The artist, their manager, a booking agent, the promoter that finances the show, organises the venues, ticketing, and marketing.

It’s a huge operation worth thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

In the past, many of these players operated independently.

In 2010, the US government approved a merger between Live Nation, America’s largest concert promoter, and Ticketmaster, the dominant ticketing company.

At the time, the industry feared it was creating a massive music monopoly and since then the behemoth has been fined more than $US160 million for fraud and overcharging customers.

Almost 15 years later, in May, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) — which approved the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger — announced it would sue the company, accusing it of monopolising markets across the live music industry and locking out competition.

“Live Nation vigorously defends against the baseless DOJ allegations,” the company said, adding previously that the lawsuit would not reduce ticket prices.

“Net profits show Live Nation and Ticketmaster do not wield monopoly power,” it stated on its website.

The company added that “the market structure in Australia differs significantly from that in the US”.

Many in the industry fear a similar pattern could emerge in Australia if the company is left unchecked.

Live Nation can get paid numerous times for one concert or tour and a big slice of what fans pay for inside: it’s a model called vertical integration, and artists are often unaware it’s happening.

In Australia, the company owns Moshtix and allows customers to resell tickets on Ticketmaster.

Live Nation also charges fees on those resold tickets, boosting its overall profits.

It operates venues like Melbourne’s Palais Theatre and Kings Park in Perth, owns Anita’s Theatre in Wollongong, Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall, and Adelaide’s Hindley Street Music Hall.

It owns Secret Sounds, which is behind major music festivals like Splendour in the Grass and Falls, as well as touring companies, and TSP Merchandising, which makes band merch.

“The paradigm that Live Nation is seeking is there’s only one or two companies left to choose from and they’re operating at such scale that it’s difficult to avoid them, which does then obviously cause disruption inside the business, the lack of choice,” Paul Sloan said.

‘Where’s this money going?’

When Adelaide band Bad//Dreems were offered to join Live Nation’s Australian booking agency Village Sounds, it seemed like a gateway to big live music opportunities.

“The reason you have a booking agent in the first place is because they represent you and shop your band to venues for opportunities to play there,” drummer Miles Wilson said.

Last year, they secured a headline tour playing Live Nation venues.

“It was our album tour, it was our most successful album to date, so we did this tour, and it grossed about $100,000 of ticket sales,” guitarist Alex Cameron said.

“We ended up with about $9,000 in our bank account at the end after everything had been accounted for and so we were like, where’s this money going?

“Artists don’t expect to be making millions of dollars at our level or even making money: like, we all have jobs to support our music career.”

The tour was promoted by a different company, but Live Nation owned other businesses involved.

“We were paying 10 per cent to our [Live Nation-owned] booking agent, there were ticketing fees, then the venue fees to Live Nation-owned venues, and then those Live Nation-owned venues were also taking a merch cut of the merch we sold,” the guitarist said.

“We were paying four times to Live Nation, and we had no way of negotiating that, and in fact, when we raised it with our booking agent, they just [gave us] the shoulder shrug.

The band said it’s difficult to find people who will advocate for artists in the industry.

“We started off very ignorant about how it works financially, which is obviously on us, but I don’t think many musicians get into music with a background in any of that sort of thing,” Alex Cameron said.

“I think we found it very hard to find … representatives who will be able to explain things to you and advocate for you in contract matters or financial matters.”

Because Live Nation has extensive control over the global live music industry, artists have been reticent to speak so candidly about how this system functions, but some have begun to voice their concerns internationally.

Grammy Award-winning artist James Blake, who has toured extensively with Live Nation, posted on Instagram he now refuses to “subject” fans to “ridiculous amounts of unexplainable hidden fees”.

“They were robbing you and robbing the artists,” he wrote.

In a statement to a US Senate inquiry into Live Nation and Ticketmaster, American band Lawerence said their cut was diminished after all Live Nations fees were deducted.

“If they want to take 10 per cent of the revenues and call it a facility fee, they can and have, if they want to charge $30,000 for the house nut, they can and have, and if they want to charge us $250 for a stack of 10 clean towels, they can and have,” band member Clyde Lawerence said.

Live Nation’s chief financial officer told the Senate inquiry: “If Mr Lawrence and others are not getting the rate card on the service fees up-front and having that made available to them, that’s a problem on our end that I’ll look into.”

Bad//Dreems has since left Live Nation’s booking agency, but many other major Australian artists, like Bernard Fanning and G Flip, are still on the company’s roster.

“What I’m a little disappointed by is the powerbrokers in the Australian music industry that let them in,” the band’s Alex Cameron said.

“It comes down to what our values are as a society, do we want the profits from the live music industry — which we know are there — do we want them lining the pockets of shareholders overseas in Live Nation, or do we want at least a small percentage of that to filter back down to the grassroots?”

