The other day I posted the text of some excerpts from last week's Senate Judiciary hearing on the proposed Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. In my opinion, the sections I highlighted stood out above nearly all other comments. They were unprecedented admissions by a music executive of where ticket service fees go (sometimes to the artist and promoter) and what percentage of tickets Ticketmaster actually sells (meaning other parties may be profiting from the tickets withheld from the first-sale marketplace).

My friend Ben Sisario pointed me to coverage of the trial at the blog Hitsville. Bill Wyman caught the same thing and wrote about it here, although he pointed to statements made later than the ones I highlighted. Wyman focused on a section of the hearing in which Azoff talked about ticket inventory. Ticketmater gets, Azoff testified, 80-85% of the tickets while the "vast majority" of withheld tickets tend to be the best seats in the house. Wrote Wyman:

This is the first time to my knowledge this has been publicly acknowledged by a major person in the music business. It’s the headline of the day.

I agree. And that's why I am so unimpressed by the public grilling of Ticketmaster. The Senators have shown they understand just the surface of the issue. Just enough to damn the company for its involvement in the secondary market. Just enough to appear to be looking out for Joe Fan who just wants an affordable ticket to see his favorite band.

Below the surface is an unseen supply of tickets that are not made available at face value. It is a waste of taxpayers' dollars to scold Ticketmaster for its inventory management and pricing practices without addressing that considerable chunk of tickets that escapes the primary market. But that would require singling out the artist (in general, not any specific artist), and the artist wears a halo and is, unfortunately, all but untouchable in this debate.