No Doubt is sticking it to Ticketmaster by selling 10% of the tickets for its North American Tour directly to fans. The goal, according to Jim Guerinot, No Doubt's manager, is for fan club members to buy tickets instead of 2nd party distributors such as TicketNow, the legal scalping division of Ticketmaster. This is the same problem Bruce Springsteen and his fans have been pissed about for weeks.

This news comes in the middle of the controversial Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. To hear the latest, Billy Corgan, who is now more dead to me than he was before, says he endorses the merger that would create a ticket monopoly.

Hopefully, as the war continues, No Doubt has opened the door for more artists to sell tickets on their own terms and no one will listen to Billy Corgan. Wow, I never thought I’d be pro-No Doubt and anti-Smashing Pumpkins. How things change since middle school.