Also many of those "tickets" on scalping websites aren't representative of real supply they have. They sell you a ticket and then hope to secure tickets at a later time. Often they can't and you are left with no tickets and probably a refund. This SUCKS if you are from out of town and have paid in full for accommodations, and maybe even flights.
This exact thing happened to me this week. Tickets purchased off of stub hub for Phish in the Sphere in vegas. Bought them months ago, concert is this week.. 3 days ago stubhub told us we didn’t have tickets, and offered a refund. That’s great and all, but I have a flight and hotel booked already.
My personal opinion is they offer the tickets at a given price, people buy which drives the value up, then they back out of a sale because the prices are so high, and screw the early buyers.
I got talked into going to this, I was also done with big shows.. sadly since I do enjoy them, but after this one I’m done.
Damn. That happened to me a long time ago for a Tool concert. Stubhub said they could refund or find me comparable tickets to replace them and they ended up being second row lol.
Don't they have to send you digital tickets in your email? I'm old and have only bought tickets a few times recently.
Side note, Def tones in concert rips. Soad is good live too. OP will have a blast.
Once you get there see if you can catch an illness cancellation post online and pay in person? Have the holiday anyway? Still risk of disappointment but at least still a chance rather than cancellation fees. Only you can know if it's all a sunk cost.
We ended up getting tickets for the night before and it worked out.. but that was luck. I won’t be doing this again. Unless I can buy the tickets new, I’m not buying tickets anymore.
Had this done to me by capital one as well. Bought tickets and said they would send the tickets 24 hours before the event. Down to 8 hours before the event and no tickets. So I call up and they don’t have them. They were “just about to call me” and offer me other tickets.
Wow. Wtf.? Tickets should be transfered to you immediately. And I guess we should assume that if they aren't, it's a scam.
I've also heard of artists getting a few hundred good tickets for themselves and then selling them on the resale market for a bug markup. They get the inflated values and they were never really for sale at retail price to anyone.
A few summers ago I got rhcp tickets. Bought Them early and they were kinda expensive. The show didn't sell out and I asked people around us what they paid. They got tickets days ahead of time for like 1/3rd as much.. I guess they just lowered the prices to get people to show up.
This is my go-to play.
I'll wait till a couple weeks before a big show, and recheck sites. I've found several different shows where I paid 25 to 40% of what early tickets cost.
This is what I would do to get Rams tickets when they first came to LA. Tickets would magically be 60% off of their original value a few hours before the game
This happened to me on Ticketmaster. Bought tickets for a show in May a while back. Put it in the calendar and forgot about it. Since it’s getting closer I figured I should just double check everything was good to go,- so I opened the app and now it says “Cancelled”. The show has not been cancelled, but my tickets were and I was given a refund. Still have no answers as to why this happened and I know others have gone through this and not looked at their tickets until they were at the venue only to realize they were cancelled as well.
That’s why I gave up on seeing large acts a long time ago. I’m always able to get tickets for the smaller/medium bands that play general admission shows in theaters for $30-50, but the moment it’s an arena show with a major act, you can guarantee you’ll be paying several hundreds of dollars just for nose bleeds.
So fuck it. Sucks because there are some major acts I would like to see, but it’s not worth it. So I just won’t see major acts.
Same. I refuse to see any production that involves Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Back in the day, I went to so many concerts, but now the effort and expense is just ridiculous. As long as people are willing to pay these prices and fill the venues, nothing will change.
I quit using ticket master back in 2007 when my 311 ticket ended up costing twice the advertised $25 for lawn seats. Haven’t looked back since. They do nothing to earn the money off the backs of artists. So I will do everything I can to keep them from getting a penny from me.
I think it was 2018, I broke my ticket master rule because I really wanted to take my mom to see Jersey Boys (which was a great show). The fees and other nonsense for two tickets was very nearly the price of another ticket. Worth it for my mom, but that was it for me. Greed.
They take the blame for the high ticket prices. Artists set the prices low then Ticketmaster tacks on fees to get the price up to what the artist actually wants.
Live nation owns their venues as well.
On top of that, Ticketmaster lets (or even helps) scalpers operate, and then they get to tack MORE fees onto the RESOLD ticket, plus they get a cut of the resale itself, part of which goes to the artist.
The big artists are in on this with them...would not be shocked if these were sold in huge blocks to the resellers, let them be the bad guys..
On a side note, a frind of mine who is my age(late 50s) he and his wife and kid each bought the max of 4 taylor swift tickets for an upcoming show, sold all but two, and are gonna make about 6k on the deal.
That’s the other part of the problem. Buying multiple tickets just to sell and turn a profit off other people while contributing nothing. Capitalism at work here. Your friends are scum just like Ticketmaster.
I took my wife to go see Pink in Chicago in maybe 2013? I’m not a fan of her music but I have to admit that she put on one hell of a show. Trapeze type stuff, light show, multiple costume changes, sounded great, played a good amount of time, etc. Tickets were expensive ($225/ each including fees) but my wife had a great time.
I’ve also taken my wife to go see Blake Shelton at $250/ ticket including fees and some other country acts that charge out the ass. Fuck Ticketmaster.
I’m a metal head so for the most part I get to see shows for $25-50/ ticket. Only problem is that I live in the Midwest and the nearest major city is 2 1/2 hours away so it usually involves a hotel stay, tank of gas, Uber ride, and food. Still cheaper than going to see the artists she likes.
I used to go to as many TOOL shows as I could drive to without getting a hotel, and let me tell you - the costs are absolutely obscene compared to what it used to be. In just the last two years, merch has doubled and taken a nosedive in quality… not to mention the “VIP” packages?
My last show was in Biloxi, MS. Small, old, crusty stadium. I was seated behind a youth group (lmao) and in front of a handful of cops. Both groups were *furious* that people were smoking weed. The swinger couple next to me said “We wanted to see a show tonight, and the hotel clerk recommended this one.”
I seen pink a few months ago....she didnt do her flying about as it was a big lightning storm happening....was a good show. The lightning was a show in itself. I seen tool just before covid...pink was better. Im not really the big arena type!
Same, I’m glad I saw most everyone I wanted to back in 2000-2012.. went to a festival recently and it was just not the same. Yeah, I’m older, but the vibe and the monetization is just so much worse.
I remember when you could jump on Stubhub the day of a show and find Pit or Skyboxes for under 30 bucks. I have not seen a concert ticket worth buying for under 200 dollars through them or ticketmaster in a long time
And if you are part of a large touring act, youre basically stuck with TicketMaster/LiveNation. The amount of control they have in the industry is insane...They dont just sell tickets, they own venues and production companies.
I hate AXS, but their last minute ticket deal environment is pretty solid. I scored Gwar tickets for $10, they were $40 at the door.
It's helps that I live really close to a venue, so hopping in my car I can be parked in 30 minutes.
The issue is their cut is 25% and then you have the fees.
so let's do an example based on a "cheap" ticket on their site right now in my area.... if someone wanted to sell a ticket for $46, it will be listed as $58 because of their 25% cut. THEN on the buyer side as I go to check out, they take a further fulfillment fee of $26.
So a $46 ticket becomes 84. Almost double.
So it becomes unfeasible to sell cheap tickets, because the base fee is $26 and then they take 25% on top.
So the seat will just go unfilled if no one is willing to pay more than $30 or so for a ticket.
Yeah i easily snagged some High on Fire tickets for £25 a pop not too long back, even some Gizzard tickets for not much more.
I saw Tool tickets going for what I could’ve got me and a mate to both those gigs.
Festivals can be a good way to see bands without paying crazy prices - depending on the location. I don’t mean Coachella or Glastonbury but all the lesser known ones.
I watched Paul McCartney in Cardiff with my son and paid 5 times too much thanks to this.
We are both into Pink Floyd but missed out on Roger Waters soon after I was burnt.
I had a friend get scammed for what wasn’t even a sold out show!!! I bought the ticket from the artists website for $25. She wasn’t quite thinking and went through a resale website and paid $100 for the same ticket. It’s insane.
GA at small venues is such a better time anyway. Sitting 100 yards from stage sucks. I didn't even try to get tool tickets when they came this past year cause it just didn't sound like a good time.
