The answer may not surprise fans of the lovable rock band.
Recently, a joint statement was issued by over 110 of Japan’s biggest names in music, including artists and major events such as the Fuji Rock Festival. The statement was a strong call to end the practice of ticket scalping in which unlicensed sellers purchase large amounts of concert tickets in order to sell them to fans at inflated prices. It’s an unnecessary and parasitic practice depriving both the artists and their fans of money.
A quick glance at the list of names on the poster will reveal many heavy-weights spanning several genres of the Japanese music scene past and present from Mr. Children and Aiko to Babymetal and Perfume.
However, one name that was conspicuously absent from the list was the fun-loving and hard-rocking band Maximum the Hormone. This caused some to wonder if the group was overlooked or worse, that they might not have been against ticket scalping for some bizarre reason. It generated enough buzz that the band issued a statement over Twitter.
「チケット高額転売防止」を求める共同声明が発表され話題になっておりますが、我々マキシマム ザ ホルモンの名前がこの中にない理由と過去に僕らが行ったダフ屋対策の話をテキストにしました。画像でお読みください。
— マキシマム ザ ホルモン (@MTH_OFFICIAL) August 24, 2016
byマキシマムザ亮君 pic.twitter.com/3Ujq3LHTjh
The tweet instructs us to read through the two attached pictures of text for their explanation and official stance on ticket resale.
“Maximum the Hormone is not listed among those in the joint statement. The reason is the agencies representing the artists on that list are members of groups like the Federation of Music Producers Japan, the Japan Association of Music Enterprises, the All-Japan Concert & Live Entertainment Promoters Conference, and the Computer Ticketing Association.
Our agency Mimikajiru is not a member of these groups. Whether that’s because of some grown-up matters or because they’re too cheap to pay the dues, we don’t know. Anyway, as we told our boss at the label, sarcastically, ‘We’re doing major releases, but [not being a member] is like indie or doujin (self-published) stuff.'”
So it appears that Maximum the Hormone didn’t appear on the list because they aren’t members of the trade groups putting it out…possibly due to cheapness.
▼ They’re also against illegal song downloading via the now defunct Winny.
In the other image file, the band goes on to say that they are indeed against ticket scalping and even developed their own system to combat it.
“A while back, as a countermeasure to ticket resale, we came up with an insane plan called, ‘No 400-word essay submitted about how much you love Hormone, no buying tickets.’ In other words, scalpers would have to go through all the effort of studying our music and history to pretend to be a fan and buy our tickets.
However, we dropped the system soon after. It took all of us reading together three months to get through them all and our eyes were tried. (Stupid!)”
Reaction to the band’s position and efforts against ticket scalping was largely positive.
“They read through them all! That’s kind of cool actually.”
“Awesome, that’s stupid but I love it.”
“That’s an interesting idea and good for fans, but what about the friends of fans who could buy tickets and experience the group for the first time.”
“In theory, that was a good idea.”
“They are onto something, we do need a one step system like they had.”
So, let the record show that Maximum the Hormone is against the exploitation of fans through ticket resale just like most of us are. However, also like most of us, they are too “cheap” and “stupid” (their words, not ours!) to find a good way to stop it. But they are trying, and if we do too, we may just be able to lick this problem someday.
Source: Twitter/@MTH_OFFICIAL, My Game News Flash (Japanese)
Top Image: Amazon
Inset Image: Twitter/@MTH_OFFICIAL
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