| This past week, Republicans and Democrats briefly abandoned partisan warfare to unite against a common foe: Ticketmaster. Two months ago, ticket sales for the latest Taylor Swift tour collapsed into a glitch-filled fiasco, outraging customers and drawing a denunciation from the singer herself. On Tuesday, senators from both parties held a hearing on the imbroglio, grilling the company’s president and attempting to curry favor with voters by quoting lyrics from Swift songs such as “Karma.” Will their posturing make a difference? A 2009 article in The New Yorker suggests that the odds are slim. In “The Price of the Ticket,” the staff writer John Seabrook outlines the history of ticketing (“thought to have been invented in the Elizabethan era”), as well as the emergence of scalping, “convenience charges,” and other innovations loathed by music fans. Swift enthusiasts will surely roll their eyes at the irony of Ticketmaster’s origin story: the company was founded, in 1976, by a pair of graduate students “who were frustrated at not being able to get tickets to their favorite rock shows.” But, as Seabrook notes, artists themselves have sometimes contributed to the problems, as Bruce Springsteen did when he “inadvertently helped to create an orgy of speculation and scalping” before his “Working on a Dream” tour. The ensuing mess might sound familiar: Springsteen pronounced himself “furious,” and politicians from his home state followed suit. The proposed legislation that followed had a cute name—the BOSS ACT—but, based on Tuesday’s hearing, it doesn’t seem to have done much long-term good. | 
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