Sure, but the economist would say that Taylor Swift should have made every penny of the $300 ticket cost. Live Nation getting even a penny is the market failure, not the cost of the ticket itself.
But why would Swift (or other artists for that matter) want to start their own ticket processing companies? They're not, they're going to want to contract that out. And if you're going to contract out the ticket processing from the get-go, they're the ones literally collecting the money from people buying tickets in the first place.
And I really don't get your example with credit card fees. You're suggesting the credit card processor not collect the fee at the point of sale and instead send all the money straight to Swift's bank account and then expect her to turn around later and cut a check? How is that more efficient than just having them collect their fee at the point of sale? It is just shuffling money and complicating it unnecessarily.
And once again, would most artists really even want to personally get involved in handling all the mechanics of who pays who when and how? I doubt it, they'll once again probably just contract that part out as well. They have a lot of work they need to do as the performer to get ready for the show. So once again it'll still just be some middleman they hire to do all this financial plumbing.
I agree, it looks like there's a certain level of monopoly with TM/LN in this space, and it sounds like artists pretty much need to take the whole package or none of if the artist wants to play at major venues. Maybe allowing these things to split up and be a bit more competitive will reduce prices, make things better for the artists, or whatever. Maybe forcing these people to separate just creates more friction and it gets harder to put on a big show or ends up more expensive overall.
In the end, these middlemen will continue to exist in some form because they do provide value, especially at the scale of putting on a show for many tens of thousands of people.
It's what people want, so they feel better about things. It's pointless and silly, because it's all fungible.
In general the public doesn't like how the sausage is made, and if you reveal parts of the making they get angry about it - even if everyone involved basically agrees it's for the best.
(Ask the random Swift fan how much the A/V company is paid to manage the equipment and they'll probably be off by an order of magnitude or more - the most famous example of this kind of thinking is "I can make eggs at home, how come a restaurant is so expensive?")
Ok, so the government smashes LiveNation to bits. There's still going to be some contractor that gets paid to handle the ticketing and promoting and dealing with venues and what not. Its not like Taylor Swift alone is the one printing out the tickets, scanning them, managing the online marketplace for resales/transfers of digital tickets, dealing with venue contracts, managing concessions agreements, etc.
Maybe TM/LN are an abusive monopoly in their current position. Maybe they're too integrated in the whole market. Sure sounds like it. But even then Swift isn't getting the full $300 of the ticket cost while the hundreds of other people involved in getting the show together get $0.00.
