Submitted by porterpilsner t3_ycct83 in washingtondc
The Arcade Fire/Beck show is now just Arcade Fire after Beck (as well as Feist on the UK dates) dropped off because of sexual misconduct allegations against the lead singer of Arcade Fire. Rather than do the right thing and refund fans who feel uncomfortable with seeing this show now (or who wanted to see Beck in what was clearly a double-headliner show), the Anthem is refusing to refund tickets.
Anyone else bothered by this?
This is not on the venue, it’s on the promoter. They are the ones who take the risk on the tickets, they are the ones who will not issue refunds. In this case it sounds like LiveNation strikes again. Fuck those guys
I.M.P. (not LiveNation) is the promoter for this show. Ticketmaster is merely the ticket seller.
Not true, these are Live Nation shows, not IMP
Scroll down a bit. You should see the Arcade Fire shows listed in a couple different spots.
Yes, the venue is owned by IMP, therefore it appears on IMP's website. They own many venues and host many shows.
IMP is also a promoter. But they are not the promoter for the show simply because the show is in their room.
Take a look, at the actual show page. What does it say above the band name, there? Does it say IMP Presents?
(hint - it doesn't).
https://impconcerts.com/event/arcade-fire-the-we-tour-with-special-guest-beck-3/
What do you think Live Nation would do if Arcade Fire said "We want to prioritize our fans' happiness, please issue refunds on request."? Force the band to play at gunpoint?
This is on the artist. Live Nation and TM will happily take the blame, but you're a fool to place it there
Ya I feel you, but arcade fire is still touring, still running a business. They don’t think they should cancel the tour clearly, so why would they refund tickets. A pretty major act dropped off the bill and obviously there was a disagreement between the bands on what to do. You’re not gunna get a refund from people who don’t think they did anything wrong.
While I agree with your sentiment, would that even matter? Like what if LiveNation just told arcade fire to fuck off? What leverage would they have? Refusal to play LiveNation venues and working with TM? Good luck with that EDIT: no they aren’t going to make the band play at gun point, but the band isn’t going to get paid if they don’t play either, it’s a business.
With the other comments about people having a rescheduled show and can’t get a refund, I could see this working. Offering refunds to those who want them and rerelease them for the new date.
I totally agree with your sentiment and I’m the first one to say support artist who respect their fans, but from the arcade for perspective they sold tickets to a show they are still going to play, it’s not their problem Beck dropped off the bill.
> no they aren’t going to make the band play at gun point, but the band isn’t going to get paid if they don’t play either, it’s a business.
The band does get paid if they don't play, just not nearly as much. The promoter rents the room and pays the artist a guarantee for the engagement.
I'm in agreement that it isn't AF's problem, just wild to see everyone in here pointing fingers at everyone under the sun except the party responsible for keeping their money
I can’t believe that guarantee remains, if the band refuses to play. It doesn’t really matter because The promoter still has the power to cancel the show they are no longer delivering. Either party can make this right, but I think we both agree they aren’t going to.
>I can’t believe that guarantee remains, if the band refuses to play.
That's literally how promoted shows work. The promoter fronts the band a chunk of money, fronts costs for the tour and production and advertising, takes back their expenses from the ticket sales and then splits profits with the artist, usually heavily favoring the artist.
The promoter can cancel it, and then another promoter (probably IMP itself in this scenario) would buy it up.
The only party who can unilaterally "make this right" is Arcade Fire - but the idea of getting a refund because the opener drops is preposterous.
I understand how these shows are structured when it comes to risk and from my experience that “chunk of money” is small compared to getting on the stage.
And I completely agree with you about canceling this show because Beck dropped out. You seem to have it out for AF and maybe rightfully show, I have no idea the details of these allegations. But I think we agree this isn’t going to work out for these folks.
Good luck out there
The band. You should blame the band. The band has the ultimate authority.
If the band said "refund everyone who wants it or we won't play" that's what would happen.
If the band said "don't you dare refund anyone, we're the headliner and we're playing" that's what would happen.
