I'd be very interested in a more reputable source than "I have heard". It would make a substantial difference in the validity of the premise of the article, but I can't find anything that suggests this is actually the case other than baseless speculation on forum threads. I've read a lot of Reddit posts asserting that artists are in cahoots with Ticketmaster and not a lot of any evidence. Ticketmaster itself, as well as anything I can find written by journalists, suggests that the artist gets only the face value of the ticket and the fees are shared between Ticketmaster and the venue.
I was told this by people that worked for Ticketmaster. They worked on their software team so they wouldn't have been "in the know" on that kind of stuff, so it's possible they were just extrapolating from the same Reddit posts and articles everyone else is.
