Ticketmaster is king of the world?ro;”but maybe not for long.

Ticketing-industry giant Ticketmaster has found itself embroiled in a monopoly suit. Like Microsoft, Ticketmaster may evade the charges and receive, at best, a slap on the wrist. The surprise player in this case is the challenger: a relatively obscure Colorado band.

The String Cheese Incident are a successful touring band with their own independent label, SCI Fidelity Records, and a post-Deadhead cult following that trails the five-piece jam band from gig to gig. They've played Radio City Music Hall and have been reviewed in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and Blender, but they don't pack the arena-packing punch of household names like, say, Phish or the Dave Matthews Band. What's a band without industry clout doing waving the Sherman Antitrust Act at an industry leader and subsidiary of a multinational interactive commerce conglomerate?

As it turns out, the String Cheese Incident is backed by its own mini-conglomerate, Madison House, also known as the Madison House/SCI "family of companies." Madison House serves as a booking and management agent as well as a label, design house, ticketing company and travel agency. The company's press kit describes its mission as "centraliz[ing] all of the industry's individual parts" and "build[ing] and nurtur[ing] sustainable careers for their clients."

To a certain extent, this progressive corporate model rings true. Business on a smaller scale means signed bands aren't required to bring in as much money in order to turn a profit and can then (hopefully) see more of what they earn. It also suggests that relationships with artists can be developed; they won't be seen as disposable commodities, squeezed for cash and discarded as yesterday's trend. With String Cheese, Madison House has kept them safely out of the mainstream industry, even as their fan base has been expanding. It's also given them a solid opportunity to sue Ticketmaster for restraint of commerce.

In the words of general manager Jason Mastrine, SCI Ticketing (a division of Madison House) is the 21st-century version of the Grateful Dead's ticket mail order. Like the Dead, String Cheese Incident is primarily a touring band. Like Dead fans, String Cheese devotees tend to trail the group from venue to venue. To accommodate them, the band started with an email list and mail order, which was fine when the band was still a local phenomenon.

Seeing an opportunity to expand sales and further accommodate fans, in 1999 SCI Ticketing engaged a private-label system run by dotcom startup TicketWeb to sell tickets online. In 2000 Ticketmaster acquired TicketWeb, so SCI went solo. They invested in their own network, servers and software to deal directly with fans. One of their innovations was offering a single service charge on multiple tickets?a great thing for String Cheese fans.

A year later, Ticketmaster caught wind that they were being cut out of the equation and, in May 2002, issued cease-and-desist letters to venues with exclusive contracts. Ticketmaster clients were told to hold back no more than eight percent of their total seats for outside distribution; these tickets could only be sold through "legitimate fan clubs," as defined by Ticketmaster. Distribution through phone or other outlets such as SCI Ticketing was not permitted.

Over the past 15 years, Washington, DC, punk band Fugazi has played thousands of live shows, and says they've never charged more than $7 per ticket. Much like SCI Tickets, Fugazi's own record label, Dischord, has found itself at odds with Ticketmaster, whose service charge increases the cost of admission by as much as 50 percent. Ticketmaster's then-president Fred Rosen was convinced to cut Fugazi an unprecedented deal: a $1.25 to $1.50 service charge per ticket. For the most part, both parties found the arrangement mutually agreeable.

"Ticketmaster have a well-deserved bad rep," Fugazi's Ian McKaye told New York Press. "Their connections [to] Clear Channel [are] so huge and Byzantine. As a business?they play hardball. On the other hand a lot of bands out there, and I can't speak for String Cheese Incident, their practices are hardball too. If a band wants to make as much money as possible?seven-eighths of the pie?they'll just make a bigger pie. That's price inflation. If a band is offering to eat up less, other people will say 'Hey, we'll eat less too.' It's a different way of looking at business."

This August, SCI Ticketing filed suit against Ticketmaster in the U.S. District Court of Colorado, alleging loss of business due to anticompetitive practices and "abuse of monopoly power." By September, Ticketmaster responded in kind with a countersuit, denying any monopolistic practices and alleging SCI Ticketing has engaged venues in willful breach of contract, and is after Ticketmaster's rightful profits. The resolution is now in the hands of the courts.

For smaller promoters, trying to provide advance tickets without a service charge is still a problem. The latest innovation in the underground is to cut a deal at smaller venues wherein a certain number of tickets (say, half of the capacity) are held off. The promoter can sell these tickets over the internet and accept payment via a service such as PayPal, and then submit the money and "prepaid list" to the club owners.

Clearly, this approach won't work for a band like the String Cheese Incident. But for everyone else, for the time being at least, who needs Ticketmaster?