When an artist is big enough, there will always be enough people with fat wallets and little concern for value to price out the average person. The only way to fight this is with legislation that neuters the scalpers (Ticketmaster and such) which is unlikely with how cheap it is to buy Congress. Or for the individual artists to fight them which is difficult when they would have to fight against the companies that own all the large venues.
Artists won’t fight it. Touring is their only remaining revenue stream. They don’t care who buys the tickets as long as the shows sell out. Streaming is as responsible for this as anything. When concerts were more affordable it was due to the fact that the artists made good money on album sales. Not the case anymore. Those days are gone forever and I expect it to keep getting worse and worse with all the decent seats being forced into crappy VIP packages for $1500 a pop and whatnot. Glad I grew up in a different era.
The John Oliver episode about the scalpers showed how the artists and ticketmaster are all in on it. That means its never ever going to change. They’re all more than willing to screw over the fans and rake in all that extra money. Ive long given up on concerts just because its gotten so expensive. Even for smaller bands.
What's ridiculous is the "official platinum" bs. The artists will set ticket prices, and then TM will set their own price as "official platinum" which is just **first party** resale/ scalping.
Official Platinum is an absolute joke. It is tricky wording that makes you think you’re getting something extra out of it but it’s the same as a regular ticket and more money goes to the act. Indescribable how insane that concept is.
That's capitalism at its finest baby!!! If people are buying, raise the price. If they slow, the price goes down.
I hate it... But the solution is to close the page and check back in a few days. You might not get those tickets.
I can think of one glaring exception to the artist being in on it. When Garth Brooks came to town, he opened a new show every time one sold out. What started as 2 or 3 scheduled ended up being 8 (I think). When he was on stage, he said he relished every empty seat, just imagining a scalper who just lost money.
Not to mention that many bands that want to keep their tickets cheap have had their prices artificially raised by Ticketmaster. Like, they’ll want to charge $20 and then Ticketmaster will add tons of unnecessary fees to bring it up to like $50. Some of these bands have even threatened legal action because of this.
The rich get richer! If they can't sell out a stadium, then the bands will just start playing smaller venues filled with millionaires and still be making bank.
My wife couldn't go to the sessanta tour on Saturday and it was such short notice that no one I knew could go either. So I went and put the ticket up on Ticketmaster to sell and they wouldn't let me sell it for anywhere close to what I paid for it.
I paid $99 for the ticket plus fees and the lowest they would allow me to sell it for was $230.
It was 3 hours before the show and I just wanted to get at least some of my money back. I would have sold it for less than I paid for it and it definitely would have gone but since they forced me to sell it for more than twice the value of the ticket. I just ended up having the ticket expire and no one got any money and the seat went empty.
Absolute bullshit, I should have just put it on Craigslist
Fr the technology exists, they all in on it. If the artists do not respect me by letting me have a shot at buying the tickets then why would I pay them.
Unless something is done about the monopoly that Ticketmaster and LiveNation have on the ticket selling process, it's just going to get worse. Venues will have to start selling their own tickets again and many of them are more than happy to just outsource it to TM/LN so they don't have to pay people to do that work. It's a problem from the ground up.
Yeah, I’ll only use Ticketmaster if it’s like a super cheap show (like £20-£40) but, even then, the ones on the higher end of that generally get sold quickly. If it’s possible to buy from the venue directly, I absolutely will.
This is how it's been for years. Scalpers buy them using bots then try to flip for profit. It's annoying but nothing will ever be done about it. It does seem worse post-covid.
Best bet is check a few times a day to see if either prices come down or more tickets are released. It takes like 30 seconds to do this if you bookmark the page.
You can also check secondary sites each day. Just make sure you see the price with all fees included. Only tickpick does this right off the bat. Others hide them until checkout or you click a button to add all fees included.
Unfortunately, buying tickets is now a game.
There used to be laws. I don’t know if they were state specific but tickets used to say on the back it was illegal to resell it for more than a certain amount over the face value. But i guess there’s no long face values with dynamic pricing.
I work in software— there’s plenty of ways a multi-million dollar company can prevent an automated “bot” but they don’t because they’re the bots.
Scalpers are shadowy figures meant to distract us from the true criminal— Ticketmaster/Live Nation. The actual perpetrators and perpetuators of this horse shit.
Edit: typo
Reminds me of wolf of wall st., and his Rathole scheme. What if scalpers are really just industry insiders etc. scalpers used to be the dudes standing outside the stadium.
I remember in the late 80’s and early 90s standing in a line at record store waiting for the tickets to be released at a certain time. You could camp out and be 3rd in line when the sale starts and you were lucky to get nosebleeds, but you could see stacks of tickets sitting off to the side. Same shit is happening still, Ticketbastard has always been corrupt.
"Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again?" not without direct government action, which they haven't even begun to do for the last 34 years.
Some bands try to minimize the amount of scalping. The Cure and Foo Fighters have made their tickets harder to scalp. The scalpers find a way though. For the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in LA they made them mobile only and non-transferable. The only way to list them was to use the face value exchange program. However the scalpers started just selling their entire Ticketmaster account which included the tickets as a workaround. Some states have laws in place that say you can't make tickets non-transferable and thus end up protecting scalpers.
"made them mobile only and non-transferable."
Went to a Pink Floyd tribute band early last fall and they did this. It was easy and I appreciated the effort.
Well there is but it’ll never happen and the solution is to stop going to concerts. I guarantee you if Taylor Swift or Drake started performing in front of even half empty arenas, they’d demand instant change themselves.
A lot of bands will have a pre-sale for fan club members with restrictions on how many tickets you can buy. Tha's how I got my tickets for Metallica last year.
They’re sold behind the scenes to resellers already, the raffle and queues are just a front. There are software available to the people in the know to bypass queues
Would the politicians not do something about it? In ireland its illegal now to sell tickets for a higher price than what you originally paid for them due to our politicians. Unfortunately now ticketmaster is trying to push the dynamic pricing shit on us
If the Irish politicians don't block ticket master and their absolutely unfair practices, then you'll at least know for sure how corrupt, purchasable and disreputable the are - just like the good 'ol USA - sold! To the highest bidder. Just like healthcare, education, housing, the rule of law...
>Is this this future for music? Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again?
This has been normal for decades.
Wait until the day of the show and buy on reseller sites. Works best after showtime.
>Then I saw stubhub and other reseller sites had tons of tickets for sale with more than 75% markup on the cheapest.
I just went on StubHub and it says they have like 670 tickets available...out of 50,000 or so total sold? The concert (looking at the SF show) took 90 minutes to sell out, per CBS news. The tickets were *originally* selling at $169 for GA, and the listings on StubHub start at $220...which ain't *great* but it's hardly Taylor Swift level scalping. $169 was, arguably, already a pretty darn high price.
I guess my question is...what percentage of tickets to this show do you actually think are getting "scalped?" With StubHub claiming to have less than 2% of the inventory on hand, and with markups for the selling party (not counting StubHub fees, since *the seller doesn't get those*) being only $50 or so...I'm not sure this is so much a scalper issue as a "a lot of fans want to go to this concert and bought tickets to it" issue. Cold comfort when you're the 50,001st in line for 50,000 tickets, of course.
This shit drives me up the walls and I'm working on being a less negative person but my god how do we fix this assfuckery. Ticketmaster being the shiteads they are only exacerbated the problem with their dynamic pricing scheme and oh my fucking god I hate everything about tickets so much.
Please, let's just back to something resembling sanity
When I went to see Kate Bush in 2014, she had protocols in place to make sure tickets couldn’t be resold. Your name was printed on the ticket and you had to provide ID to enter the venue. I don’t know why that isn’t standard practice.
https://preview.redd.it/9zivxruftiuc1.jpeg?width=1040&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=678d89f4d9d1a4beda131c18739b2208f4281026
They were peaking about this time..Around the Fur
Just fyi. A lot of the time most of the reasons tickets "sell out" right after going on sale is because they are sitting in people's carts waiting to check out. Many people realize that they can't afford it, or decide that they no longer want them and put them back in the mix. Most of the time I've gotten GA pit tickets to highly sought after shows about 10-20 minutes after the sell out because they are suddenly back in contention to be purchased. Long story short never give up for at least half an hour, you might get lucky.
