Reports this week indicate that Donald Trump personally pushed the Justice Department to settle its antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. If accurate, this is exactly as bad as it sounds, and it deserves more attention than it’s getting amid the daily noise.
The DOJ’s case against Live Nation was one of the more consequential pieces of antitrust action in the music industry in decades. The government’s argument was straightforward: Live Nation controls venues, Live Nation controls ticketing through Ticketmaster, Live Nation controls artist management and promotion through its various subsidiaries, and all of this control is bad for competition, bad for artists, and very bad for anyone who has ever tried to buy a concert ticket without paying a 40% service fee.
A settlement is not necessarily a capitulation – settlements can include meaningful remedies and structural changes. But the framing here – that the president personally intervened – suggests this is less about good policy and more about Live Nation’s lobbying apparatus finally finding a sympathetic ear at the top. Live Nation is not a company that deserves sympathy. It is a company that charges you $18 to print your own ticket at home.
Artists have complained for years about the way the Live Nation ecosystem squeezes them. Independent promoters have been systematically shut out of major markets. Smaller venues struggle to compete when the biggest acts are locked into Live Nation-controlled spaces. None of that gets better with a settlement brokered under political pressure.
The music industry’s concentration problem was already severe. This week’s news suggests it’s about to get a little worse, with a presidential stamp of approval.
