Ticketmaster is the company everyone loves to hate, and today it acknowledged as much. Quietly, the ticketing behemoth that's now part of Live Nation Entertainment launched a blog, making a very real effort to finally put a consumer-friendly face on the largely automated, fee-heavy operation. 

In a post attributed to CEO Nathan Hubbard, the company admitted the following: "We get it -- you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for." Hubbard doesn't totally break down the allotment of the fees, but reiterates some of what is already known. He wrote, "Most of the parties in the live event value chain participate in these service fees either directly or indirectly -- promoters, venues, teams, artists and, yes, ticketing companies."

So fees are not going to go away, but Ticketmaster is making an effort to let customers know what kind of financial commitment they'll be making the moment they come to the site. For years, Ticketmaster waited until a potential concertgoer was nearly done with purchasing a ticket before unveiling the fees, which typically add a minimum of $10-$15 to the price. 

Now, at least for most events, prospective buyers will see a portion of the fees as soon as they select the tickets. So, for example, let's say you want to see Nick Cave's Grinderman at the Music Box @ Fonda (you should). A drop-down menu tells you that the $30 is actually $40.30. It's not until one clicks through the site that the fees are broken down, with a $2.50 facility charge, which goes to the venue operator, and a $7.80 "convenience charge," some of which goes to Ticketmaster, the promoter, credit card companies and artists. 

Yet the actual cost of the ticket still isn't $40.30. 

The final price comes to $47.30, thanks to an additional "order processing fee" and the $2.50 charge to print your own ticket. All told, fees add $17.30 to a single $30 ticket. In instances where the promoter owns the venue, the latter is double-dipping of a sort. The Goldenvoice-run Fonda comes with a $2.50 faculty fee, and Live Nation's own Palladium tacks on $1. 

Company chief Irving Azoff acknowledged some of the shortcomings of the new features on his Twitter page. He wrote, "can’t boil all fees down to a per ticket fee until we know how many tix are bought and shipping method chosen, so it has to happen later."

Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino has already accused the press of "scaring" artists from touring. Now the company's executive chairman, Irving Azoff, has gone so far as to call Billboard journalist-commentator Glenn Peoples a "jerk." 

Azoff's Twitter went live Tuesday. A spokesperson confirmed that the Twitter feed is indeed run by the famed industry executive and artist manager (the Eagles, Christina Aguilera and more). One of his first tweets, however, drew some criticism. Wrote Azoff: "So if you want ticket prices to go down stop stealing music."

Many, including Perez Hilton, took the comment as a direct attack on music consumers, implying that the tweet was instantly putting a Big Giant Corporation in one corner, and recession-addled fans in another. Writing his morning column on industry news on Billboard.biz, Peoples contended that "Twitter is hardly the place to reveal a company’s strategy for dealing with the competing forces of rising artist demands and consumer demands for cheaper tickets, but blaming high ticket prices solely on piracy is disappointing."

Much has been made over the last few years of the declining value of the album and song, what with 99 cent downloads and $2.99 digital albums on Amazon.com. But maybe it's time to start talking about the rapidly declining cost of the concert ticket. Days after Live Nation executives confessed that concert ticket prices are too high, the company continued to ramp up its low-priced ticket promotions.

So, the good news: Fans of the Jonas Brothers and Wolf Parade, and dozens of other acts, can snare $10 tickets to upcoming Southern California shows for one day only -- Tuesday. The bad news: If you've already paid, say, $57.98 for two Wolf Parade tickets for July 31 at the Wiltern, you're out of luck. The Live Nation fire-sale discount is even greater for the Jonas Brothers, where two of the cheapest seats to the act's Sept. 19 Irvine date would normally cost $99.70.

Perhaps its not surprising to see a tribute to Journey given the $10 treatment ($9.99 too high, if Pop & Hiss were asked, which it wasn't), but also included in the promo is Ozzfest's Aug. 14 gig in Devore, where the two cheapest tickets would normally run a fan $79.

One needn't look much further than Live Nation's own presentation to Wall Street last week to get some insight into the motivation behind such promotions. With the concert biz facing a slow summer, Live Nation has noted that North American concert attendance is down 3%, and sales at its Ticketmaster division are trending down 11%. When all is said and done, the company projected that 2010 sales for the top 100 touring acts could be down more than 15%.

A bright spot for the company has been its "no service fee" sales. The company noted that previous one-day discounts to $10 fueled a 7,000% increase in daily sales. The fine print states that $10 will be available only while "supplies last" during a 24-hour period beginning July 20. 

The bigger question, however, is whether the frequency of such promotions will permanently change consumer buying habits, forcing fans to wait to the last minute and forever question the cost of tickets. 

A full list of Live Nation's $10 promotions is available after the jump.

--Todd Martens

After noting during an investors meeting that ticket sales for the top 100 touring bands are down 12% this year, Live Nation Entertainment's major executives went on the defensive Thursday, blaming the press for "scaring" artists from touring and arguing that acts need to alter their pricing strategies. 

The company's CEO, Michael Rapino, and executive chairman, Irving Azoff, painted a grim picture for the second half of 2010 yet noted that major artist tours, and a more customer-service-focused approach, were on tap for 2011. 

Journey, Kenny Chesney, Neil Diamond, Van Halen and Fleetwood Mac were among the artists cited by Azoff as plotting outings in 2011. He added that Christina Aguilera, whose 2010 summer tour was taken off the docket, would be on the road next year. He also noted that more dates are on the horizon from the cast of "Glee," the hit Fox musical-comedy.  