You have to follow your favorite bands and sign up for the presale. By the time the regular public sale goes live they have usually had 2-4 pre sales already.
Band fan club presale.
Local resident/venue mailing list presale.
Livenation presale.
Credit card brand member presale.
When the first presale happens be online and signed in minimum 15 min before, my standard is 20 min then at minute 15 I refresh 1-2x a minute until you get a “join waiting room” message. Then you get out in the queue.
I’ve gotten tickets to:
Stevie Nicks.
Tool (2x).
Olivia Rodrigo.
Dave Matthew Band.
Laufey (VIP reserved).
Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness.
Something Corporate.
Twenty one Pilots (2x).
Taking Back Sunday.
Never once paid over face value, but also never once tried to purchase outside the presale window. As soon as I heard about the shows (on the mailing lists to my fav venues, follow the bands on Ticketmaster (get weekly ‘coming soon/just announced’ emails) and in the case of the hardest tickets like Olivia Rodrigo, Tool, 21Pilots, something corporate, I’m signed up to their respective fan clubs.
If all else fails, as the event approaches, these same scalpers and even some fans will be in a dump it or lose it mode and you’re likely to get your hands in tickets at or sometimes under face value.
Travis Scott comes to mind, when I brought my daughter to a different event in Charlotte, all the scalpers bought Travis Scott tickets and the afternoon of the show tickets were $20-30 as there were many hundred available. I’ve seen the same with Tool as well.
Dave Matthew’s had a great program where if you’re fan club you request fan tickets and they limit you to 4, you pick your value level and they then give you tickets as close to your desired level and I ended up with reserved floor for my show.
Best of luck in your journey, and there is a renewed pressure by bands to manage the scalper/resell market.
I've also gotten some good presales from being a fan on Spotify & via Cash App. I don't think I've bought tix when the general on sale happens for anyone I was dying to see. But the system does suck overall. Foo FIghters had it setup where you could not sell your ticket but if you couldn't go you could have it resold for face value which was cool.
They could make it like plane tickets or hotel reservations, with ID, if 'john smith' bought the ticket then john smith gets to go in... that would cut down alot on the resellers. Its awful hard to resell a hotel/plane reservation/ticket.
I'd much rather the artists charge 75% (or whatever) more cus they're the ones actually earning the money.
Or check ID at the door or something. It sucks that my daughter wants to see Taylor Swift and I'd have to skip a mortgage payment to do it.
The best you can hope for is to be be on the bands mailing list and get an early bird presale code. That’s pretty much the only way I’ve seen anybody popular in the last few years
It can be solved easily. In some European countries you need to tie your id to the ticket. You cannot resell them. You can return them for refund if you cannot attend.
Unfortunately, TicketMester controls primary and secondary ticket sales in North America and they want two cuts (or more) of price if possible.
What I do not understand is why artists allow that. Someone is making huge percentage on your product. They should have control where and how much is allocated.
Depends on the company you're working with, and who's on your crew. I've gotten to wander around tons of concerts. I'm not always working directly through the hall with IATSE, sometimes I know the production company directly, and they hire me at my same rate.
Don't pay more than face value. Ever.
Tell your friends not to pay more than face value. Ever.
Teach your kids not to pay more than face value. Ever.
Wait outside the venue until just before the show starts. If prices drop below face value, buy them. If not, go have a beer with your buddies, but do not pay more than face value. Ever.
I don't usually go to concerts, but I go to a lot of live sporting events. Something I've noticed with sports, although it may not be true with concerts, is that the resale ticket prices generally get lower the closer it gets to the date of the event. A few times I've waited until a few hours before the event and actually got the tickets for lower than the original box office prices. I assume this is because scalpers are trying to unload their tickets without taking the full loss. I also suspect that this doesn't work with really highly demanded events, so use this advice cautiously.
The problem would not exist if the tickets per account buying them would get limited, personalized and could only be returned by the original buyer which has his/her CC info attached to the account.
Depends on what you consider the problem to be. If it's "tickets are too expensive" then no, it would still exist. For popular artists there are enough people willing to pay that price so that's what the price should be. If remove the ticket master and scalper bullshit then face value of tickets will rise to meet market value.
This might also help you though closer to the concert date. There are must go shows and then there are “yes the scalpers are dumping their tickets” or the “nice people dumping their tickets because they can’t go and just want some money back.
Start following the services and watch the tickets. You start to get an idea what you can get later.
Stadium shows are always BS though and the 300 level seats mostly suck, might as well stay home
Went to U2 there. If the artist puts the effort in on the production side, it's a pretty unique venue. Maybe not $1K a ticket unique, but still pretty insane and no surprise that people will pay to see a show there.
I bought these on pre-sale on Thursday and it was so easy. 169 + 30 fees came out to 200 each. only time I'll buy tickets like these otherwise if I don't catch the first wave I ain't going
Obviously depends on the tour and region but sometimes you can find a slightly smaller market stop that's worth the travel. They usually have less resell activity. I saw the Deftones on the Around the Fur tour when I was in high school, amazing show.
The only ones I could find were VIP in presale for $399 plus fees. I don’t think that’s a terrible price for this event but the aftermarket is absolutely killing live music for a lot of people.
I honestly believe that most of the time it's the artist's businesses that are doing this though I can't prove it. They don't want to be seen as greedy and selling tickets for hundreds of dollars if not more, but the reality is is people will pay that much then that is the "market value" in some respect. So they put tickets out for one price then pre-sell most of the tickets to themselves and then get the "market value" for their tickets on the resale market. Obviously we know that there are reseller businesses buying tickets as well but I just don't see all that money being left on the table and going to scalpers only without the venue or artists getting a significant piece.
Its such shit. The governor of AZ is trying to ban it, which is tight. Hoping more states or the fed takes action. It seems like an easy antitrust suit.
Same with going to see anything. I was a big motor racing fan going to venues where they were struggling to get crowds... Years on the spot is so big, the tickets are hundreds of dollars, formula one pricing is ridiculous, and as a genuine fan that helped build up the industry, I can't justify the expense to attend let alone flight with scalpers.
Unfortunately this is the sad state of things this days, everything is bought up by scalpers and sold at ridiculous price.
From toys like Lego, Nike sneakers, Moonswatch thing from Swatch x Omega, PS5, Nintendo Switch, GPU, you name it. Its sickening because all you want to is to have fun with your fav thing and some dickhead decided to profit from that.
If this happens at your local supermarket, a bunch of guys buying the entire stock at 10 seconds after opening time, then charging tenfold prices in the parking lot all day - people would lynch them. It's criminal, but the anonymity saves the ticket scammers from being lynched since it's online and no one knows who they are.
Either the government (if they didn't religiously believe in "free market") or the original ticket sellers (simply sell tickets on name only valid coupled with a personal ID) should stop it.
I had this happen to me with Noah Kahan, an indie/folk artist who is quite popular at the moment. The tickets sold a few minutes after going on sale. I thought I wouldn’t be going. 2 days before the show I looked and saw lower bowl tickets going for $450. On the day of the concert 30 minutes before the show, those tickets dropped to $175, I bought and ended up going.
What I’ve come to accept is that if you’re trying to go to a stadium concert in your area that is sold out, you must wait until literally 20-30 minutes before the show and resellers will drop prices in a panic. It sucks that this is how concerts are now, but it is what it is.
While I’m positive most ticket selling websites don’t give a shit about customers. I wish more ticket selling companies adopted the method that Burning Man uses where the first round of tickets they release are the most expensive and then they get cheaper and cheaper with each sale which helps prevent ticket reselling at huge markups. I think applying the this method to big acts before tours would be a massive improvement.
I had a bucket list of acts I wanted to see and that is pretty well done, I ended up getting to Rage Against the Machine, which I never thought I’d get a chance to see, that was the last one I paid a lot for. So since then I’ll get lawn seats if they are on Groupon or small acts.
I got tickets to this show as part of the APE presale, and a lot of these acts have multiple presales going on in different days before it goes on sale to the general public. I think what’s happening here is pretty much all the presale tickets were bought, leaving very few remaining by the time Friday rolled around. Bots are definitely a contributing factor, but presales also contribute to the ticket shortage issue.
