Sep 21, 2026
Forget paper tickets for concerts. Large ticketing companies now force concertgoers to use mobile apps full of exploitative algorithms and surveillance. Jesse Jarnow, a music journalist and WFMU DJ, talks with Mark about what’s going wrong.
Jesse Jarnow, a WFMU radio host who wrote a book on Yo La Tengo, said he has “endless contempt” for these large ticket companies.• Ticketmaster Biometric Check Clears Face Data in 60 Days; Failed Checks Hold Data 3 Years (Tech Times, Aug 18, 2026):
“The ticketing app thing has infected almost every venue in the city,” he said. “It's like I live in New York, this venue is in New York, this band is from New York, but somehow to enter this room in New York where this band from New York is going to play, I have to do all these interactions with some giant-ass corporation of people who probably don't go to see live music.”
When a fan tries to log in to Ticketmaster or complete a ticket purchase and the platform decides something looks off, some of them now face a prompt they did not agree to when they created their account: scan your face, photograph your government-issued ID, and hand that data to a company called Persona Identities — the same vendor whose entire government dashboard codebase sat exposed on a publicly accessible federal server for hours in February, requiring no exploit to access.• Ticket Resale Laws by U.S. State: “New Jersey requires ticket brokers to be licensed and imposes disclosure and refund obligations.” As for New York:
New York has one of the most comprehensive ticket resale laws. Arts & Cultural Affairs Law §§ 25.30–25.34 require ticket resellers (“ticket brokers”) to be licensed, prohibit the use of bots, prohibit reselling within 1,500 feet of venues, require disclosure of total prices and seat locations, and mandate refund guarantees when events are cancelled or tickets are not delivered. The law also forbids venues from restricting resale and prohibits speculative listings.• @bernmanmatt on Bluesky (Sep 8 and 9, 2026):
Have tickets to a show tonight that we bought through Stubhub. The tickets still aren’t available to download and apparently will not be until 30 minutes before the GA show starts, which will already be one hour after the doors open. Getting legit annoyed about all aspects of this idiocy.• Can New York Stop Ticket Scalpers From Gouging Concertgoers? (Hollywood Reporter, Feb 5, 2026): “A state senator will introduce legislation Friday that, if passed, would place a price cap preventing scalpers from reselling tickets for greater than their face value.” (See also NYS Music coverage.)
. . . [then, the next day]. . .
Heads up y’all: Yesterday Stubhub failed to provide me tickets I’d bought, failed to provide replacements, and refused to refund my money. Neither customer service phone number works and the customer service email auto replies that it’s no longer monitored, so there’s just online chat.
We are so grateful and humbled by the enormous demand for the two Feels live shows we announced last week, and it has taken us a minute to fully understand everything that went down during the on sale. The reason these shows came about is because our fans asked, “Why aren’t you playing this live?” We asked ourselves the same question and found a small window of time when we could all do it (which was not an easy task!). We truly did not expect this overwhelming response, and while we did try to prepare for it, the resulting ticket-buying experience was not what we had hoped for. Our team did everything they could in advance to set up a fair and affordable ticketing experience and did their best to foresee any issues that might arise. Unfortunately, as you all know now, that didn’t happen as planned and a couple things transpired that were out of our control.Mark’s upcoming conference: Gel 2026, Fri-Sat, Oct 2-3, in Accord, NY, two hours north of NYC.
We want to explain those issues to you as clearly and concisely as we can, based on what has been explained to us. In NY, Bowery Presents’ registration system inadvertently sent an incorrect communication out to those who had registered for the Knockdown Center show telling them the presale was happening that day (Wednesday) instead of Thursday. Then on Thursday, the Fonda & Goldenvoice’s ticketing system got attacked by bots at the exact time the presale happened, which triggered Goldenvoice to have to cancel EVERYONE’S code and reissue new codes. A lot of you missed out on a chance to purchase tickets because of these errors, and that just really sucks.
No one can control the resale market. It is legal in CA and NY for a person to resell a ticket they purchased on an authorized resale website. It is infuriating to us that there is nothing anyone can do to stop that or to set a limit on the resale price. We realize that the demand also encourages this, but it not something we expected and our tickets were already priced as high as we were comfortable with. We’re sorry and we’ve spent the last week thinking of how to make it right the best we can. We are as frustrated as you all have been throughout this.
We are here to announce an additional show in NY and an additional show in the LA area. We know we can’t please everyone, but we’re doing the very best that we can.
Oct 21 Knockdown Center - Queens, NY
Oct 26 Fox Theater Pomona - Pomona, CA