Why You Can’t Get a Ticket …

The Ringer
Jason Tate

Nathan Hubbard (former CEO of Ticketmaster), writing for The Ringer, on why trying to get tickets to major events is a pain in the ass:

The other way these held-back tickets weasel their way into the secondary market: The individuals who get the tickets realize that, ostensibly, someone just handed them cash. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but attending a concert or a game can be a pain in the ass. Industry insiders fortunate enough to obtain these tickets are just jaded enough that they don’t need to go like true fans do. And so they think about the traffic, and the parking, and the hassle, and they check prices on the secondary market. And they realize that whatever true fans are willing to pay sounds better than the work of actually going to the event. So they sell (out).

Steven Hyden’s ‘Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me’

Steven Hyden
Craig Manning

If you’ve ever told someone they’re a fucking moron for liking band X more than band Y, or for otherwise disagreeing with your obviously superior musical opinion, then Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me is the book for you. Written by Steven Hyden, a former contributor for Pitchfork, the AV Club, and Grantland (RIP), Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me is a thoroughly entertaining excavation of artist-versus-artist pissing contests. The subtitle says the book will teach us What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life. Hyden’s thesis is that, depending on which side you take in any given pop music war, your choice says something about you. Something like Oasis vs. Blur might seem pretty trivial for anyone who wasn’t actively paying attention to Britpop in the 1990s, but in the pages of Hyden’s book, these battles mean everything.

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Twitter Bets It All on Jack Dorsey

Twitter
Jason Tate

Nick Bilton, who wrote Hatching Twitter, a book I’ve recommended in the past, writes for Vanity Fair about the current state of Twitter:

If these expulsions sound like murders, that’s likely because many of them were committed with the same behind-the-scenes planning and mastery. In every instance, the man who was knocked off had no idea who was behind the coup that led to his demise. In 2013, after the publication of my book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, I was greeted with effusive (or enraged) phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from co-founders, board members, and senior employees who were excited to finally learn the true identities of their tormentors. I still occasionally receive calls from people inside the company asking me for information about a recent firing.