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johnnythunders
This is a fascinating article - it seems that even getting rid of bots will not help us

[motherboard.vice.com]

Fascinating indeed ...

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Ed Sheeran is not my musical cup of tea but fair play to the bloke. Seems he is determined to crack down on touting & the expoitation of his fanbase...

[www.bbc.co.uk]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-06-29 14:24 by Adrian-L.

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johnnythunders
This is a fascinating article - it seems that even getting rid of bots will not help us

[motherboard.vice.com]

It's very disingenuous to state presale tickets are tickets withheld from the general public, as passwords are often easily available (band & venue Facebook, Ticketmaster & LIve Nation email blasts etc).

In the Italian news today: big names in concert promo business (including the promoters of the Italian date of this Stones tour) are accused of allegedly illicit agreements with Viagogo whereby 90% of the tix are sold through that site and the extra profits are then shared. The practice included manipulated information on the sales to create hype (venue sold-out in minutes, million requests for only little amount of money, the event of the century etc).

Apparently artists are not involved in these malpractices.

[milano.repubblica.it]

Articles in the news as usual are very sensational and lacking in facts: not easy to understand exactly what the actual criminal conduct is.

C

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liddas
In the Italian news today: big names in concert promo business (including the promoters of the Italian date of this Stones tour) are accused of allegedly illicit agreements with Viagogo whereby 90% of the tix are sold through that site and the extra profits are then shared. The practice included manipulated information on the sales to create hype (venue sold-out in minutes, million requests for only little amount of money, the event of the century etc).

Apparently artists are not involved in these malpractices.

[milano.repubblica.it]

Articles in the news as usual are very sensational and lacking in facts: not easy to understand exactly what the actual criminal conduct is.

C

O there's a surprise ........ NOT !!

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Is the end really coming ?

When a band enforces the rules it set ""Fans that bought tickets through our official box offices had to agree that they were buying named tickets prior to purchase," it's a mess...with Stubhub having the nerve to "call the ID policy "not fair to customers."" !

[www.rollingstone.com]

Now don't the Stones have that rule for Barcelona ?

--------------
IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio

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gotdablouse
Is the end really coming ?

When a band enforces the rules it set ""Fans that bought tickets through our official box offices had to agree that they were buying named tickets prior to purchase," it's a mess...with Stubhub having the nerve to "call the ID policy "not fair to customers."" !

[www.rollingstone.com]

Now don't the Stones have that rule for Barcelona ?

Yes it seems like it, and I think Stockholm have been mentioned as well in that respect. It's absolutely stupid. That's why I posted this in the Barcelona thread:

“I understand that organizers want to prevent scalping, but when they allow one and the same customer to buy 6-10 tickets for the same show, how on earth can the organizer know if they're preventing an honest customer with a face value ticket or someone who paid over the top at the black market? With this new policing system it's practical impossible to buy someone a ticket as a gift.

For the No Filter tour, I have bought tickets for friends in different categories: some of us are in the pit, others are in the stands etc. All tickets have my name on it. That doesn't mean I made any profit; of course friends pay me back face value. It makes absolutely no sense to ask all ticket holders to show ID. The name on the ticket can be a friend, a relative, a colleague or a boss. It should not be a problem in a rational world.”

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gotdablouse
Is the end really coming ?

When a band enforces the rules it set ""Fans that bought tickets through our official box offices had to agree that they were buying named tickets prior to purchase," it's a mess...with Stubhub having the nerve to "call the ID policy "not fair to customers."" !

[www.rollingstone.com]

Now don't the Stones have that rule for Barcelona ?

Tom Petty Hollywood Bowl tickets for tomorrow are as low as $6 on Stubhub. They probably sold a few extra thousand tickets and made a fair amount of money they otherwise wouldn't if there were any named ticket rules. And they are still scalping their own best seats.

This is a joke right ? I signed up and set up on account with Ticketmastered and was put on standby for the first presale for Bruce on Broadway .Then after they announce a second batch of Bruce shows the same thing happens again with being put on standby .Thanks but no thanks as this is the biggest scam of them all ,but it's all good because they aren't getting any of my money .

