Artists Should Unionize, Says Ticketmaster CEO

To gain leverage

Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard has called for artists to demand unionisation in the face of the raging Spotify debate sparked this time by Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich.

Hubbard was one of a number of executives to voice his opinion to Bob Lefsetz and said that he was "obsessed with solving this".

The Ticketmaster boss blamed the lack of action on managers and agents who keep [artist unionisation] from happening because they're afraid of poaching if they let another representative get close to their artist."

He argued: "Without a collective voice from the artist community, transformative forces will shape the future of [artists'] business (and potentially their craft) without them. And history says that is an exploitative environment for artists, and a mediocre-at-best experience for fans."

Comments

[Sevo]

Wait! Wait!
How about we get the government to LICENSE them?! That's it!

[Marty Feldman's Eyes]

I don't get it- there already is a musicians' union. I had to click through wondering if he was talking about painters or something.

At least in the states though, the musicians union is on the side of the RIAA (!) when it comes to DRM and copyright nonsense.

[ant1sthenes]

Without a collective voice from the artist community, transformative forces will shape the future of [artists'] business (and potentially their craft) without them. And history says that is an exploitative environment for artists, and a mediocre-at-best experience for fans.

Pretty hard to keep the economic solidarity from turning into or used as leverage to enforce artistic conformity. I know which would be worse for art.