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  1. Not neccesarely U2-related, but I see this as a potential future harm for us all:


    Excerpt:
    It's never going to be a popular opinion to suggest that something currently affordable by music fans isn't expensive enough – but hear me out. The problem is, the "price" we see on the tickets to today's biggest concerts is essentially a myth: for every one of these gigs, thousands of tickets (sometimes more than 50%) are being bought then sold for huge profits via online resale platforms. This "secondary market" has become its very own parasitic industry: technologically endowed racketeers snap up all the best seats, freezing genuine music lovers out of any chance of paying face value. This reprehensible practice from these "e-touts" ensures that many fans' only option is to buy from them for a hugely inflated price. (For anyone who's sat bewildered at their monitor at 9am, suspicious about how tickets to big O2, Manchester Arena or Wembley gigs have seemingly sold out in seconds – these bloodsuckers are to blame.) Artists do not see a penny of this resale profit. Selling the most sought-after seats at a higher price in the first place would force touting scumbags to flog tickets for even more exorbitant amounts to make a profit – upping their risk and ultimately killing their so-called business.


    Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/17/are-gig-tickets-too-cheap


    What do you think?
  2. I agree that something needs to be done, but I think that getting ticket prices up would be an awful idea, and a lot of people (including myself here) wouldn't be able to attend concerts at all.


    I think that the best option would be printing the name of the holder on the ticket and check ID (or the credit card number) together with the ticket. If they don't match, the ticket holder doesn't go into the venue - simple.
  3. I know, I know...another Pearl Jam from me...

    I got tickets for a show this October through the band's website. I cannot pick them up until the day of the show. I must pick them up so even if I wanted to, I could not sell them in advance.

    I'm sure there'd still be a few loopholes for scalpers using this method but if ticketmaster did something along this lines it should help quite a bit.
  4. There are ups and downs for all methods, but all of them would work even a little bit. Pick up at the box office is a good one, but the queues must be staggering on the day of the show. Nevertheless, someone can pick their tickets up and then scalp with them outside of the venue - I've personally seen that happen. It would be bad, but "less bad" than scalping with them in advance, which also brings up the problem of false tickets being sent, transactions gone awry, etc.
  5. Okay,I will say that nobody in Turkey would ever accept this at first glance.That is because,the economy of our country is so deceiving.Government and adherents,always speaking so positively about it,have given the image of a prosperous country.That's not right.Why am I telling all this ? Because you will remember the show in İstanbul,where the stadium was half empty.The reason behind that is simple to see.People can't afford music.They can't buy albums,can't afford concert tickets and that is so discouraging.I had seen your post Sergio,about this under the Istanbul topic and it was so insightful,thank you for expressing.In Istanbul we thought our tickets were so expensive,it later turned out that it was among the cheapest in 360.Now this depends on many things,Turkey isn't a poor country though-anyway enough with the politics.

    What I'll say is,after a second reflexion,this is a righteous thing to say.This secondary market thing is so common in Turkey and it just can't be avoided.But I don't know if the solution is to increase the ticket prices,I wouldn't suggest that.Maybe I slided a bit away from the topic but just wanted to say all this.
  6. Yeah, it's the same here in Spain. Well, not the same, but really similar points all around. And, even though we had similar prices for U2 than the rest of the tour, I know that 70 bucks for a GA ticket meant a significant effort for a lot of people - myself included. I can't see 50.000 people pushing themselves to pay even more than that. There will always be the odd guy that can pay 200 bucks on a regular basis, but most of the people (aka most of the tickets = 70 bucks or so) won't be able to pay more than that. It's a disgrace.
  7. May sound abit counter productive to start with, but maybe using solely 'Home Print' tickets at venues, meaning no physical ticket but instead a piece of paper with a bar-code. They would be so easy to reproduce that no one would trust the touts in the first place because they could simply print off more than one ticket for the same seat.
  8. Originally posted by Hans23:May sound abit counter productive to start with, but maybe using solely 'Home Print' tickets at venues, meaning no physical ticket but instead a piece of paper with a bar-code. They would be so easy to reproduce that no one would trust the touts in the first place because they could simply print off more than one ticket for the same seat.

    Print @ Home and Mobile Phone Tickets are becoming more and more common and I think they're both good ways to avoid scalpers. Of course there will always be someone who buys one of those tickets (I myself have sold a PDF ticket -at face value of course- where I couldn't make it to the show, the buyer trusted me but I could have printed it at home and attended the show instead of him - just like that), but it would be reduced I think.
  9. If there was 20,000 people picking up tickets on the day of the show, there would still be people there at midnight after the show had ended. It's a great idea, of course, because it would eradicate the concept of scalping considerably. Although, yes, someone could still pick up their tickets and sell them after they have done so. However, they could have a system where you if you have already picked up your tickets, you aren't allowed to leave the venue but I suppose that's a bit like dictatorship, really.

    What I don't understand is that venues will still charge you for picking up your tickets. For example, Ticketsoup is a Scottish ticket selling company who are located in the SECC and Hydro area. It's like £2.65 to pick up your tickets. How do they justify that? I suppose it is cheaper than getting tickets delivered to your house which is an astronomical charge of £6.

    Concert tickets aren't too cheap, nor are too expensive. I'm speaking for Britain. If a band is popular and liked enough, they will sell their gig out. You'll know if a band is not in demand because they will not sell out. Obviously, there is some bands I'm not happy paying a certain amount for. The Rolling Stones – who were mentioned in the article for having "laughable" prices – were charging prices for tickets that are unacceptable. I can admit they were definitely overpriced but most bands aren't.

    The idea of text tickets is something that is slowly being drafted in. I've done it once and all they do is check the text, so it could easily be a fake. The printing off can be a fake too. It's sort of difficult to come up with an idea that will work efficiently.
  10. No, it isn't.

    MANDATORY credit card/ID check at the entrance gates.

    Voilà.

    (with tickets that have credit card / ID numbers printed on them, of course)
  11. Yeah, I suppose that could work. Some tickets these days have names on them already, there is just no ID check. It's an idea that would be implemented then would slowly drift out. The people on the door wouldn't bother checking ID properly, then scalping would begin again.

    Yeah, it's a good idea just has potential to fade out.
  12. I know, most of my print@home tickets have my name printed on them - but there's just no ID check at the door. In fact I've attended shows with other people's tickets, and other people have attended shows with mine. But if ID check was mandatory (it's just a look, they do it night after night, year after year at the clubs/discos and it doesn't stop - law enforcement I guess) a big part of the problem would disappear I think.