I don't believe that the artists - or their promoters aren't heavily involved in the secondary markup - sorry market.

They are already officially scalping their own tickets through Platinum and VIP packaged tickets ( $4000 for a lanyard anyone ?).

It all stinks.The only band that I don't like using secondary market for are the Stones because I always panic buy.It did turn out OK for the last Vegas show though . Anyone else I play the waiting game . You can buy day of the gig if they have print off tickets. I've bought all recent Who tickets in front blocks 1st 10 rows for below face and sometimes as many as 5 together, so sometimes it can work in the fan's favour.

I'm starting to think this named ticket thing has nothing to do with helping fans. It's simply a way of pushing them towards more expensive options

sc uk

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straycatuk
I don't believe that the artists - or their promoters aren't heavily involved in the secondary markup - sorry market.

They are already officially scalping their own tickets through Platinum and VIP packaged tickets ( $4000 for a lanyard anyone ?).


sc uk

Artist and promoters are absolutely heavily involved. This is out in the open via some artist contracts.

Sometimes they are the same tickets listed across multiple platforms via point of sale software. Shows up as official platinum ticket on Ticketmaster, standard resale ticket on other sites. They want the fans to buy their tickets wherever they end up looking.

Yeah sorry, I don't think scalping is coming to an end. Or actually, I think scalping will come to an end when the dinosaur rockers go away. THEY are the ones that make the big bucks cause they are the in demand shows. In 10 years, I don't know who will be around and more importantly who could command a draw for a mark up to be viable anymore. And thats not a knock on current day artists. But a lot of them play clubs or theaters or triple bills just to get a tour going. Sorry, but aside from a few overpriced VIPs which will never disappear, I think once the Macca's and Roger Waters and Stones and Whos and all the other big name dinosaurs go away there will be a big drop. Yes, there will still be people like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc, but I don't think it'll be at the level it is or has been the last 10 years. I actually give those artists credit (maybe its just for optics, but maybe its genuine) that I think they will step up and take a stand on that. Try to get tickets in the right hands. I HATE Lady Gaga but it does seem like a thing I could see her sticking up for. I think Taylor Swift already does.

Love our artists as much as possible, but I do think they're the problem. They're not gonna take the stand (Bruce did but still charged $850 for tickets so it cancels out). I think its gonna go down in the next 10 years but thats also because I think the music concert business will be very different then. There won't be much scalping cause there won't really be anything to scalp. The methods they have today, while charming, don't actually really help the problem at all, besides shutting more people out. But the scalping still exists.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-09-21 19:52 by RollingFreak.

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RollingFreak
Yeah sorry, I don't think scalping is coming to an end. Or actually, I think scalping will come to an end when the dinosaur rockers go away. THEY are the ones that make the big bucks cause they are the in demand shows. In 10 years, I don't know who will be around and more importantly who could command a draw for a mark up to be viable anymore. And thats not a knock on current day artists. But a lot of them play clubs or theaters or triple bills just to get a tour going. Sorry, but aside from a few overpriced VIPs which will never disappear, I think once the Macca's and Roger Waters and Stones and Whos and all the other big name dinosaurs go away there will be a big drop. Yes, there will still be people like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc, but I don't think it'll be at the level it is or has been the last 10 years. I actually give those artists credit (maybe its just for optics, but maybe its genuine) that I think they will step up and take a stand on that. Try to get tickets in the right hands. I HATE Lady Gaga but it does seem like a thing I could see her sticking up for. I think Taylor Swift already does.

Love our artists as much as possible, but I do think they're the problem. They're not gonna take the stand (Bruce did but still charged $850 for tickets so it cancels out). I think its gonna go down in the next 10 years but thats also because I think the music concert business will be very different then. There won't be much scalping cause there won't really be anything to scalp. The methods they have today, while charming, don't actually really help the problem at all, besides shutting more people out. But the scalping still exists.

A LOT of smaller artists with moderate popularity selling out clubs and theatres are scalped to death, especially since it's harder and harder to sell the big shows due to max pricing, overbrokering. So now they are shifting to the smaller shows, which usually crash hard closer to showtime when the tour is rolling thru a club in small town Indiana with 100 tickets still on the secondary marketplace.