Live Nation declined several requests for an interview, but in a statement sent through the company’s lawyer, a spokeswoman said: “Our business model aligns with standard industry practices ensuring that costs for artists and fans are consistent with industry standards.

“As with all tours, the band approves the full plan and budget, including venue choices, ticket prices, merch fees, and the overall tour deal, before anything is confirmed.”

Bands navigating the ‘bin fire’

Live Nation’s increasing dominance in Australia’s music industry has prompted one of the country’s most prominent artists to issue a warning.

“Spotify, TikTok, Live Nation, these are global entities,” Peter Garrett said.

“They are not accountable in our country, they’re hardly regulated, they are quite often unethical, they have no loyalty to Australia or to Australian artists at all.”

As one of Australia’s most successful bands, Midnight Oil has sold out gigs in the US and Europe and has experienced Live Nation’s global dominance firsthand.

“They in particular are egregious because they use, and I would say misuse, their market power, particularly in places like the United States,” Garrett said.

“We’ve had to play at Live Nation venues in cities in America because there are no other venues because Live Nation has them all tied up.

“You’re faced with quite a difficult choice, do you play to your fan base … or do you not go there at all?”

Sarah Thompson, or Thommo, the drummer of another internationally famous Australian band, Camp Cope, said it became impossible to avoid Live Nation during a 2022 US tour.

“It was quite easy to see the amount of Live Nation venues that had appeared comparatively to pre-COVID,” she told Four Corners.

“You’d like to support independent venues, so we would try and do that, if they have the monopoly on everything and every venue that you play at, you can’t really help all of the money going to the one place.

Camp Cope decided it was too difficult to keep going as a band, with Thommo tweeting that the music industry was a “bin fire”.

“I understand why people are stopping, it’s a lot of work for very little reward,” she said.

“You look around and you’re like, there’s so much money in this industry, so much money and you’re like, where is it? Because it’s certainly not in the hands of artists.”

All about the share price

While emerging musicians struggle to sustain a career, Live Nation promoted 50,000 shows for 6,800 artists globally last year. Names like Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Coldplay.

There are two other major live music companies in Australia. Promoter TEG — backed by US private equity firm Silver Lake — owns Australia’s largest ticketing agent, Ticketek, as well as Qudos Bank Arena and Laneway Festival.

The other, Frontier Touring, is backed by global promoter AEG, which put on some of Australia’s most profitable gigs last year, including Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, and Elton John.

“The live music industry in Australia is thriving, with more competition among concert promoters than ever,” Live Nation’s spokeswoman said.

Live Nation’s scale globally is helping it edge out Australian promoters.

Veteran Australian promoter Michael Chugg partners with Frontier Touring and said he put on Coldplay’s tours locally for years until Live Nation entered the scene.

“I lost Coldplay to Live Nation, that’s the biggest one I’ve lost to them,” Chugg said.

“I started with Coldplay in a 200-seated venue way back and we built together to get to stadiums.

“Live Nation offered them a worldwide tour and I know that [Coldplay singer] Chris Martin didn’t want to leave us. Live Nation just kept adding millions and millions and in the end, we lost out.”

In a statement, the company denied it offered Coldplay millions for Live Nation to run its tours in Australia.

Before Live Nation entered Australia in 2010, Chugg, along with promoter Michael Gudinski, were the top dogs of live music in the country.

“We didn’t abuse it though,” Chugg said when asked about whether the pair had dominated the industry in that era as Live Nation is doing now.

Artists like Peter Garrett are now imploring the Australian government to step in and combat Live Nation’s growing power.

“We need to make sure that governments have rules in place, regulations, tax issues, support, to protect and nourish Australian artists, and that Australian fans get the opportunity and do take up that opportunity to support them as well.”

Government’s role

While many are concerned about the charges lumped on music fans, the body whose role is to protect Australians from deceptive business conduct, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), said hidden fees were allowed.

“Businesses aren’t required to give consumers specific breakdowns of all components the business has taken into account in setting that up-front price,” a spokeswoman said.

That’s pushed industry leaders to ask the Australian government to put in more stringent regulations to stop these fees.

Arts Minister Tony Burke did not commit to a change in legislation.

Instead, he issued a warning to Live Nation.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we are heading down a pathway where these sorts of anti-competitive risks are going to exist within the music sector,” he told Four Corners.

“I put down a very clear warning to the companies on that, the fact that you can be told in a market economy, ‘Yep, you pick your prices, yep, you pick how you do that, yes, you can buy different parts of a supply chain,’ that’s all true.

“But you can’t then use that in an anti-competitive way and increasingly we are hearing those complaints from artists, from venues, from festivals.”

Supporting local music

Globally, small to mid-sized venues where artists develop their craft are closing.

In Australia alone, more than 1,300 have shut down since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Live Nation is boasting record attendance at its concerts.

