How to sell tickets fairly

There's a few ways it is implemented and not all artists/venues do all of these but things I've seen are:

- Priority purchase for "fan club" registered members. Most artists have a LINE group fan club with a yearly subscription (like $50 or whatever), then if you are in this group, you get priority access to that artist's events. This means if you're a "real" fan you get to access tickets before everyone else.

- Lottery system based on price "bands". I've seen a few artists let the fans decide how much they want to pay based on tiers. Months before the event, the artist will send out a survey with price ranges you can choose (only one) like: $10, $15, $30, $50, $90 and then seats will be allocated based on a priority level as a self-chosen value. So if there's 5 people who chose $90, 10 people who chose $50, 30 people who chose $30, 200 people who chose $15, and 1000 people who chose $10, if the venue can only host 250 people then 5 + 10 + 30 + 200 (= 245) people will get in at their price, and only 5 remaining people will get in at $10 price point.

- Totally random lottery based on "waves". X people will apply to wave 1, and out of those X people let's say only 70% will get chosen. Then the artist/venue decides on a more approachable size and might host a second wave, another X people will apply to that second wave (including the previously excluded 30%) and another 70% will get chosen, then repeat until the venue is full or the artist decides they cannot host more events. Those who don't get chosen have to suck it up and try again another time.

It's far from perfect, and as I said it can be extremely frustrating, but it has its good sides too.

Taylor Swift is huge, a megastar. She has a fanbase in the millions. She doesn't want to tour endlessly as it is exhausting and impedes upon a family life and seeing friends. So... a big tour, but big venues.

Her fanbase is all ages, but probably veers towards teens and those in their twenties as she went mega-big after 1989 was released (in 2014).

The vast majority of the fanbase are younger, and therefore poorer (wealth is accumulated over time, and the cost of living crisis hits the young disproportionately).

Because the fanbase is so large, the minority with wealth could afford to purchase every ticket under a dutch auction and the vast majority of her fanbase wouldn't stand a chance.

Taylor Swift is famed for doing things for her fans, getting them in to gigs, visiting in hospital, sending messages to console... and basically having empathy and caring for them.

Can you even imagine the headlines on every front page as teens and twenty-year olds are priced out by older people who are wealthier... and the immense damage that would cause to a brand curated and sculpted over the past decade or more.

In this specific instance... Taylor Swift would consider the proposal in the article to be the worst possible thing she could do. It would still be flat-out rejected.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...

Of course if the biggest venue isn't big enough to do that, then that's more of a problem of the local facilities, or the artist's decision to play in an area with inadequately sized venues.

Perhaps you are describing, and perhaps the author are tackling the upper strata. For myself, I swore off big venues decades ago. If I am unable to set my beer behind the monitor speaker, I'm not going.

I wonder if the lower strata could use a kind of "artists coop" to manage ticket sales. All smaller venues (bars and the like) could participate, all smaller artists could as well.

I think more artists would handle selling their own tickets if it was easy to do. In that way the artists are served (of course) and presumably they will do what is best for their fanbase.

Connecting artists and venue owners with a web portal, allowing ticket sales to fans via the same site shouldn't be heavy lifting for a lot of the readers on HN.