On Christmas Eve, country star Zach Bryan issued a statement vowing to find a way to keep ticket prices low and easy to obtain for his yet-to-be-announced 2023 tour without naming Ticketmaster as a problem, as he has done in the past.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t find another place to invoke the ticketing behemoth by name explicitly. Along with his written response, Bryan also dropped a surprise live album called All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster (Live at Red Rocks).
The title of Bryan’s new album is a play on a tweet from Nov. 15, when he wrote at the end of a long series of messages criticizing the company; I am completely aware of the affiliation between Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
All future decisions will reflect this, and until there is a significant change in the system, all of my homies will continue to despise Ticketmaster. (This is my final word on the subject.) Sorry for bothering you.
His last statement
That tweet wasn’t his final word on the matter, but fans who sympathize with him are amuse that He transformed his final remark into the name of a brand-new album that, like his studio output from 2022, is certain to garner enormous streaming figures.
Bryan has been one of the most-consumed artists in any genre over the last year, not just oneof the country’s new breakout stars.
Bryan fulfilled his promise while headlining Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre in early November by releasing the concert as a live album. The performance took place during an (obviously) unexpected fall blizzard. It included the song Snow, performed to the delight of the freezing audience as the storm system dumped exactly that on them. The near-whiteout at the Red Rocks performance this past Christmas weekend will be clearly remember by listeners in the majority of the nation.
Bryan has been an active communicator on social media since becoming famous, but rarely doing interviews and has recently used his platforms to vow that he would not be using Ticketmaster for future tours, indicating that he was still working on finding another way to distribute tickets. He became the highest-profile artist to wage such a public war against Ticketmaster since Pearl Jam in the 1990s; that band, After having trouble locating alternatives for promoting tours, they eventually reached agreements with the ticketing provider that allayed the band’s worries.
Since becoming famous, Bryan, who hardly ever does interviews, has become a prodigious social media communicator. Bryan has recently used his platforms to promise he would not utilize Ticketmaster for future tours, signaling that he was still looking for a different means to distribute tickets. He became the most well-known performer since Pearl Jam in the 1990s to openly go to war with Ticketmaster in such a significant way. Pearl Jam subsequently struck terms with the ticketing company that it considered satisfactory and overcame its problems.
Power and tactics have escalated this year.
Ticketmaster has argued that it is left to the artist’s camp to establish prices and that as a firm, it earns little of the tacked-on costs that customers and, more recently, legislators worry about as controversy over its power and tactics has escalated this year.
Additionally, artists can set a price ceiling on their most expensive tickets and opt out of the platinum system.
Bryan, who doesn’t mind building relationships, made sure to wish Ticketmaster a happy holiday season by including the company’s name in the record’s title when he announced the release of the new album on his social media channels.
After two studio albums, the live album is Bryan’s third release of the year. However, there are still more projects in the works for him. The musician disclosed at the end of November that he is working on a studio album for 2023 with the working title Writers and Fighters.
Barack Obama, the former president, selected Bryan’s song Something in the Orange as one of his top 25 songs of 2022 on Saturday, giving Bryan his Christmas Eve gift.