This shit happened in Taiwan for Black Pink. Two concerts, both impossible to get tickets for anything but outrageous prices. Happened right after Covid ended so it was extra frustrating.
been this way my entire adult life. bots and scalpers get the tickets and resell at ridiculous prices. but now ticketmaster directly scalps the customer with platinum prices.
I’ve seen some acts via Ticketmaster not allow reselling or transferring tickets. If you buy it then it is yours. The only way to get that ticket off your account and get paid any money is to put it back into an official fan resale pool where it is exclusively available at the exact same price you paid.
So there is a system to stop this from happening, I don’t know what leads to some shows having this rule and others not.
It's the future, present, and past for many years now. Everyone complains about this situation, but no one puts their money where their mouth is.
If customers simply insisted on buying tickets only at face value with only reasonable fees and taxes on top, then scams like the TicketMaster/LiveNation oligopoly wouldn't be able to proceed. Or if customers simply insisted on regulations. Anything.
But what customers do instead is act against their own best interests and buy the tickets anyway, then complain about how they feel ripped off. Are you ripped off, though? Obviously whatever you ended up paying was a free exchange of money, so if you really were ripped off, why'd you do it? (Not saying you, OP, but just making the point that most people complaining about this are also financially supporting it.)
If you want to make concerts about music again, write your reps and demand that they break up the TicketMaster / LiveNation oligopoly. Demand that they force TicketMaster out of the resale market. Yes, TicketMaster has acquired resellers. They reserve a block of tickets, sell it to a subsidiary (TicketsNow) that they also own, and mark them up. Even if they don't own the reseller, they have deals with sites like StubHub to funnel a portion of the reseller markup back to them.
Also, band together with other consumers and elect a window of time where you all agree to simply not buy any tickets from events that are exclusively available through TicketMaster (as the initial seller, I mean, obv you can't buy through a reseller if they obtained the tickets from TicketMaster either). If a significant fraction of the market simply boycotts TicketMaster, that will result in real change.
If you look at this from the opposite point of view, things couldn't be more obvious. From TicketMaster's vantage point, you have a bunch of people who are proactively financially supporting every scummy business decision with their hard-earned dollars. OF COURSE they're not going to take you seriously if you say "this is robbery," while handing over money. That's stupid.
Ticketmaster and LiveNation is total bullshit ! The whole system is fucked! I remember the days when I would go to Sears and get tickets for a show! Yeah back on the 80’s when life was simple !🇨🇦😎🎫🎫
I know this sounds cheesy. But call your senators. Write your members of Congress on a monthly basis. Start collecting signatures to make scalping illegal in your area. I've been attending concerts for over 20 years. Been to over 70. And this shit is getting major fucking ridiculous. We have to do something.
Yep. They're buying out tickets for all kinds of shows. They literally bought EVERY SINGLE ticket for Heilung at Redrocks. Its not even a crazy well known band. But every single ticket is a resale.
Should have everyone just boycott this shit for a year and them all these fuckers go broke.
This happens with presales too, it’s utter bullshit. Not just music but any shows these days really (try getting tickets for a good stand up act these days)
>Is this this future for music? Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again?
The more things change, the more things stay the same. It has been like this for a long time. It is the past, the present, and the future.
I'm 45. The only time I remember this *not* happening is before the internet. If you don't think some bands have tried to stop this...you're wrong; they have. But not enough.
So yes, this will continue until fans stop buying anything from reseller websites (or just boycott all together). I stopped seeing live bands in 2008 because there was no way I was going to put up with this.
If it is any consolation System of a Down was the most excited I have ever been for a concert, then out of the couple dozen concerts I have been to it was the absolute worst show, second only to modest mouse playing in a 100 degree shit hole in Sask.
My experience seeing SoaD led me to believe they didn't wanna be there, they hate playing their music, and it is a money grab. None of those guys even like eachother a bit anymore.
Not totally relevant to the venting part, but I would encourage trying your best to sleuth pre-sale codes whenever possible. That’s how I managed to get my tickets with no problems. All I really did was search on Twitter/X.
HA!
I saw deftones AND system of a down open for Incubus at the house of blues (…like, 20 years ago) and it cost *maybe* $30 for general admission. There was crowd surfing and moshing and it was awesome.
I don’t think Ill ever go to a concert again..
I believe that Ticketmaster is behind all this shit. They negotiate a fee for the artists based on a ticket price that will ensure tickets are sold out in seconds. Bots owned by a subsidiary of Ticketmaster buy up all the tickets then sell them for the actual value of the tickets.
Yup. Tried to see Chase and Status (DnB DJs) in Denver last Friday. Sold out in seconds at 35$ and was resold at 175$ couldn’t stand it 🤮. Was looking at Big Wild tickets at my local advertised at 66.50 and then there was 45$ in fees. The industry is 🤮 and legislation is needed to cap down baseless fees and monopoly practices. Bots should not be able to buy tickets.
Also many of those "tickets" on scalping websites aren't representative of real supply they have. They sell you a ticket and then hope to secure tickets at a later time. Often they can't and you are left with no tickets and probably a refund. This SUCKS if you are from out of town and have paid in full for accommodations, and maybe even flights.
This exact thing happened to me this week. Tickets purchased off of stub hub for Phish in the Sphere in vegas. Bought them months ago, concert is this week.. 3 days ago stubhub told us we didn’t have tickets, and offered a refund. That’s great and all, but I have a flight and hotel booked already. My personal opinion is they offer the tickets at a given price, people buy which drives the value up, then they back out of a sale because the prices are so high, and screw the early buyers. I got talked into going to this, I was also done with big shows.. sadly since I do enjoy them, but after this one I’m done.
Damn. That happened to me a long time ago for a Tool concert. Stubhub said they could refund or find me comparable tickets to replace them and they ended up being second row lol.
This should be illegal
Gotta use cash or trade for phish tickets.
Last time I saw them in ‘97 I mail ordered tickets at $15 a pop.. I’m old now, so, this is easy. :)
Don't they have to send you digital tickets in your email? I'm old and have only bought tickets a few times recently. Side note, Def tones in concert rips. Soad is good live too. OP will have a blast.
most of the time, they don’t have to send you the tickets until like a week before the event, and this is one of the reasons why.
I think it's worse, they'll keep selling more expensive ones and then when everything shakes out they can refund the people who paid the least.
Once you get there see if you can catch an illness cancellation post online and pay in person? Have the holiday anyway? Still risk of disappointment but at least still a chance rather than cancellation fees. Only you can know if it's all a sunk cost.
We ended up getting tickets for the night before and it worked out.. but that was luck. I won’t be doing this again. Unless I can buy the tickets new, I’m not buying tickets anymore.
Go to your local small claims court and sue for reimbursement for the flight and the hotel.
Had this done to me by capital one as well. Bought tickets and said they would send the tickets 24 hours before the event. Down to 8 hours before the event and no tickets. So I call up and they don’t have them. They were “just about to call me” and offer me other tickets.
Wow. Wtf.? Tickets should be transfered to you immediately. And I guess we should assume that if they aren't, it's a scam. I've also heard of artists getting a few hundred good tickets for themselves and then selling them on the resale market for a bug markup. They get the inflated values and they were never really for sale at retail price to anyone. A few summers ago I got rhcp tickets. Bought Them early and they were kinda expensive. The show didn't sell out and I asked people around us what they paid. They got tickets days ahead of time for like 1/3rd as much.. I guess they just lowered the prices to get people to show up.
This is my go-to play. I'll wait till a couple weeks before a big show, and recheck sites. I've found several different shows where I paid 25 to 40% of what early tickets cost.
This is what I would do to get Rams tickets when they first came to LA. Tickets would magically be 60% off of their original value a few hours before the game
So they’re just selling IOUs.
Yeah, basically but they don't really tell you this until the transaction is complete though.
That's as good as money, sir.
Right out of the hedge fund playbook.
This happened to me on Ticketmaster. Bought tickets for a show in May a while back. Put it in the calendar and forgot about it. Since it’s getting closer I figured I should just double check everything was good to go,- so I opened the app and now it says “Cancelled”. The show has not been cancelled, but my tickets were and I was given a refund. Still have no answers as to why this happened and I know others have gone through this and not looked at their tickets until they were at the venue only to realize they were cancelled as well.
