I don't think this is accurate. Ticketmaster/LiveNation control most good/big venues so artists have to deal with them in some way. Artists generally don't want to charge market clearing prices to their fans (for niceness and PR reasons) but Ticketmaster is happy to be the bad guy and do that via exorbitant fees. I'm very in favor of breaking up Ticketmaster but we should be clear-eyed about what that will do: it will transfer money from either Ticketmaster to scalpers or transfer money from Ticketmaster to artists.
Fundamentally, if there's someone out there willing to pay up to $x for a space-limited event, they will find someone to give that $x to. I'd rather that person be the artist.
There was an article in the LATimes article a few years ago with the former ceo of Ticketmaster who explicitly confirmed the above. Ticketmaster does a deal with the band to charge as much as possible and take all the negative blowback or whatever about it and then gives them a kickback.
Fundamentally, if there's someone out there willing to pay up to $x for a space-limited event, they will find someone to give that $x to. I'd rather that person be the artist.