Neil Young has come out criticizing Ticketmaster for its long-held monopoly on concert ticket sales. On Sunday, March 19, Young made a post in this website titled “Concert Touring Is Broken” in which he decried the company’s high ticket prices and ticket fees, which have reached up to 30 percent for some artists. “I get letters blaming me for $3,000.00 tickets for a benefit I am doing. That money does not go to me or the benefit. Artists have to worry about ripped off fans blaming them for Ticketmaster add-ons and scalpers. Concert tours are no longer fun. Concert tours not what they were,” shared Young.

Young also credited an Quartz article about the fans being subjected to high fees during the Cure’s “Verified Fan” sale for their upcoming tour. “Ticketmaster… agreed with… that many of the fees being charged are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all ‘Verified Fan’ accounts for lowest ticket price (‘LTP’) transactions,” shared frontman Robert Smith.

Ticketmaster has been taking a lot of heat since Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” caused major issues for the website.

This is also not the first time Young has denounced large companies such as Ticketmaster. Last year, the singer posted a letter to his website demanding that his music be removed from Spotify. Young claimed the company spreads “fake information about vaccines—potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.” Spotify complied with Young’s request and removed his music days later, also stating that it removed “over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.” (Pitchfork)