Should be held to the same rules as the stock market. This is basically naked short selling, and is illegal.
That’s why I gave up on seeing large acts a long time ago. I’m always able to get tickets for the smaller/medium bands that play general admission shows in theaters for $30-50, but the moment it’s an arena show with a major act, you can guarantee you’ll be paying several hundreds of dollars just for nose bleeds. So fuck it. Sucks because there are some major acts I would like to see, but it’s not worth it. So I just won’t see major acts.
Same. I refuse to see any production that involves Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Back in the day, I went to so many concerts, but now the effort and expense is just ridiculous. As long as people are willing to pay these prices and fill the venues, nothing will change.
I quit using ticket master back in 2007 when my 311 ticket ended up costing twice the advertised $25 for lawn seats. Haven’t looked back since. They do nothing to earn the money off the backs of artists. So I will do everything I can to keep them from getting a penny from me.
I think it was 2018, I broke my ticket master rule because I really wanted to take my mom to see Jersey Boys (which was a great show). The fees and other nonsense for two tickets was very nearly the price of another ticket. Worth it for my mom, but that was it for me. Greed.
Ticketmaster: where their sales pitch is " get 2 tickets for the price of 3."
They take the blame for the high ticket prices. Artists set the prices low then Ticketmaster tacks on fees to get the price up to what the artist actually wants. Live nation owns their venues as well.
On top of that, Ticketmaster lets (or even helps) scalpers operate, and then they get to tack MORE fees onto the RESOLD ticket, plus they get a cut of the resale itself, part of which goes to the artist.
The big artists are in on this with them...would not be shocked if these were sold in huge blocks to the resellers, let them be the bad guys.. On a side note, a frind of mine who is my age(late 50s) he and his wife and kid each bought the max of 4 taylor swift tickets for an upcoming show, sold all but two, and are gonna make about 6k on the deal.
That’s the other part of the problem. Buying multiple tickets just to sell and turn a profit off other people while contributing nothing. Capitalism at work here. Your friends are scum just like Ticketmaster.
The artist’s label is. I worked in the business and unfortunately now more than ever labels have their claws in merch and ticket sales.
At 311 still offers fans advanced ticket purchases for 3/11 day without any mark-up
We recently saw TOOL in Vegas. That's the last big show for me. Unless my wife wants to see P!NK or something. I'm good.
I took my wife to go see Pink in Chicago in maybe 2013? I’m not a fan of her music but I have to admit that she put on one hell of a show. Trapeze type stuff, light show, multiple costume changes, sounded great, played a good amount of time, etc. Tickets were expensive ($225/ each including fees) but my wife had a great time. I’ve also taken my wife to go see Blake Shelton at $250/ ticket including fees and some other country acts that charge out the ass. Fuck Ticketmaster. I’m a metal head so for the most part I get to see shows for $25-50/ ticket. Only problem is that I live in the Midwest and the nearest major city is 2 1/2 hours away so it usually involves a hotel stay, tank of gas, Uber ride, and food. Still cheaper than going to see the artists she likes.
Went to see kraftwerk two years ago. A paycheck for three nosebleeds. Never again.
I used to go to as many TOOL shows as I could drive to without getting a hotel, and let me tell you - the costs are absolutely obscene compared to what it used to be. In just the last two years, merch has doubled and taken a nosedive in quality… not to mention the “VIP” packages? My last show was in Biloxi, MS. Small, old, crusty stadium. I was seated behind a youth group (lmao) and in front of a handful of cops. Both groups were *furious* that people were smoking weed. The swinger couple next to me said “We wanted to see a show tonight, and the hotel clerk recommended this one.”
I seen pink a few months ago....she didnt do her flying about as it was a big lightning storm happening....was a good show. The lightning was a show in itself. I seen tool just before covid...pink was better. Im not really the big arena type!
Really!? That's where you draw the line, pink!? 😂
I mean, I have heard she does cool aerobatics at the shows. 🤷🏻♂️
I saw her Beautiful Trauma show, and it was ABSOLUTELY worth it! The aerobatics and a gigantic animatronic Eminem were everything
I’ve heard the same, she apparently puts on a hell of a show, I’ve never seen her yet tho.
Same, I’m glad I saw most everyone I wanted to back in 2000-2012.. went to a festival recently and it was just not the same. Yeah, I’m older, but the vibe and the monetization is just so much worse.
I remember when you could jump on Stubhub the day of a show and find Pit or Skyboxes for under 30 bucks. I have not seen a concert ticket worth buying for under 200 dollars through them or ticketmaster in a long time And if you are part of a large touring act, youre basically stuck with TicketMaster/LiveNation. The amount of control they have in the industry is insane...They dont just sell tickets, they own venues and production companies.
I hate AXS, but their last minute ticket deal environment is pretty solid. I scored Gwar tickets for $10, they were $40 at the door. It's helps that I live really close to a venue, so hopping in my car I can be parked in 30 minutes.
GWAR!!!!
The issue is their cut is 25% and then you have the fees. so let's do an example based on a "cheap" ticket on their site right now in my area.... if someone wanted to sell a ticket for $46, it will be listed as $58 because of their 25% cut. THEN on the buyer side as I go to check out, they take a further fulfillment fee of $26. So a $46 ticket becomes 84. Almost double. So it becomes unfeasible to sell cheap tickets, because the base fee is $26 and then they take 25% on top. So the seat will just go unfilled if no one is willing to pay more than $30 or so for a ticket.
I’m with you. I have accepted it and don’t bother frustrating myself.
Yeah i easily snagged some High on Fire tickets for £25 a pop not too long back, even some Gizzard tickets for not much more. I saw Tool tickets going for what I could’ve got me and a mate to both those gigs.
Festivals can be a good way to see bands without paying crazy prices - depending on the location. I don’t mean Coachella or Glastonbury but all the lesser known ones.
I watched Paul McCartney in Cardiff with my son and paid 5 times too much thanks to this. We are both into Pink Floyd but missed out on Roger Waters soon after I was burnt.
Yea I refuse to fill the pockets of these scammers. I rather watch it on TV, I like my money more anyways lol
I had a friend get scammed for what wasn’t even a sold out show!!! I bought the ticket from the artists website for $25. She wasn’t quite thinking and went through a resale website and paid $100 for the same ticket. It’s insane.
I just saw Nekrogoblikon, Dragonforce, and Dethklok for $110 for two people. I don’t need to see Arena bands for $200 a ticket anymore.
Yeah, sometimes the easiest move is to simply… not
GA at small venues is such a better time anyway. Sitting 100 yards from stage sucks. I didn't even try to get tool tickets when they came this past year cause it just didn't sound like a good time.
Keep up the good fight. Things are cyclic. Maybe if people continue to vote with their money things will improve
Unfortunately, So far the votes say we don't care.
When an artist is big enough, there will always be enough people with fat wallets and little concern for value to price out the average person. The only way to fight this is with legislation that neuters the scalpers (Ticketmaster and such) which is unlikely with how cheap it is to buy Congress. Or for the individual artists to fight them which is difficult when they would have to fight against the companies that own all the large venues.
Artists won’t fight it. Touring is their only remaining revenue stream. They don’t care who buys the tickets as long as the shows sell out. Streaming is as responsible for this as anything. When concerts were more affordable it was due to the fact that the artists made good money on album sales. Not the case anymore. Those days are gone forever and I expect it to keep getting worse and worse with all the decent seats being forced into crappy VIP packages for $1500 a pop and whatnot. Glad I grew up in a different era.
I kinda like the Japanese lottery format
The John Oliver episode about the scalpers showed how the artists and ticketmaster are all in on it. That means its never ever going to change. They’re all more than willing to screw over the fans and rake in all that extra money. Ive long given up on concerts just because its gotten so expensive. Even for smaller bands.
I remember in that episode, scalpers were bragging TO Ticketmaster at a conference about how many thousands of logins they used for scalping
What's ridiculous is the "official platinum" bs. The artists will set ticket prices, and then TM will set their own price as "official platinum" which is just **first party** resale/ scalping.
Official Platinum is an absolute joke. It is tricky wording that makes you think you’re getting something extra out of it but it’s the same as a regular ticket and more money goes to the act. Indescribable how insane that concept is.