But everyone who already has a ticket, by almost definition, loves the band, so are all to happy to blame everyone else except the sexual predator who wants to keep your money.
Same thing happened to me when Guns n roses (obviously) cancelled their 2020 show in DC. I put in a request for a refund to LiveNation and never received it :(
And that is when you do a credit card charge back.
I did a chargeback on my tix to last night's show. I had never done one before. The customer service agent agreed that if I paid for 2 bands and only got one band, I deserved some sort of compensation or refund from Ticketmaster. It was easy.
Why obviously? What did I miss?
Not much… just a two-year-long pandemic
Oh, that?
All I want to do is resell my ticket, but with Ticketmaster they won't even let me list it at the price I want. They force you to list your resale ticket at a price that is higher than their face value one.
Go outside of Ticketmaster and post on reddit, the band's subreddit, DC facebook groups, etc. Obviously a more limited audience, but you'll have a better chance selling it your own price and not the Ticketmaster price.
While I totally agree with you, be very careful while doing this (especially buying tickets this way). There are a ton of scammers out there that will send you bogus venmo charges and take the tickets and run. Make sure they are a real person, who seems like they might like the band in real life.
There’s also an app called Cash or Trade that started in the jame band community. It’s a safe way to buy, sell, trade face value tickets. Not sure if there’s a ton of action on it for arcade fire, but it’s guaranteed safe.
I'm not even sure you can do that. My tickets are will call only to stop re-sellers. I'm not sure I can even re-sell my ticket, and definitely can't sell it outside of ticketmaster's systems.
really?? i was under the impression ticketmaster just makes me re-install and then delete their stupid app every time i go to a ticketmaster'd show, no will-call option anymore. it's a pain, but it made reselling some tickets recently pretty easy (granted i trusted who i was selling to), i just went with "transfer tickets" instead of "sell" or whatever.
Ya but I do believe they say “super excellent” seats are non-transferable. Not saying it’s right, but That’s how it used to be.
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Yeah, I paid $70 for it when Beck was on the ticket, who is going to buy a resale version of that ticket without Beck? Absolutely batty. Trying to offload mine via Instagram.
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Iam convinced ticketmaster is one of the most evil corporations in this country.
I've been frustrated by this too. I'm sure it's buried in their terms of use, but I figured my ticket would be my ticket to sell and at whatever price I wanted.
If there are still regular-priced tickets available for sale, why would Ticketmaster allow you to compete with them by selling below purchase price on their own website? How does that make any sense?
Right, because they don't want you undercutting the tickets still available for direct purchase on their own website.
Use a third party seller or sell direct if you want to set your own rates.
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I can't believe the band didn't cancel the tour after multiple, disturbing allegations. Sucks you can't get a refund.
and the weird thing about it is that his ex?-wife is in the band. All the shit he did, was while he was married to a band member. And they are still together, touring and doing their thing.
Which kinda makes me think maybe what he did wasn't that bad (I really haven't looked into it). She seems OK with it, who am I to judge. (i probably should look into it).
You should, he's no Harvey Weinstein but the shit he did ain't cool
What I hate about this is that we have no idea what he did or did not do. Allegations are allegations and sometimes what looks like truth to one person looks like something else to somebody else. Do I think people should be called out for crap? Sure. But I'm also really uncomfortable when people automatically believe just one side of the story.
The real thing here is that Beck was essentially the headliner. Arcade Fire would open for Beck not the other way around. Come on - you ever seen Beck in concert? Insane. Although, was a scientologist. So if we're going to make judgments about what people do and whether or not to see them in concert that should be part of the equation too, no?
Beck was explicitly the opener and was playing a limited acoustic set. You're profoundly wrong about how the tour was billed.
We have accounts from 4 accusers and a response from Butler on all counts. If truth is somewhere in the middle, even then Butler is a predatory creep.
