Pearl Jam's battle with Ticketmaster during the 90's during Versus, Virtalogy and No Code Era.

0:00 - Run Up To The Boycott
6:25 - Pearl Jam Boycott's Ticketmaster
8:26 - Justice Department Involvement
10:42 - Congressional Testimony
13:48 - Ill-Fated 1995 Tour/Conclusion

Dave Abbruzzese Firing
   • Pearl Jam: Why The Band Fired Drummer...  

Why Pearl Jam Stopped Making Videos
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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.

Back in the early 90’s Pearl Jam was one of the biggest rock band’s in the world. They released three massive albums with 1991’s Ten, 1993’s Versus and 1994’s Vitalogy. Following the release of Versus the band opted to stop making music video for nearly half a decade. I’ve done a whole vidoe on this, the link is down below. and then it was around this time that the band picked a fight with ticketmaster that didn’t end well. It would result in an ironic move nearly two decades later when ticketmaster and pearl jam would join forces. Let’s talk their prolonged battle with the ticket giant and why they ended up working together decades after their bitter beef.

Ticketmaster which started in the 1976 was built on the premise of selling ticketing software would exponentially increase in size starting in 1982 when lawyer and entrepreneur named Frederic D Rosen became the companies chairman and chief executive. The band changed their business model by signing exclusivity contracts with venues promising them a cut of the profits and fees and .by the early 90’s Ticketmaster was buying up it’s competition effectively owning 60-90% of the market in the live entertainment business The other 10-40% was held by smaller more regional companies. On top of that ticketmaster had lobbyists in washington and hired the best anti-trust lawyers in addition to setting up a government relations office in washington dc to lobby congress. The company also hired public relations people to sway public opinion in the media and online.

The company was ready to challenge any kind of legislation or messaging that threatened their business model, market share or profits.. In fact before pearl jam raised a big stink about ticketmaster there really wasn’t a big debate around service fees, the bigger question was how high ticket prices could go with legacy acts like Billy Joel, The Eagles and Elton john charging upwards of $100/ticket. Ticketmaster’s feud with Pearl Jam wasn’t instantaneous. It was something that built up after both parties had bad experiences with one another. It started on Labor Day 1992. Nearly a year prior Pearl Jam released their debut album Ten which was a monumental success. To thank their fans in their hometown of Seattle Pearl Jam wanted to play a free concert. It was estimated 30,000 people were expected to attend. Despite being advertised as a free concert ticketmaster was distributing the tickets and wanted $1 charged for each ticket Upset with the request, Pearl Jam ditched Ticketmaster and distributed tickets on their own, thus keeping the show free.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the band’s whole battle with ticketmaster was that despite the fact that frontman Eddie Vedder was wielding more creative control over the band he wasn’t the main driving force behind the feud with ticketmaster. Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament would tell the LA Times in late 1996 that it was their idea to plan their own tour and sidestep ticketmaster.

Stone Gossard would tell the LA Times what informed the band’s decision making saying “We swore when we formed this band that if we ever got successful we would make sure we did something to keep our concert prices down,” “But we decided to take it one step at a time.” In 1993 Pearl Jam was now supporting their second album Versus which came out in the later part of the year. While the band was out on tour they were still playing ticketmaster friendly venues and had their tickets distributed by the company with their fans being charged a service fee between $3 to $6 per ticket. It was at this time that Pearl Jam started cutting deals with venue owners to take a smaller cut on the band’s merchandise sales so prices could be lo