Yet the company, a recently merged pairing of ticketing powerhouse Ticketmaster and promotions behemoth Live Nation, would first have to navigate a limp 2010.

"The press has implied the sky is falling," Rapino told Wall Street investors, yet he also noted that the company's operating income for 2010 will be down significantly from that of 2009, perhaps by as much as $80 million, and said Ticketmaster's sales are down about 12% from those of 2009.

"The press," Rapino said, has "scared about every artist" out of touring in the fourth quarter. A number of major tours have struggled in 2010, including the refurbished Lilith Tour, and once-can't-miss artists such as the Jonas Brothers have been canceling dates, as outlined in this front-page story in Friday's Times. Amid rampant reports of a down market, Rapino said, "a lot of artists who had planned to tour are now saying they're going to sit it out."

Yet the company's top brass did more than point fingers at the media, and promised a leaner, friendlier model for 2011. But first, artists would have to budge on ticket prices, executives said. Jason Garner, the company's CEO for global music, acknowledged that "ticket prices need to come down" and directed the second half of his statement at artists and managers: "Your guarantee needs to come down."

To that end, Live Nation Entertainment promised that "dynamic pricing," which would add numerous pricing tiers, would be more widely implemented in 2011.The company's executives said they were months away from introducing a ticketing inventory system that can adjust prices in real time. 

Think of the future of buying a concert ticket not too unlike that of buying an airline ticket, in which the price can go up or down in the days leading up to an event based solely on demand.

Live Nation Entertainment is forgoing all service charges this month on tickets for concerts at all amphitheaters the entertainment giant operates across the country.

“No Service Fee June” will apply to about 8 million tickets for 700 performances by more than 100 artists, from Alice in Chains to the Zac Brown Band, according to a release issued Tuesday by Live Nation.

In Southern California, that encompasses Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, the San Manuel Amphitheater in Devore, Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista and the San Diego State University Open Air Theatre.

“A fan in every seat is our mission this summer,” Live Nation President and Chief Executive Michael Rapino said in the statement, echoing a goal he stated last year before the hotly debated merger of the world’s largest concert promoter (Live Nation) with the largest ticket agency (Ticketmaster).  “We know that’s tough in this economy, so it’s our job to find a way to make concerts more affordable.”

Despite periodically waving add-on fees during promotions such as “No Service Fee Wednesdays” before and since the merger was approved in January by the U.S. Justice Department, concert-goers have continued voicing a steady stream of criticism over shows for which they are charged fees above and beyond the face value price of tickets.

A POP & HISS COMMENTARY

Monday was a historic day in the music business. Concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment posted its first quarter results as a newly merged company with ticketing giant Ticketmaster. Much of the post-earnings-call press has focused on the stats. The highlights: Concert attendance for the first quarter was down 3%, and the company's revenue from resale site TicketsNow has fallen sharply. 

But listen carefully to the conference call discussion with Live Nation Entertainment Chief Executive Michael Rapino and there are hints about the controversial company's future. And they are far removed from some of the pre-merger talk, especially when Rapino and Ticketmaster chief Irving Azoff went before Congress and noted that 40% of all concert tickets went unsold. 

Rapino told The Times last year: "In my business, the cheaper the ticket price the better. I'd love for more consumers to walk into an amphitheater, park, have a beer and eat a hot dog. There's no advantage to me to have anything but sold-out shows."

All sounds reasonable, and could lead one to believe a merger would be good for the consumer. The combined entities could use their data and power to better price concerts, and the fan wouldn't have to worry about being gouged. Why, just look at Live Nation's U2 tour, in which about 10,000 tickets per show were priced at an economical $30 -- binoculars not included. 

So where is the company sensing a growth opportunity? Concert prices! 

It sounds easy. Figure out who's playing in town. Buy tickets on the Web. What could be simpler in the age of Web 3.0?

This turns out to be maddeningly difficult for sussing out mid-tier or independent artists that aren't big enough to warrant the attention of Ticketmaster, which deals mostly with top acts.

Sure, there are local listings. Most newspapers have one, including The Times. And MySpace has one of the most comprehensive listings out there. But listings don't connect the dots for people by linking them right away to a way to buy tickets.

This is where BandsInTown, SonicLiving and Songkick come in. BandsInTown's co-founder, Todd Cronin (right), gave us a quick drive-by of how his app works on iPhone. Once you install the app, it peeks into your iTunes collection, sees what you like to listen to and takes note of where you are at the moment, using the iPhone's GPS.

It then trolls through its database of between 150,000 and 200,000 upcoming live concerts, narrows them down to the ones near you and serves up a customized list, complete with options for buying tickets. The San Diego online service works with hundreds of ticketing companies, including Ticketmaster, to keep up its extensive database of tour dates, which Cronin says covers "more than 95% of shows" out there.

"Anyone selling tickets, we likely have that show listed," Cronin said.

One word of caution: If you like music, you may end up finding more than you bargained for. This reporter found three concerts she hadn't known about, and is about to blow just under $100 for the tickets. Ignorance would have been cheaper, but it wouldn't have been as fun.

-- Alex Pham

Photo: Todd Cronin, co-founder, BandsInTown.com. Credit: Alex Pham / Los Angeles Times

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.