"We have no idea" fuck all the way off
Dude settle the fuck down. I MEANT Beck was "essentially" the headliner cause he's so much better, esp live. I don't blame anyone for getting tickets to this just to see Beck - /that/ was my point.
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I'd do a chargeback on my credit card if this happened to me.
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And to make sure you say that you attempted to get a refund before the show started.
The thing is that you are buying tickets for the main act, and who ever is opening is always subject to change
Has this worked for you / anyone else in the past? I’ve never considered doing that but would in the future.
The common knowledge is it works, but only once, because the vendor will blacklist you from doing business in the future.
Unless enough people do it, then Ticketmaster will have to answer to Visa/Mastercard. So yea, everyone should be doing a chargeback for this. If even 10% of ticket holders to this event did a chargeback Visa would be up their ass so fucking fast.
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i know that some platforms like video games will straight up ban your account and all your purchases. But it'll work lol.
Well they can't take past concerts away from me, and if this is how they do business I don't mind being blacklisted. I'll just take my money back, thank you.
I did this when I had tickets to see a music festival where there was supposed to be Devo, and then Devo pulled out. It was the only reason I wanted to go and they would not refund my tickets so I did a charge back. But as somebody else said, you can really only get away with that once or rarely. Don't make a practice out of it.
Was this show ever sold out? I thought it was, but I got a notification from Ticketmaster saying to buy tickets for it which "[I] thought were gone" (or something like that).
I just wanna sell mine, man. Beck was the whole reason I was going.
Two of the shows were originally sold out (according to the Anthem website) but it looks like tickets are available for all the shows.
Not sure if they added tickets (which sometimes happens) or if they are quietly doing some refunds if people make a big enough stink, and they are reselling those.
It was originally one night and the additional nights got added based on demand.
Ok, that's what I figured happened. A lot of question marks fired off in my head when I saw that all three nights were suddenly not sold out.
Could also be that they added tickets to avoid the market being suddenly flooded with resale tickets from people who don't want to go anymore.
It isn't any of this.
Any concert that isn't a completely local show holds tickets for use by the artists, promoter, venue, agents, etc and so on. As the show date approaches, these tickets either get directly sold or used as comps, or they are no longer needed by any of the above parties and get released.
At any venue over 1000 capacity you're nearly always going to see tickets pop up closer to the date
ah true, you're right. totally forgot about that.
It was sold out. We bought tickets for Friday before they added the other two shows. Sucks about Beck.
Friday and Saturday definitely were at least as of July 27th, because that’s when I bought my Thursday ticket reluctantly. Unless they were lying lol
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Probably not. Aren’t they doing 3 nights in a row?
apparently so. didn’t even realize they were doing that.
especially weird since IMP typically only does that when the first night sells out. guess they really banked on all of these selling out.
I don’t think The Anthem is the one to blame here — Ticketmaster/LiveNation usually sets the ticket policies. And it’s a crappy situation, but I kind of get it from a logistics perspective. If they allow refunds for this they’ll just open the floodgates.
It wasn't "clearly a double-headliner show." Beck was opening for Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire has not cancelled the show. If they had, yes, you'd be owed a refund. But unfortunately, they haven't. And the allegations are what they are, but they're not enough for anyone, apparently, to decide the tour shouldn't happen(wrong, IMO, but no one asked me). When you buy tickets, the headliner is what is being purchased.
I don’t know how many times this needs to be said in this subreddit. It was never arcade fire AND Beck. It was always with special guest Beck. Co headlined tours don’t phrase the coheadliner as a special guest lol. At least not that I’ve seen.
I agree it’s unfortunate but I am not sure what options the Anthem has since they’re not the point of sale if you bought online and the show wasn’t technically cancelled. Dealing with IMP venues ever since Ticketfly shut down and IMP switched to Ticketmaster has been a huge pain in the ass that’s for sure.
Yeah my wife and I are pretty annoyed by this. Bought our tickets less than a week before everything came out about the lead singer of Arcade Fire. Honestly, I've seen them before (decent but not wow)and was much more excited to see Beck.
