Comment by rglover
3 days ago
Go back to the old way. Get in line physically and go get the tickets. This is one of those "technology should help here but actually makes the problem worse in weird ways" type of situations.
Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor did this in 2018 and it was infinitely better (I also met a lot of people just standing in line—we recognized each other at the show later and ended up throwing each other around in the mosh pit—a great time) [1].
I like it. Your last bit is good marketing against those who think paying a linesitter / spot holder is all upside.
Also economics of paying linesitters make it relatively much less attractive than all-digital scalping. So I think you have a solid plan. Should greatly reduce scalping.
Reminds me of technologically-inclined woman who pointed out the flawed thinking behind a grocery store handing out first-gen iPads to their shelf stockers. “I love my iPad at home but this will cost them so much time compared to pen and paper.” (Gotta go find out whatever happened to putting an RFID tag in every product, maybe they needed to hit 1/10 of a cent instead of a penny or something)
If it can still be resold online, it won’t mitigate scalping much for on-demand shows. You can see that on any scalping-heavy items that require a person to be there physically to purchase the item (cards, collectibles from restaurants, and etc.).
Above-face-value ticket resale is illegal here and it helps a lot. But you need to make sure this gets prosecuted hard.
That excludes all fans who don't live in big cities. A lot of people travel just to go to shows.
Some people drove in. A few hardcore fans came into town (Chicago) the night before and had tents set up. There were also people coordinating with friends who did live in/close to the city to get the tickets and pay them back later.
Overall, that was the last really "old world" experience I had that reminded me why technology isn't always the right solution to a problem. Since then it's felt like this [1].
[1] https://youtu.be/fnVQlwKAuLk?si=hVr30353SlKfnyRz&t=106
Not really. In the past you could buy tickets in tonnes of places. Ticketmaster had physical 'stores' all over and most of the big music retailers also sold tickets. Admittedly these aren't widespread anymore which poses a problem. It's also a terrible solution because it excludes people with jobs.
There used to be a Ticketmaster counter at the grocery store. You could buy groceries for the week and pick up tickets for a show at the same time.
It was a far more sane (and exciting) experience.
> That excludes all fans who don't live in big cities. A lot of people travel just to go to shows.
Not really. The place that sells the tickets doesn't have to be the performance venue itself.
This sort of distribution was quite common pre-Internet. In theory it's even easier now, because so many of the venues have (unfortunately) consolidated under vertically integrated ownership (e.g. directly owned by Live Nation). Which incidentally, after scalping, is the biggest reason that ticket prices are so high in the first place.
This doesn't solve the problem and selling on the internet has become easier in the last 8 years. As we've seen recently with the Swatch Watch Riots and Pokémon Cards, professional and have-a-go scalpers are happy to stand in line for hours and resell on the internet for massive markups.
I lived through the '90s when all presales were physical and scalping absolutely happened.
It's actually a lot easier, the scalper would just hand a wad of cash to the teller and walk away with a stack of tickets to resell.