As we reported last week, June 1 is the official release date of Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped. Written by Relix editors Josh Baron and Dean Budnick the book “chronicles the as-yet-untold story of the live entertainment industry, revealing its origins, development and ongoing strategies of companies such as Ticketmaster, Live Nation and StubHub and the efforts of numerous independent competitors. With over 100 exclusive interviews and utilizing many previously unreleased documents, this character-driven book explores the actions and impact of the iconoclasts guiding these companies while folding in related tales of scalping syndicates, old school music promoters and would-be Internet tycoons along with the brash business decisions of such world-renowned groups as the Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam and The Rolling Stones.” As we have noted, one chapter focuses on the development of the Grateful Dead Ticketing Service, while another examines the String Cheese Incident’s battle with Ticketmaster in 2003.

Next Thursday May 26 Budnick and Baron will host a book release event at New York City’s 92YTribeca. Budnick and Baron will moderate a panel of industry leaders who are featured in the book from 7-8:30 PM. Joining them will be John Scher, Mike Luba, Eric Baker and Andrew Dreskin. Scher is longtime national promoter, who worked closely with the Grateful Dead, among many other acts and the founder of Metropolitan Talent Presents. Baker, co-founded StubHub in 2000 and has since launched the London-based secondary ticketing platform Viagogo. Luba, who is now the President of Global Music S2BN Entertainment, was a co-founder of Madison House where he managed the String Cheese Incident, working with the band as its SCI Ticketing division brought suit against Ticketmaster in 2003. Dreskin was a principal in the TicketWeb, which sold to Ticketmaster in 2000 and more recently founded Ticketfly, a rising ticketing company in competition with Ticketmaster. The four panelists will address questions from Budnick and Baron, as well as those posed by the audience.