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Eh this may not be the ventures fault versus what ever company sold u the ticket ie Ticketmaster live nation monstrosity
Just resell if u can’t be there…that’s the price of buying form the largest comp. A smaller seller may have had more options for a refund w a change like this
Agree. I’ve had to sell many tickets on stubhub because things come up. Personal or band/tour related. Buying tickets that are pretty much a binding contract are an unfortunate (and painful) part of concert going. And, with a heavy heart, I’ve come to accept it; because there really is next to no other option. In accepting that, I if I can’t sell them for something (mostly a fair amount less than what I paid) I feel ok with giving them away. It’s a decent way attempt toward karma. I’ve been paid back in other ways by the kindness of strangers. Maybe not in concert tickets but in some way. Good luck. The idea of Beck opening for AF really was too good to be true.
That sucks - it’s always the people behind Ticketmaster who set the boundaries. Livenation is being a real dick and won’t give refunds. I hope you can resell it on Reddit or FB etc.
As a New Orleanian, I can’t tell you that we all hate Win Butler. He’s a huge dirtbag who has had a reputation for hanging around bars past close to talk to some barely 18 year old girls ear off. It’s a huge bummer for fans of their music and especially the women he took advantage of.
Yeah I lived in New Orleans til recently and I guess I lacked perspective. I assumed everyone knew Win was a creep because everyone in New Orleans knows Win is a creep. It takes a lot of bad behavior for anyone to get 86’d from places in New Orleans, and that dude has racked up multiple permanent bans.
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This show was not billed as double headliner, despite Becks ability to qualify as such.
If the supporting acts change but the headliner still plays, no refunds are merited, according to the conditions of sale you agreed to when you made the purchase.
And none of those things are anything the Anthem has control over.
I’ll take them off your hands
We are going through this too, you could try disputing the charge with your bank.
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wait. wtf. beck isn't playing anymore now?
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Does anybody know - if you go in person to the anthem box office and buy tickets that way does it come directly from them or still go through Ticketmaster with all of their bull crap and fees?
Arcade Under Fire!
Surprised this hasn't been said already, but the Anthem is an IMP venue, which is owned by Seth Hurwitz. I'll leave it to you to look into his history, but perhaps it's not so surprising that they aren't too interested in sexual misconduct allegations.
Like others have said - I don’t think it is on Anthem but the promoter. Either way I’m very angry. I bought these presale before the allegations and at least 50% because Beck was on the ticket. I can’t go to this show with these serious allegations.
I've got one GA floor ticket if anyone wants it. Free obv. DM me with your email and it's yours.
(ticket now spoken for, thx!)
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Hey, I’ll take 2 tickets! Where and how much ?
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These are still available if anyone is interested
For which night?
Same :/ and hubby doesn’t want to let the tickets go to waste. Don’t know what to do
Also have a free ticket for anyone willing to go. Sucks all around.
Got a friend who would be happy to use it if ya still are dumping it.
This still available?
I have 2 box seats for sale for Saturday night. (We can't go anymore cuz baby but no babysitter.) Face is $254 for both, OBO. DM me if interested.
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They folded over Die Antwoord’s first show, then rebooked them…
have one ticket, selling for cheap. DM
I have extra super excellent reserved seat for friday night. DM me if interested
mattstermouse t1_itlezfp wrote
I never know if I should blame the venue, Ticketmaster/LiveNation, or both. Venues that don’t bend to the pressure of the ticket monopoly probably struggle, but I’m sure they’re not advocating on our behalf either. I had a similar situation come up for a Watchhouse (Mandolin Orange) concert earlier this year at 9:30 Club. The band was in an accident a week or so before the date and very obviously couldn’t play any gigs for some time while they recovered. Ticketmaster’s new, COVID-era fine print meant they could hold my money indefinitely, no refund, until a rescheduled date was formally announced. Of course that happened months later and was a Sunday, not a Friday, so I couldn’t go. The band even put out statements right after the accident saying fans should be able to get their money refunded, but to no avail.