The Police are coming back through the US and will be stopping in Phoenix again.  [This is, my friends, a small miracle.  Despite Phoenix being the 5th most populous city in the US, many great acts refuse to make a stop here.  I digress...]  In an amazing lineup, Elvis Costello is "opening" for them, despite Elvis calling The Police "bloody dreadful."

Today, I purchased my tickets for the show through Ticketmaster.  The process is not the quickest, but that I can live with.  I start to get really steamed when I calculate that for every dollar I spent, Ticketmaster, the venue and/or the promoter made an additional $0.47 above and beyond the cost of my ticktes.  So here I sit, $80 worth of tickets costing me $115.25.

But here's what really chaps my hide: of the methods available to get your tickets, Ticketmaster charges $2.50 to deliver your tickets via email. 

For those of you not-so-technically-inclined, let me explain this to you.  It costs Ticketmaster first class postage to mail your tickets to you.  Today, that's $0.41.  They do not charge you a dime for that service.  Email, if you don't remember, is free.  The tools they use to make the tickets were long-ago paid for.  (Software to create bar codes and PDFs are relatively inexpensive; ~$1000 one time charge.)  So, can you tell me why they charge $2.50 for something that is essentially free?!

This, my dear friends, is highway robbery and just another reason why the music industry is collapsing under it's own weight.  Hangers-on and companies with nominal value-add are squeezing every last dime out of the consumer.  And they wonder why music is being pirated?