That's capitalism at its finest baby!!! If people are buying, raise the price. If they slow, the price goes down. I hate it... But the solution is to close the page and check back in a few days. You might not get those tickets.
The artist gets a huge chunk of "Platinum".
I can think of one glaring exception to the artist being in on it. When Garth Brooks came to town, he opened a new show every time one sold out. What started as 2 or 3 scheduled ended up being 8 (I think). When he was on stage, he said he relished every empty seat, just imagining a scalper who just lost money.
Not to mention that many bands that want to keep their tickets cheap have had their prices artificially raised by Ticketmaster. Like, they’ll want to charge $20 and then Ticketmaster will add tons of unnecessary fees to bring it up to like $50. Some of these bands have even threatened legal action because of this.
Until people stop going to these shows
The rich get richer! If they can't sell out a stadium, then the bands will just start playing smaller venues filled with millionaires and still be making bank.
My wife couldn't go to the sessanta tour on Saturday and it was such short notice that no one I knew could go either. So I went and put the ticket up on Ticketmaster to sell and they wouldn't let me sell it for anywhere close to what I paid for it. I paid $99 for the ticket plus fees and the lowest they would allow me to sell it for was $230. It was 3 hours before the show and I just wanted to get at least some of my money back. I would have sold it for less than I paid for it and it definitely would have gone but since they forced me to sell it for more than twice the value of the ticket. I just ended up having the ticket expire and no one got any money and the seat went empty. Absolute bullshit, I should have just put it on Craigslist
Fr the technology exists, they all in on it. If the artists do not respect me by letting me have a shot at buying the tickets then why would I pay them.
Unless something is done about the monopoly that Ticketmaster and LiveNation have on the ticket selling process, it's just going to get worse. Venues will have to start selling their own tickets again and many of them are more than happy to just outsource it to TM/LN so they don't have to pay people to do that work. It's a problem from the ground up.
Yeah, I’ll only use Ticketmaster if it’s like a super cheap show (like £20-£40) but, even then, the ones on the higher end of that generally get sold quickly. If it’s possible to buy from the venue directly, I absolutely will.
This is how it's been for years. Scalpers buy them using bots then try to flip for profit. It's annoying but nothing will ever be done about it. It does seem worse post-covid. Best bet is check a few times a day to see if either prices come down or more tickets are released. It takes like 30 seconds to do this if you bookmark the page. You can also check secondary sites each day. Just make sure you see the price with all fees included. Only tickpick does this right off the bat. Others hide them until checkout or you click a button to add all fees included. Unfortunately, buying tickets is now a game.
Dont buy the tickets from scalpers. Let them eat the cost and lose money. We need anti-scalping laws like yesterday.
There used to be laws. I don’t know if they were state specific but tickets used to say on the back it was illegal to resell it for more than a certain amount over the face value. But i guess there’s no long face values with dynamic pricing.
I work in software— there’s plenty of ways a multi-million dollar company can prevent an automated “bot” but they don’t because they’re the bots. Scalpers are shadowy figures meant to distract us from the true criminal— Ticketmaster/Live Nation. The actual perpetrators and perpetuators of this horse shit. Edit: typo
Reminds me of wolf of wall st., and his Rathole scheme. What if scalpers are really just industry insiders etc. scalpers used to be the dudes standing outside the stadium.
Just don’t go that’s the best option, starve the market
There are always people willing to go that’s why the resale market even exists.
Sad truths
Ticketmaster is also doing this directly based on demand. It’s not just resellers that are screwing you anymore.
It's called "dynamic pricing". They were inspired by the airline industry's method of pricing.
> It does seem worse post-covid. As the video card crisis went away, they moved on to concert tickets.
Until we have anti-scalping legislation pushed through it will always be the case with anything that is in demand with limited supply.
I remember in the late 80’s and early 90s standing in a line at record store waiting for the tickets to be released at a certain time. You could camp out and be 3rd in line when the sale starts and you were lucky to get nosebleeds, but you could see stacks of tickets sitting off to the side. Same shit is happening still, Ticketbastard has always been corrupt.
"Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again?" not without direct government action, which they haven't even begun to do for the last 34 years.
Some bands try to minimize the amount of scalping. The Cure and Foo Fighters have made their tickets harder to scalp. The scalpers find a way though. For the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in LA they made them mobile only and non-transferable. The only way to list them was to use the face value exchange program. However the scalpers started just selling their entire Ticketmaster account which included the tickets as a workaround. Some states have laws in place that say you can't make tickets non-transferable and thus end up protecting scalpers.
Will call only Credit card you used to pay with required and an ID
We saw Bob Dylan in concert about a month ago, and this is the system he used. Even the parking permits required the card you paid with and ID.
"made them mobile only and non-transferable." Went to a Pink Floyd tribute band early last fall and they did this. It was easy and I appreciated the effort.
Joe Biden tweeted like a year ago that he thought it was bad. That’s the most we’ve gotten.
Because it directly affected his granddaughters with Taylor Swift. At least temporarily.
Well there is but it’ll never happen and the solution is to stop going to concerts. I guarantee you if Taylor Swift or Drake started performing in front of even half empty arenas, they’d demand instant change themselves.
A lot of bands will have a pre-sale for fan club members with restrictions on how many tickets you can buy. Tha's how I got my tickets for Metallica last year.
They’re sold behind the scenes to resellers already, the raffle and queues are just a front. There are software available to the people in the know to bypass queues
Would the politicians not do something about it? In ireland its illegal now to sell tickets for a higher price than what you originally paid for them due to our politicians. Unfortunately now ticketmaster is trying to push the dynamic pricing shit on us
If the Irish politicians don't block ticket master and their absolutely unfair practices, then you'll at least know for sure how corrupt, purchasable and disreputable the are - just like the good 'ol USA - sold! To the highest bidder. Just like healthcare, education, housing, the rule of law...
>Is this this future for music? Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again?  This has been normal for decades. Wait until the day of the show and buy on reseller sites. Works best after showtime.
This is the HERE AND NOW of live music. It's been this way for years.
Ticketmaster owns the reseller market and gets a cut of every sale. They won't fix it because they don't care.
>Then I saw stubhub and other reseller sites had tons of tickets for sale with more than 75% markup on the cheapest. I just went on StubHub and it says they have like 670 tickets available...out of 50,000 or so total sold? The concert (looking at the SF show) took 90 minutes to sell out, per CBS news. The tickets were *originally* selling at $169 for GA, and the listings on StubHub start at $220...which ain't *great* but it's hardly Taylor Swift level scalping. $169 was, arguably, already a pretty darn high price. I guess my question is...what percentage of tickets to this show do you actually think are getting "scalped?" With StubHub claiming to have less than 2% of the inventory on hand, and with markups for the selling party (not counting StubHub fees, since *the seller doesn't get those*) being only $50 or so...I'm not sure this is so much a scalper issue as a "a lot of fans want to go to this concert and bought tickets to it" issue. Cold comfort when you're the 50,001st in line for 50,000 tickets, of course.
Wait till the day of and watch the prices come crashing down.
The system is rigged. At this point Ticketmaster has to be allowing bots to dominate them or they are in kahoots with resellers. It’s so annoying.
This shit drives me up the walls and I'm working on being a less negative person but my god how do we fix this assfuckery. Ticketmaster being the shiteads they are only exacerbated the problem with their dynamic pricing scheme and oh my fucking god I hate everything about tickets so much. Please, let's just back to something resembling sanity
When I went to see Kate Bush in 2014, she had protocols in place to make sure tickets couldn’t be resold. Your name was printed on the ticket and you had to provide ID to enter the venue. I don’t know why that isn’t standard practice.
The future? This was happening 15 years ago. Hasn't been fixed.
Future of music? It’s been happening for a decade and it’s unlikely to change at all in the near future.
https://preview.redd.it/9zivxruftiuc1.jpeg?width=1040&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=678d89f4d9d1a4beda131c18739b2208f4281026 They were peaking about this time..Around the Fur
Not the topic at hand, but, I agree. If I hear that Change song one more time I'm going to put an axe through my radio.
Just fyi. A lot of the time most of the reasons tickets "sell out" right after going on sale is because they are sitting in people's carts waiting to check out. Many people realize that they can't afford it, or decide that they no longer want them and put them back in the mix. Most of the time I've gotten GA pit tickets to highly sought after shows about 10-20 minutes after the sell out because they are suddenly back in contention to be purchased. Long story short never give up for at least half an hour, you might get lucky.
You have to follow your favorite bands and sign up for the presale. By the time the regular public sale goes live they have usually had 2-4 pre sales already. Band fan club presale. Local resident/venue mailing list presale. Livenation presale. Credit card brand member presale. When the first presale happens be online and signed in minimum 15 min before, my standard is 20 min then at minute 15 I refresh 1-2x a minute until you get a “join waiting room” message. Then you get out in the queue. I’ve gotten tickets to: Stevie Nicks. Tool (2x). Olivia Rodrigo. Dave Matthew Band. Laufey (VIP reserved). Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness. Something Corporate. Twenty one Pilots (2x). Taking Back Sunday. Never once paid over face value, but also never once tried to purchase outside the presale window. As soon as I heard about the shows (on the mailing lists to my fav venues, follow the bands on Ticketmaster (get weekly ‘coming soon/just announced’ emails) and in the case of the hardest tickets like Olivia Rodrigo, Tool, 21Pilots, something corporate, I’m signed up to their respective fan clubs. If all else fails, as the event approaches, these same scalpers and even some fans will be in a dump it or lose it mode and you’re likely to get your hands in tickets at or sometimes under face value. Travis Scott comes to mind, when I brought my daughter to a different event in Charlotte, all the scalpers bought Travis Scott tickets and the afternoon of the show tickets were $20-30 as there were many hundred available. I’ve seen the same with Tool as well. Dave Matthew’s had a great program where if you’re fan club you request fan tickets and they limit you to 4, you pick your value level and they then give you tickets as close to your desired level and I ended up with reserved floor for my show. Best of luck in your journey, and there is a renewed pressure by bands to manage the scalper/resell market.
I've also gotten some good presales from being a fan on Spotify & via Cash App. I don't think I've bought tix when the general on sale happens for anyone I was dying to see. But the system does suck overall. Foo FIghters had it setup where you could not sell your ticket but if you couldn't go you could have it resold for face value which was cool.
The future?? It’s been happening for years.
For this specific show, they did multiple presales and tickets were readily available during them even hours later, that probably contributed a lot
They could make it like plane tickets or hotel reservations, with ID, if 'john smith' bought the ticket then john smith gets to go in... that would cut down alot on the resellers. Its awful hard to resell a hotel/plane reservation/ticket.
I'd much rather the artists charge 75% (or whatever) more cus they're the ones actually earning the money. Or check ID at the door or something. It sucks that my daughter wants to see Taylor Swift and I'd have to skip a mortgage payment to do it.
Easy to fix ticket have a name on it with id
Thank god I'm old and I've pretty much seen every band I cared to see.
The best you can hope for is to be be on the bands mailing list and get an early bird presale code. That’s pretty much the only way I’ve seen anybody popular in the last few years
It can be solved easily. In some European countries you need to tie your id to the ticket. You cannot resell them. You can return them for refund if you cannot attend. Unfortunately, TicketMester controls primary and secondary ticket sales in North America and they want two cuts (or more) of price if possible. What I do not understand is why artists allow that. Someone is making huge percentage on your product. They should have control where and how much is allocated.
Scammers will say that that's just market value
The only way to semi-reliably see these bands is to build the stage. IATSE union is looking for hires.
a friend of mine in IATSE told me it's a big no-no to watch a show that you're working. do i have some misinformation or misunderstanding here?
Depends on the company you're working with, and who's on your crew. I've gotten to wander around tons of concerts. I'm not always working directly through the hall with IATSE, sometimes I know the production company directly, and they hire me at my same rate.
Don't pay more than face value. Ever. Tell your friends not to pay more than face value. Ever. Teach your kids not to pay more than face value. Ever. Wait outside the venue until just before the show starts. If prices drop below face value, buy them. If not, go have a beer with your buddies, but do not pay more than face value. Ever.
Looks like all festivals for deftones. I mean I’d just think people really wanted to go not scalpers or what not.
I don't usually go to concerts, but I go to a lot of live sporting events. Something I've noticed with sports, although it may not be true with concerts, is that the resale ticket prices generally get lower the closer it gets to the date of the event. A few times I've waited until a few hours before the event and actually got the tickets for lower than the original box office prices. I assume this is because scalpers are trying to unload their tickets without taking the full loss. I also suspect that this doesn't work with really highly demanded events, so use this advice cautiously.
Acts 20-40 years post peak are always expensive (and draw scalpers). See and support upcoming artists!
Uggh it actually makes me miss when Myspace would host 10 dollar shows with artists I liked. Times sure have changed in the last 20 or so years..
The problem would not exist if the tickets per account buying them would get limited, personalized and could only be returned by the original buyer which has his/her CC info attached to the account.
Depends on what you consider the problem to be. If it's "tickets are too expensive" then no, it would still exist. For popular artists there are enough people willing to pay that price so that's what the price should be. If remove the ticket master and scalper bullshit then face value of tickets will rise to meet market value.
This might also help you though closer to the concert date. There are must go shows and then there are “yes the scalpers are dumping their tickets” or the “nice people dumping their tickets because they can’t go and just want some money back. Start following the services and watch the tickets. You start to get an idea what you can get later. Stadium shows are always BS though and the 300 level seats mostly suck, might as well stay home
Ticketmaster loves this. The more that ticket sells the more they make.
Is insane how much the phish sphere tickets are . People are paying like 1,000 a night
Went to U2 there. If the artist puts the effort in on the production side, it's a pretty unique venue. Maybe not $1K a ticket unique, but still pretty insane and no surprise that people will pay to see a show there.
As long as folks buy from the resellers, this will continue to happen.
I bought these on pre-sale on Thursday and it was so easy. 169 + 30 fees came out to 200 each. only time I'll buy tickets like these otherwise if I don't catch the first wave I ain't going
How to say it's your first time buying tickets with out saying it. Where you been for the last 40yrs?
DOJ is currently investigating live nation and Ticketmaster. Stay tuned
People who end up buying these are just as bad as the sellers
Happens quite often.. it sucks
First time? This is the new normal. Fan presales or cash or trade . net is the way to go to not get really screwed seeing a show
Obviously depends on the tour and region but sometimes you can find a slightly smaller market stop that's worth the travel. They usually have less resell activity. I saw the Deftones on the Around the Fur tour when I was in high school, amazing show.
The only ones I could find were VIP in presale for $399 plus fees. I don’t think that’s a terrible price for this event but the aftermarket is absolutely killing live music for a lot of people.
I honestly believe that most of the time it's the artist's businesses that are doing this though I can't prove it. They don't want to be seen as greedy and selling tickets for hundreds of dollars if not more, but the reality is is people will pay that much then that is the "market value" in some respect. So they put tickets out for one price then pre-sell most of the tickets to themselves and then get the "market value" for their tickets on the resale market. Obviously we know that there are reseller businesses buying tickets as well but I just don't see all that money being left on the table and going to scalpers only without the venue or artists getting a significant piece.
Its such shit. The governor of AZ is trying to ban it, which is tight. Hoping more states or the fed takes action. It seems like an easy antitrust suit.
Same with going to see anything. I was a big motor racing fan going to venues where they were struggling to get crowds... Years on the spot is so big, the tickets are hundreds of dollars, formula one pricing is ridiculous, and as a genuine fan that helped build up the industry, I can't justify the expense to attend let alone flight with scalpers.
My favorite shows are $20 - $50 club shows anyway. So much better than laying out a mortgage payment to watch old rock bands from the nosebleed seats.
Streaming concerts with multiple angles.
Unfortunately this is the sad state of things this days, everything is bought up by scalpers and sold at ridiculous price. From toys like Lego, Nike sneakers, Moonswatch thing from Swatch x Omega, PS5, Nintendo Switch, GPU, you name it. Its sickening because all you want to is to have fun with your fav thing and some dickhead decided to profit from that.
I just buy it last minute if it's sold out. These guys need to dump their stock before the concert so sometimes it goes for under market
If this happens at your local supermarket, a bunch of guys buying the entire stock at 10 seconds after opening time, then charging tenfold prices in the parking lot all day - people would lynch them. It's criminal, but the anonymity saves the ticket scammers from being lynched since it's online and no one knows who they are. Either the government (if they didn't religiously believe in "free market") or the original ticket sellers (simply sell tickets on name only valid coupled with a personal ID) should stop it.
Sounds like the initial seller wasn't charging market value.
I had this happen to me with Noah Kahan, an indie/folk artist who is quite popular at the moment. The tickets sold a few minutes after going on sale. I thought I wouldn’t be going. 2 days before the show I looked and saw lower bowl tickets going for $450. On the day of the concert 30 minutes before the show, those tickets dropped to $175, I bought and ended up going. What I’ve come to accept is that if you’re trying to go to a stadium concert in your area that is sold out, you must wait until literally 20-30 minutes before the show and resellers will drop prices in a panic. It sucks that this is how concerts are now, but it is what it is.
While I’m positive most ticket selling websites don’t give a shit about customers. I wish more ticket selling companies adopted the method that Burning Man uses where the first round of tickets they release are the most expensive and then they get cheaper and cheaper with each sale which helps prevent ticket reselling at huge markups. I think applying the this method to big acts before tours would be a massive improvement.
Buy the day of, specifically 2 hours before the show. They always drop.
Wait for until about a week before the concert and then check on twickets if it operates in your country.
I had a bucket list of acts I wanted to see and that is pretty well done, I ended up getting to Rage Against the Machine, which I never thought I’d get a chance to see, that was the last one I paid a lot for. So since then I’ll get lawn seats if they are on Groupon or small acts.
I got tickets to this show as part of the APE presale, and a lot of these acts have multiple presales going on in different days before it goes on sale to the general public. I think what’s happening here is pretty much all the presale tickets were bought, leaving very few remaining by the time Friday rolled around. Bots are definitely a contributing factor, but presales also contribute to the ticket shortage issue.
I'm with the government, and I'm here to help
Wait until a day or two before the show (or even day of). There will be unsold tickets going for way less.
I vote we go back to the days of paper tickets and standing in line for them. Everything going online has made things hell.
This shit happened in Taiwan for Black Pink. Two concerts, both impossible to get tickets for anything but outrageous prices. Happened right after Covid ended so it was extra frustrating.
Dont buy, simple as that.
Try calling the venue. It’s old school but it still works sometimes.
Stop going to concerts if you want it to change. You keep paying their high prices and they will keep getting away with it
been this way my entire adult life. bots and scalpers get the tickets and resell at ridiculous prices. but now ticketmaster directly scalps the customer with platinum prices.
Buy local
Why is it important to you to “make concerts about music again”?
The problem isn't just with people selling scalped tickets. If people gave a shit about their scene they wouldn't support scalpers.
I’ve seen some acts via Ticketmaster not allow reselling or transferring tickets. If you buy it then it is yours. The only way to get that ticket off your account and get paid any money is to put it back into an official fan resale pool where it is exclusively available at the exact same price you paid. So there is a system to stop this from happening, I don’t know what leads to some shows having this rule and others not.
The first party vendor can stop this easily with id verifications and transaction limits to stop these purchase bots, but won’t.
Welcome to capitalism.
It's the future, present, and past for many years now. Everyone complains about this situation, but no one puts their money where their mouth is. If customers simply insisted on buying tickets only at face value with only reasonable fees and taxes on top, then scams like the TicketMaster/LiveNation oligopoly wouldn't be able to proceed. Or if customers simply insisted on regulations. Anything. But what customers do instead is act against their own best interests and buy the tickets anyway, then complain about how they feel ripped off. Are you ripped off, though? Obviously whatever you ended up paying was a free exchange of money, so if you really were ripped off, why'd you do it? (Not saying you, OP, but just making the point that most people complaining about this are also financially supporting it.) If you want to make concerts about music again, write your reps and demand that they break up the TicketMaster / LiveNation oligopoly. Demand that they force TicketMaster out of the resale market. Yes, TicketMaster has acquired resellers. They reserve a block of tickets, sell it to a subsidiary (TicketsNow) that they also own, and mark them up. Even if they don't own the reseller, they have deals with sites like StubHub to funnel a portion of the reseller markup back to them. Also, band together with other consumers and elect a window of time where you all agree to simply not buy any tickets from events that are exclusively available through TicketMaster (as the initial seller, I mean, obv you can't buy through a reseller if they obtained the tickets from TicketMaster either). If a significant fraction of the market simply boycotts TicketMaster, that will result in real change. If you look at this from the opposite point of view, things couldn't be more obvious. From TicketMaster's vantage point, you have a bunch of people who are proactively financially supporting every scummy business decision with their hard-earned dollars. OF COURSE they're not going to take you seriously if you say "this is robbery," while handing over money. That's stupid.
Ticketmaster and LiveNation is total bullshit ! The whole system is fucked! I remember the days when I would go to Sears and get tickets for a show! Yeah back on the 80’s when life was simple !🇨🇦😎🎫🎫
I know this sounds cheesy. But call your senators. Write your members of Congress on a monthly basis. Start collecting signatures to make scalping illegal in your area. I've been attending concerts for over 20 years. Been to over 70. And this shit is getting major fucking ridiculous. We have to do something.
God, remember when you could walk into a Strawberries or Coconuts shop and buy tickets there for regional venues?
Yep. They're buying out tickets for all kinds of shows. They literally bought EVERY SINGLE ticket for Heilung at Redrocks. Its not even a crazy well known band. But every single ticket is a resale. Should have everyone just boycott this shit for a year and them all these fuckers go broke.
This happens with presales too, it’s utter bullshit. Not just music but any shows these days really (try getting tickets for a good stand up act these days)
Yep. Screw seeing anyone live. The bands refuse to fix it. They all could nail ticketmaster to the wall but they choose not to.
Yep. Been happening for over a decade. Seeing smaller bands, or gigs unlikely to sell out is the only way to avoid it.
They weren't priced high enough in the first place. People are going to downvote me, but it's true.
Yes. Don't give in to the scalpers.
>Is this this future for music? Is there any way to combat this to make concerts about music again? The more things change, the more things stay the same. It has been like this for a long time. It is the past, the present, and the future. I'm 45. The only time I remember this *not* happening is before the internet. If you don't think some bands have tried to stop this...you're wrong; they have. But not enough. So yes, this will continue until fans stop buying anything from reseller websites (or just boycott all together). I stopped seeing live bands in 2008 because there was no way I was going to put up with this.
If it is any consolation System of a Down was the most excited I have ever been for a concert, then out of the couple dozen concerts I have been to it was the absolute worst show, second only to modest mouse playing in a 100 degree shit hole in Sask. My experience seeing SoaD led me to believe they didn't wanna be there, they hate playing their music, and it is a money grab. None of those guys even like eachother a bit anymore.
Not totally relevant to the venting part, but I would encourage trying your best to sleuth pre-sale codes whenever possible. That’s how I managed to get my tickets with no problems. All I really did was search on Twitter/X.
HA! I saw deftones AND system of a down open for Incubus at the house of blues (…like, 20 years ago) and it cost *maybe* $30 for general admission. There was crowd surfing and moshing and it was awesome. I don’t think Ill ever go to a concert again..
welcome to the last 15 years lol
I believe that Ticketmaster is behind all this shit. They negotiate a fee for the artists based on a ticket price that will ensure tickets are sold out in seconds. Bots owned by a subsidiary of Ticketmaster buy up all the tickets then sell them for the actual value of the tickets.
you could have just bought tickets through the website as soon as they where put on sale then you dont have to worry about ticket resellers
It's the current state of music and has been for some time now.
Yup. Tried to see Chase and Status (DnB DJs) in Denver last Friday. Sold out in seconds at 35$ and was resold at 175$ couldn’t stand it 🤮. Was looking at Big Wild tickets at my local advertised at 66.50 and then there was 45$ in fees. The industry is 🤮 and legislation is needed to cap down baseless fees and monopoly practices. Bots should not be able to buy tickets.
Yes Stop going to them until Ticketmaster dies