Of course smaller artists playing smaller venues often have venue managers and ticketing companies other than Ticketmaster to pay attention to who is buying the tickets.

Bots being banned in Ontario (because we need a futile gesture at this point) and resale being limited to 150% over face value, after the outcry over Tragically Hip tix last summer.

[www.thestar.com]

Comments open on this Guardian article if you want to have your say (or read other people's comments)

[www.theguardian.com]

"Many of the tickets are listed at significant mark-ups, despite the fact that the gig is not sold out and face-value tickets were still available as of Thursday."

I liked the commenter who explained the scalper's position something like this:

I sneaked in before the pub opened and bought all the beer, so now the rest of you can pay me £15 a pint or go thirsty..

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Green Lady
I liked the commenter who explained the scalper's position something like this:

I sneaked in before the pub opened and bought all the beer, so now the rest of you can pay me £15 a pint or go thirsty..

Or he lowers the price until the beer sells, possibly below his cost and the pub owner is happy someone else assumed the risk.

Story on the CBC today, one of the biggest scalpers is Canadian and was identified in the recently released Paradise Papers. [www.cbc.ca]

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SomeTorontoGirl
Story on the CBC today, one of the biggest scalpers is Canadian and was identified in the recently released Paradise Papers. [www.cbc.ca]

From the article ......

<<< "Governments more or less think scalping is not a real crime," he said. "They think it's victimless crime. 'Who gets hurt?' And so nobody pays a lot of attention to it." >>>

Unless - or until - that changes, it's a case of 'same old & same old' ...... !!

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

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paulywaul

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SomeTorontoGirl
Story on the CBC today, one of the biggest scalpers is Canadian and was identified in the recently released Paradise Papers. [www.cbc.ca]

From the article ......

<<< "Governments more or less think scalping is not a real crime," he said. "They think it's victimless crime. 'Who gets hurt?' And so nobody pays a lot of attention to it." >>>

Unless - or until - that changes, it's a case of 'same old & same old' ...... !!

Sounds like business as usual

The thing that will embarrass StubHub (if that’s possible) is that they have a program to award high-volume resellers aka massive organized scalpers, despite marketing themselves as fan-to-fan ticket resellers...

“But the CBC/Star investigation also discovered a password-protected portal exclusively for StubHub's top sellers who prove they can move more than $50,000 worth of tickets a year.

The company offers them special software to upload and manage huge inventories of tickets.

In its Top Seller Handbook, Stubhub offers incentives for high-volume resellers, including reducing its 10 per cent cut on each ticket sold. The higher the reseller's numbers, the sweeter the deal, with special rates for those who hit sales of $250,000, $500,000 and up to $5 million US per year.

In a statement, StubHub acknowledged it has a top seller program but refused to say how many people are enrolled or what percentage of StubHub's overall supply comes from industrial-scale scalpers.”

"The raids are key to an investigation launched last year into whether ticketing companies are giving fans enough information about their tickets, such as who the seller is and whether buyers could be denied entry due to undisclosed restrictions on resale."

Naturally these articles are one-sided. No mention of primary market transparency of course and how many of these tickets are being scalped by the artist and promoter directly.

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SomeTorontoGirl
The thing that will embarrass StubHub (if that’s possible) is that they have a program to award high-volume resellers aka massive organized scalpers, despite marketing themselves as fan-to-fan ticket resellers...

Wonder how many tickets you have to sell to get them to take less than a week to add an event to the system?

[www.bbc.com]

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

[www.independent.co.uk]

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Verified fan? This "solution" is just horrible in my eyes and what about those of us who don't do Facebook etc.?

[www.theguardian.com]

Tickets: is this the system to finally beat the touts?

Ticketmaster’s new software will trawl Facebook and Twitter to check if you’re a ‘genuine’ fan

You might think you’re a real fan of an artist or show, but how far would you be prepared to go to get your hands on tickets to see them?

Would you be willing to hand over your personal information – name, phone number, email address and so on – to a faceless third party, and let someone nose around your Facebook page and Twitter feed, so they can try to establish whether you are a “genuine” fan? Would you be prepared to boost your chances of getting a good spot in the queue for tickets by splashing out on pricey merchandise – or even providing a sample of your DNA?

