“The Monopoly”--the most evil band in the world--embodies the worst of one company's dominance and selfishness to step on fan rights to fair ticketing experiences. The non-profit organization Fan Fairness Coalition (FFC) launched the “band” to protest TicketMaster and parent company Live Nation’s 70% control of the ticketing industry.

FFC enlisted BUTTER to craft touring band-quality tracks aimed at the conglomerates with barbed lyrics, including “Then we made you wait forever / and kicked you to the curb / And when you tried to reach out to us / well you never even heard a word” (“Keep Coming Back”).

In 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged, forming a monopoly that owns 70% of all live music venues--leaving fans with no alternatives despite Ticketmaster's poor service and overpriced tickets.

Fans have come to expect from TicketMaster the phenomenon of crashing during on-sales when it matters most, queues that go on forever, ticket price surges, tickets that seem to disappear, and restrictions on fans' rights to resell the tickets they buy. Ultimately, TicketMaster supports a system that doesn't serve fans.

The Fan Fairness Coalition (FFC) is a lobbying organization that works to protect fans' rights to a fair ticketing experience. They provide resources to help fans make their voices heard. This campaign from the FFC helped create a grassroots effort with over 75,000 letters sent from fans to the US Congress. The non-profit aims to rally live viewing audiences and let policymakers know they have global support. The music videos and The Monopoly content drive audiences to contact their members of Congress and demand that the Department of Justice take swift action. In February 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster, and in April 2024, the DOJ began steps to file a formal antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation.

TicketMaster has had a devastating impact on fans across America who are already struggling with rising costs and financial challenges. FFC believes it is time for Congress to uphold the principles of fairness and competition by doing something about it. With control of over an estimated 70% of the live event ticketing market, TicketMaster’s impact on the live event ticketing industry can’t be overstated. It was time to start putting control back in the hands of fans.

FFC’s objectives were to connect with fans using the medium they love and strive to protect: music itself. Collaborating with BUTTER Music and Sound, they sought to bring the issue directly to fans in language (and lyrics) they understand, driving urgency--and no small amount of anger--onto the issue to get fans to contact their lawmakers.

Buying tickets to a concert has become a nightmare. Tickets cost thousands of dollars, fans have to wait online for hours, and then the site crashes. The Taylor Swift ticket fiasco is the best example, yielding widespread condemnation from fans--and Taylor herself. The strategy behind this campaign mixed fan rage on TikTok with their love for new bands and music while harnessing their passion for political action, inspiring them to contact their senator to disband this illegal monopoly.

To break up the real monopoly, we created a fictional band called “The Monopoly”. The band embodied everything evil about Ticketmaster: selfishness, arrogance, greed, and complete disregard for the fans.

We worked with TikTok Influencers to introduce our band to major fanbases on TikTok, such as Swifties, BTS Army, and The Stylers. We launched an album with original songs like "Puppet Fan," and "Ticket Servant," each with its own music video as well as a mockumentary that narrated the band's evil story.

Each TikTok video ended with a call to “Break Up The Monopoly”, with a direct link to send an email to Congress.

BUTTER had the unique challenge to simultaneously create 5 unique tracks across a variety of genres (R&B/Soul, Rock, Pop, Electronic, Dance) that could all feel like they were composed and performed by The Monopoly, and needed to feel authentic in its production and performance despite their tongue-in-cheek lyrics.

The band had to sound legit. However, given a very tight timeline of a little over a week to get everything created in advance of the shoot so that the band could lip-sync, we had to spread the compositions across multiple in-house composers to produce, record, and sing on each track, and therefore were juggling the challenge of revising multiple tracks at once across time zones.

The finalized music videos and mockumentary video went live globally on YouTube, with subsequent TikTok and Spotify ads to inspire passionate fans to reach out to Congress.

Thanks to a summer of a pending investigation and millions of disgruntled would-be Eras Tour attendees, all campaign content across all platforms combined saw 30M views and counting, which includes TikTok and YouTube, with 38M total media impressions.

The message was working: by January 2024, over 72,000 letters from music enthusiasts had been forwarded through the Fan Fairness Coalition to Members of Congress in the United States. Shortly thereafter, in February 2024, the DOJ launched an antitrust probe against Live Nation, whom prosecutors publicly deemed “uncooperative” (Bloomberg). As of April 15, 2024, the government had finally had enough, and the Justice Department stated its intention to file an antitrust suit against Live Nation.