Fwd: The Briefing: Taylor Swift the Trust Buster

Greetings!

Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour united music fans, and now her fury towards Ticketmaster has resulted in an antitrust lawsuit against the ticketing giant that seems to have united people across the ideological spectrum. The U.S. Department of Justice and state and district attorneys general today filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment for operating a monopoly that they said muscles out competitors, hurts artists and forces fans to pay exorbitant fees. The lawsuit created a rare kumbaya moment in a heavily divided U.S., as Democratic and Republican senators, Red and Blue state attorneys general and libertarian and progressive think-tankers locked metaphorical arms. If Drake and Kendrick Lamar settle their beef and endorse the lawsuit, then we’ll know for sure that world peace is possible.

A lot of the anticompetitive conduct that the DOJ and crew accuse Ticketmaster of in their lawsuit has been known for decades, going back to the 1990s when the band Pearl Jam went on a crusade against the company’s ticketing monopoly. But that effort went nowhere. In fact, the Obama Administration’s DOJ allowed the company to get even more powerful in 2010 by approving its merger with Live Nation.

Eventually though, Ticketmaster ticked off the one person you definitely don’t want to cross. In November 2022, the company turned the ticketing for Taylor Swift’s tour into a debacle, making enemies of millions of her fans and Swift herself. Ticketmaster begged for forgiveness, but it was too late: A couple months later, the Senate Judiciary committee dragged Live Nation executives into a hearing room for a public flogging, as lawmakers competed to see who could awkwardly shoehorn the most Taylor Swift lyrics into their polemics.

This time, the grandstanding seems to have prompted the nation’s antitrust enforcers into their most serious challenge yet to the company. The DOJ’s lawsuit didn’t cite Taylor Swift or her lyrics. But her influence is all over it.            

In Other News

• The Securities and Exchange Commission greenlit the first of a two-step process that could see exchanges list exchange-traded funds linked to thespot price of ether (more here). 
• Snowflake shares closed 5% lower on Thursday after the company said on Wednesday that its product revenue is expected to top out at 27% in the current quarter, about seven percentage points slower than the revenue growth the company posted in its first quarter (more here).
• Meta Platforms and Alphabet are trying to sign deals with Hollywood Studios that would allow the tech companies to license content and use it to train AI video technology, according to Bloomberg.
• SpaceX is considering a June tender offer that may value the business at around $200 billion, according to Bloomberg. 
• xAI has brought on Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and other big name investors for its $6 billion targeted fundraising round, according to The Financial Times. 

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