It all sounds like something out of the Netflix series Black Mirror – but most of the above is already a reality, courtesy of a new system devised by Ticketmaster that has made waves in the US and is now launching in the UK. (The bit about providing your DNA was a “joke” made by a Ticketmaster executive last year – at least, we think it was a joke.)

It is called Verified Fan, and former White Stripes frontman Jack White this week became one of the first acts to use it to sell tickets for his UK dates. It was tested out last year on a few intimate gigs by acts such as George Ezra and Paolo Nutini, but now appears to be getting a full roll-out.

Ticketmaster describes Verified Fan as a way for “real fans to get exclusive ticket access to see their favourite shows”. You have to register, and then, if you are selected, you receive a unique code giving you access to a special pre-sale. The company says it is a highly effective way of clamping down on touts and computer “bots” – the software used to harvest tickets in bulk for resale at rip-off prices.

Verified Fan might be new to the UK, but in the US it has quickly become one of the main selling platforms, used by acts including Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles.

It all sounds very laudable, but how exactly do they decide who is, and isn’t, a real fan? The Verified Fan page on Ticketmaster’s UK website gives very little information about what happens behind the scenes. The company says it is “deliberately opaque” about how the system works. Dig around a bit, however, and you will find that the firm talks about using “algorithms and unique data analysis” to identify genuine fans and remove people using unfair tactics to access tickets.

In an interview last year, the Ticketmaster Ireland managing director, Keith English, said: “People register ... and we then use sophisticated software to look at their social media activity and other things.” Meanwhile, another senior Ticketmaster figure told a US conference last year that with Verified Fan, “people will come in and register. They will give their first name, last name, email, Facebook ID,” jokily adding: “They’ll write a 10-page essay, provide DNA. They’ll do anything to give themselves an edge in getting tickets for what they are a fan of.” The service will then “score” people, based partly on data showing which other concerts they attended.

Ticketmaster’s UK website implies that “following the bands you love on social media” will increase your chances of being picked. However, it is far from clear what happens if you are a loyal follower of an act – you’ve been to the gigs and bought the records and T-shirts - but you don’t crow about it on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Ticket fraud expert Reg Walker, the director of security firm Iridium Consultancy, is scathing about Verified Fan, calling it “smoke and mirrors” and “simply a way of leveraging more money” from people, adding: “There’s not an algorithm in the world which will determine whether someone is a genuine fan or not.”

But Ticketmaster says that with more than 3m fan registrations, 60 tours and an average success rate of 90% in keeping tickets off secondary markets, Verified Fan “has proven its success as an innovative new tool that helps artists get tickets directly into the hands of fans”.

Jack White is playing two London dates in June, and his Verified Fan presale registration looks fairly innocuous: it asks for your name, email address, postcode and mobile phone number. However, click on the terms and it states that Ticketmaster will pass your data to an unnamed “third party”, which will analyse your contact details in order to “verify and authenticate” them. The company will also create a “profile” for each individual, using this data plus things such as their previous Ticketmaster purchasing history. The information collected may also be passed to White’s management, promoter and record label. There’s no specific mention of social media in the terms.

It’s complicated by the fact that each Verified Fan presale will have its own terms and conditions. For example, Taylor Swift copped a lot of flak in the US for running a system where fans could improve their position in the ticket queue by forking out on merchandise etc.To be fair to White, his UK fans don’t have to sign up to Verified Fan in order to see him – tickets will also go on general sale on Friday morning, two days after the Verified pre-sale. But in the US, tickets for some concerts and shows, including gigs by U2 and Springsteen, have only been available via the platform. So, like it or not, this new system is here, and you had better get used to it.

This is terrible.

Talk about big brother 1984!!

So they want you to submit your contact details so a third party can bombard you with tailored advertising ?

Presales seem to be a way to generate panic and offload the worst of the expensive tickets first.

If you don't get lucky on sale day..........wait. They always drop the good seats nearer to the show time . Verified Fan is A LOAD OF BS.

sc uk