music vs. ticketmaster

SBT and I have a couple concerts to attend on our horizon. In February we're seeing New Edition and Carbon Leaf. In April we're seeing Joe Firstman.

Unfortunately, for two $10 tickets to Joe Firstman, we just paid a total of $34.05. That's a little steep for a concert in what is essentially a slightly-larger-than-your-typical-bar-venue. Did we pay so much because we bought our tickets from some shady guy on the street? Nope, just everyone's favorite Ticketmaster. Because I'm pretty sure the venue wasn't open at 10:00 am today for me to go buy tickets directly from them.

Remember when Pearl Jam was aggressively fighting Ticketmaster? And how just about no one joined forces with them? Back then, I think the service fees & ordering fees were around $4-$5 per ticket. That seemed pretty reasonable to fund their services and turn a profit (consider that just about every venue and every artist uses them).

I get that Ticketmaster has to make a profit. And they have that slick website, and phone service, and probably some customer sales reps in India or China they pay $50/week to answer the phones. So charging a service fee is reasonable. But I just paid almost 2x what the tickets cost, and that extra money isn't going anywhere near the actual artists, so I'm still a little bitter.

The good news is, we haven't seen either Carbon Leaf or Joe Firstman for a long while and therefore I'm very much looking forward to both shows. I'm hoping Joe Firstman has the same bass player he had last time we saw him, Darwin Johnson - that cat can play.

And speaking of concerts, if anyone has experience ripping audio tracks from a (homemade) DVD I could use some knowledge. My dixieland band has a DVD of one of their summer performances, and I'm trying to upload some songs to our MySpace page. I was trying to use the vcl media player, but it's just not working...