The company makes money on artists by investing once they’re famous enough to drive profits, according to Mark Davyd, the head of a charity working to save the grassroots end of the industry, the UK’s Music Venue Trust.

“At 1,500 capacity, the ticket price and the number of people in the room will be sufficient to get you a profitable live show,” he said.

“It’s frankly disgraceful that the biggest companies in the music industry are prepared to see small venues — that get them that talent — closing down, they should be ashamed of that, they need to be called to account.”

Live Nation told Four Corners it ran programs to nurture “the next generation of talent” and has promoted more than 900 shows in small venues since 2016.

“We are proud our Live Nation Australia team is operated by local Australians who live and work here to bring in some of the world’s biggest acts to local fans while championing Australian talent and fuelling growth in the live music sector.”

Davyd also runs venues in the UK and put on one of British band Oasis’s first-ever gigs in a converted toilet block.

Of the 34 small venues where Oasis played on that UK tour, “23 have closed in the last 30 years,” Davyd said.

“You’ve got to be bad before you are good,” he said.

Davyd has pitched the concept of a ticket levy, where a dollar from every ticket sold at a large show would go to a struggling venue — it was endorsed by the UK parliament, which then asked companies like Live Nation to be proactive in rolling out.

This year, Live Nation won the hugely coveted contract to run the comeback tour for Oasis, and in meetings, the company had shown support for the ticket levy, he said.

When tickets were released for Oasis’s UK leg, though, it failed to commit to the scheme.

“225 million pounds in gross income [from the Oasis tour], how much was invested into the grassroots? How much was put forward into developing the next Oasis, supporting our talent pipeline?

“A big fat zero. Nothing at all.”

Dynamic pricing

After tickets went on sale for Oasis in the UK, Live Nation and Ticketmaster faced a public outcry as prices soared due to dynamic pricing, a process where rates go up as demand increases.

Thousands of fans waited hours in online queues, with some paying more than 350 pounds at the check-out, which was double the advertised price.

It unlocked a high-profile battle over who’s responsible for setting prices — Oasis said it left decisions on ticketing entirely “to promoters and management and at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used”.

Ticketmaster said artists and promoters were responsible for determining the face value of tickets, saying dynamic pricing combats scalping.

Fan anger led to an announcement that the UK government and Britain’s consumer watchdog would investigate dynamic pricing.

In Australia, Live Nation has already used dynamic pricing, most recently on tickets for punk band Green Day’s upcoming tour, with some fans paying more than $500 for a ticket.

“Ticketmaster does not set prices, nor do we have or offer algorithmic surge pricing technologies,” a Live Nation statement said.

“Ticketing companies do not control how artist teams and other event organisers price their shows or whether they adjust prices up or down based on demand.

“However, like other ticketing companies, we have tools to help artist teams understand demand for their tickets.”

Arts Minister Tony Burke said the Australian government was not planning on following the UK’s lead.

“Surge pricing is something that, as consumers, people have always dealt with, I don’t love it, but I think we have to be realistic, it’s always been there,” he told Four Corners.

“It’s not something we’re looking at, at the moment.”

Tour promoters for Oasis promised that Ticketmaster would not use dynamic pricing for its Australian or North American tours.

Live Nation’s CEO, Michael Rapino, said the concept was “just rolling out around the world”, with plans to eventually expand it in Australia.

Keeping the soul in Australian music

Some artists, like rapper Barkaa, are trying to avoid the big corporates altogether, saying the lack of government regulation has made live music a “cowboy industry”.

“I feel like I’ve met more trustworthy crackheads than people in this industry and that says a lot.”

Touring independently is easier said than done because it “costs a lot of money to put on shows and to take your team around … so you’ve got to fork it out of your own pocket,” she said.

Musicians are now fighting for support, saying that without their art, the foundation of the industry would crumble.

“Can we just enjoy and thrive and create rather than being in survival mode and always having our back up about people doing us dodgy or taking and ripping everything away from us?

“As artists, we need to take back that power, we need to be more vocal … write diss tracks to Live Nation, like, do something, guys,” she laughed.

Peter Garrett is concerned that the rise of streaming and Live Nation’s domination has created a country where we are no longer valuing or listening to our own music.

“Without nurturing your local artists, who are now getting washed away in a tidal wave of big companies, we’re not hearing our songs, we’re not hearing the things that connect us to the place that we’re in,” Garrett said.

“What makes us human in a way is artists sharing their sense of things, their stories with the people who they’ve grown up with or who they live nearby, or who they’re visiting, and that’s why people still go out to shows.

“A country without its own music is a country without a soul.”

Watch Four Corners’ full investigation, Music For Sale, tonight at 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.

Credits:

Story by Avani Dias, Amy Donaldson, Lara Sonnenschein

Digital production: Maryanne Taouk

Photography: Nick Wiggins, Rob Hill

Video: Rob Hill