Bruce Springsteen To Ticketmaster: War!

Have you been Bosscocked yet? No? Well, if you watched Bruce Springsteen's Super Bowl performance, you were Bosscocked when Bruce did his now-famous Slide Into America. If you'd like to relive that experience, the internet would like to see you Bosscocked.

But many Bruce fans who tried to purchase tour tickets when they went on sale Monday morning were Bosscockblocked when Ticketmaster's site went crazy, timing out fans who were near the end of the purchase process, and also sending other customers on a dubious journey to online reseller Tickets Now.

The fans may be pissed, but Bruce, despite what he looks like in that photo to the left, is furious. Seriously, he says so in this open letter to his fans that is currently front and center and above the fold and everything on his site:

We know there was much confusion regarding Ticketmaster and TicketsNow during last Monday's on-sale dates. We were as confused as you were, as we were given no advance notice of the major changes in the Ticketmaster-TicketsNow world. (Bear in mind that we are not clients of any ticketing company, and that all those arrangements are between venues and ticketing companies.)

Last Monday, we were informed that Ticketmaster was redirecting your log-in requests for tickets at face value, to their secondary site TicketsNow, which specializes in up-selling tickets at above face value. They did this even when other seats remained available at face value. We condemn this practice.

The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you. We will continue to do our utmost now and in the future to make sure that these practices are permanently curtailed on our tours.

Damn - the Boss ain't messing around. And being the most popular man in New Jersey (not to mention a friend of Obama), his anger has gotten the attention of the office of the New Jersey attorney general, which is investigating matters. And if Springsteen's power needed any more confirmation, Ticketmaster's CEO (and Guns n' Roses manager) Irving Azoff issued a public apology:

While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark. Fans are confused and angry, which is the opposite of what we hoped to accomplish. We sincerely apologize to Bruce, his organization and, above all, his fans.

The letter goes on to outline all the future steps that Ticketmaster will take. It takes a lot to get an enormous entity like Ticketmaster to admit fault; they know Bruce, and the government, isn't playing around.

Ah and yes, the government. Ticketmaster will need their support if they want to push forward with a rumored merger with Live Nation. Not that Bruce thinks that's a good idea:

A final point for now: the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. Several newspapers are reporting on this story right now. If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives.