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Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

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Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#191

Post by lbreakjai »

iamalizard wrote: post #178
csb6 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want view ticket pricing as a pure economics problem (it is not), consider that live shows are also a way to build up and expand a fanbase. If only a handful of rich people (or people who bought tickets the second they went on sale) are at your show, you are not expanding your audience. Since streaming has decimated most artists' income from record sales, it makes sense to try and build a large fanbase who wil…

I understand what you're saying but it still mostly an issue for the artist - building a fan base. Otherwise if you have X amount of tickets to be distributed, you'll get X people at the venue, at most. Since the same number of people will show up, it's a matter of distribution. What should the distribution be? You, and many others, say it shouldn't be the richest people, or more accurately those who'd pay the highes…

People leave out that the first selection has already happened before the tickets are even on sale, by picking the cities where the tours will stop. The new trend is for artists to stay for longer, in fewer cities, which saves them a ton of money. Like mini-residencies.

Harry Styles is giving more than 20 concerts in Europe, but only in Wembley or Amsterdam.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#192

Post by raincole »

wat10000 wrote: post #190
Aboutplants wrote: post #175

Auction. Auction is the answer. Or, when a tour is announced, start tickets at 10X the regular price and have it drop down to the regular price over the course of a couple of weeks in a simple time based mechanism. After that, if tickets are not sold out it continues to drop until sold or it hits a reserve price for Door tickets. Good for artists, fair from a market perspective and gets rid of scalpers

The answer to what question?

The fact there are more people want X than the total number of X.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#193

Post by mktemp-d »

Aboutplants wrote: post #175

Auction. Auction is the answer. Or, when a tour is announced, start tickets at 10X the regular price and have it drop down to the regular price over the course of a couple of weeks in a simple time based mechanism. After that, if tickets are not sold out it continues to drop until sold or it hits a reserve price for Door tickets. Good for artists, fair from a market perspective and gets rid of scalpers

Terrible idea. The venues would taking on all the risk and could even cancel a show if there are not enough ticket purchases because its steepest discount is only the day before the show.

A person purchasing a ticket a month or two in advance prior to the show off loads the risk from the venue. They purchase the ticket thinking they can make the show in two months because the event is a long ways away. People know what they are going to do a week advanced most of the time and therefore might just forego purchasing the ticket a that point in time, because there it has instant depreciating value at the point of sale.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#194

Post by mckn1ght »

raincole wrote: post #176
827a wrote: post #5

For those against this: I'm curious to hear your take on how you'd stop/mitigate scalping.

I agree with the libertarians on this. Scalping isn't an issue. People who are willing to pay more for tickets should get them. Concert tickets are not basic needs like housing or food. If there is room for arbitrage (which is what scalping really is) then the tickets are too cheap in the first place.

I agree with supply and demand dictating the price on scarce items. I don’t agree with letting middlemen butt in and drive the price up by exacerbating the scarcity, and making a profit with no value add to the market.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#195

Post by pibaker »

Aboutplants wrote: post #175

Auction. Auction is the answer. Or, when a tour is announced, start tickets at 10X the regular price and have it drop down to the regular price over the course of a couple of weeks in a simple time based mechanism. After that, if tickets are not sold out it continues to drop until sold or it hits a reserve price for Door tickets. Good for artists, fair from a market perspective and gets rid of scalpers

You are overlooking the secondary effect — what happens if you, a musician, a person who lives off having a positive public image, becomes known as the kind of musician who uses free market forces to effectively price fans out? Fans will not like it. It is not rational but nothing in music is. You win the pricing battle but lose the PR war. It's bad for your business and the entire business of concerts in the long run.

And with your particular pricing scheme, there is arguably still nothing stopping scalpers from scooping up the tickets after the price drops to a level likely to be profitable for them but before fans had the time to react. In fact it would probably benefit the scalpers even more because they will have more time to track price drops than your average fan!

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#196

Post by presentation »

pibaker wrote: post #195
Aboutplants wrote: post #175

Auction. Auction is the answer. Or, when a tour is announced, start tickets at 10X the regular price and have it drop down to the regular price over the course of a couple of weeks in a simple time based mechanism. After that, if tickets are not sold out it continues to drop until sold or it hits a reserve price for Door tickets. Good for artists, fair from a market perspective and gets rid of scalpers

You are overlooking the secondary effect — what happens if you, a musician, a person who lives off having a positive public image, becomes known as the kind of musician who uses free market forces to effectively price fans out? Fans will not like it. It is not rational but nothing in music is. You win the pricing battle but lose the PR war. It's bad for your business and the entire business of concerts in the long ru…

What about both? Artists want money, fans want entry, reserve a portion for hardcore fans and the remainder by auction. Artists get to sell their $10k seats to the rich while looking like they’re giving an amazing discount to their fans.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#197

Post by mckn1ght »

hananova wrote: post #152
mike-cardwell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK they're making it illegal to resell tickets for more than the original cost. That should deal with the majority of the problem.

Scalpers will just do two transactions, one high one for the privilege of being able to buy the ticket, and then the sale at the listed limit. No, the real solution is to make tickets strictly id-bound and non-transferable in any way.

> Scalpers will just do two transactions, one high one for the privilege of being able to buy the ticket, and then the sale at the listed limit.

I don’t understand this. If you can’t resell for higher than ticket price, how do they make any profit? Are you saying they’d sell the cheaper ticket for the more expensive ticket’s price? Wouldn’t price stick to the ticket, since presumably different price tiers afford different location/etc?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#198

Post by pibaker »

presentation wrote: post #196
pibaker wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are overlooking the secondary effect — what happens if you, a musician, a person who lives off having a positive public image, becomes known as the kind of musician who uses free market forces to effectively price fans out? Fans will not like it. It is not rational but nothing in music is. You win the pricing battle but lose the PR war. It's bad for your business and the entire business of concerts in the long ru…

What about both? Artists want money, fans want entry, reserve a portion for hardcore fans and the remainder by auction. Artists get to sell their $10k seats to the rich while looking like they’re giving an amazing discount to their fans.

This is a better idea, but you run into the problem of determining who are the more deserving fans, and you circle back to what Spotify is planning to do.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#199

Post by iamalizard »

lbreakjai wrote: post #191
iamalizard wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying but it still mostly an issue for the artist - building a fan base. Otherwise if you have X amount of tickets to be distributed, you'll get X people at the venue, at most. Since the same number of people will show up, it's a matter of distribution. What should the distribution be? You, and many others, say it shouldn't be the richest people, or more accurately those who'd pay the highes…

People leave out that the first selection has already happened before the tickets are even on sale, by picking the cities where the tours will stop. The new trend is for artists to stay for longer, in fewer cities, which saves them a ton of money. Like mini-residencies. Harry Styles is giving more than 20 concerts in Europe, but only in Wembley or Amsterdam.

Is that bad? It's economics. The artist likely decided they'll make more money that way. Hardcore or richer fans will be able to travel to Wembley or Amsterdam. Less enthusiastic and poorer fans won't.

I can't attend most of the concerts I would go to if they were in my city and cost nothing because they're far away from where I live org because they cost a lot. I still enjoy the recordings I can download. I treat concerts as a luxury, not a necessity or a right.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#200

Post by Barrin92 »

lbreakjai wrote: post #149
mike-cardwell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should anything be done? Because there is demand for it. A lot of people like going to live music and theatre events and scalpers make it more difficult and more expensive for them. Why shouldn't anything be done? Because capitalism is God?

I'm probably one of the least capitalism-minded commenters on HN, but this is a case where I'm happy to let the market sort itself out. It's not food, shelter, medicine, or housing. I'm absolutely not convinced that the problem is as widespread as people make it out to be, outside of a few big names or events. > Why shouldn't anything be done? Because capitalism is God? Because it's just the system manifesting itself…

>But the shiny charmander card is where people draw the line?

this isn't just about trendy commercial items. Michael Sandel in 'The Moral Limits of Markets' called this 'Skyboxification'. These mechanisms like scalping affect sport events where people of different classes used to sit next to each other and where now low income earners are either priced out or delegated to the backrow. Cultural spaces that do not separate people into 'winners' or 'losers' but treat people equally are the basis of any civil society. It's where people from different walks of life come into contact.

One guy driving a nicer car or having a nicer watch than another person is fine but when you start tearing apart culture, sports, art, music you end up with well, the US of today https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-money-cant-buy_b_1442128

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