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Selling concert tickets is… not especially hard. Despite what your $20 “service fee”  would suggest, on a scale of difficult   problems to solve, it lies somewhere between  light bulb installation and check cashing. The only remotely hard part — you might say  a ticketing company’s one job — is to handle   the extremely predictable surge of traffic  the day Taylor Swift tickets go on sale. So, of course, that’s exactly what TicketMaster   failed spectacularly at during  her recent “Eras” tour presale. Traumatized fans told stories of $200 service  fees, cryptic error messages, and $50,000 seats. Most left with nothing to show for their  eight hours of fighting in the trenches.   Others felt like lottery winners  simply for having been granted   the privilege of paying five, six, or  nine hundred dollars for nosebleeds. But although demand for this tour  could hardly have been higher,   there’s nothing new about the  unpleasantness of buying tickets. When service fees commonly  cost more than the actual seat,   it’s no surprise America’s hatred of  TicketMaster makes Comcast look favorable. How does the company get away with it? “Because,” common sense would say, “they can.” TicketMaster is so deeply embedded in the industry  that it’s nearly impossible for large artists to   avoid. Of Taylor Swift’s 52 upcoming shows,  for instance, it sold the tickets for 47. Not only does it sell twice as many  tickets as its closest competitor,   StubHub, but it also represents performers,  owns venues, and acts as a promoter. All of this is 100% true. And yet, it’s not the reason  service fees are astronomical,   scalping is rampant, or buying  tickets, just generally sucks. Sponsored by Audible. Listen to “Ticket Masters:   The Rise of the Concert Industry  and How the Public Got Scalped”,   or one of thousands of other great audiobooks  for free with the link in the description. What’s the “right” price for a product? Ask the seller and they’ll  tell you “that’s easy!”,   the right price is the one  people are willing to pay. Entire careers and disciplines exist for the   sole purpose of finding that  number with penny precision. And because price has the largest impact  on profit — more so than production costs   or even volume sold — the science of  pricing has gotten pretty darn good. Through surveys, trends, and algorithms,  companies systematically deconstruct the   value consumers place on each feature.  A $3 gallon of milk might derive 30   cents of its value from being reduced  fat and a nickel from its packaging. They can then use those values to  determine the theoretical price   of a new product or a matrix of products  with different combinations of features. Concerts, on the other hand, are  just about the opposite of milk. Not only are they an experience but  they’re also highly emotionally charged. Besides, no two shows are the same.   Taylor Swift will only ever play the Eras  Tour in Kansas City on July 7th once. Now, none of this would faze an economist.   After all, there are many one-of-a-kind...