Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

hollywoodreporter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 378 posts

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#251

Post by TylerE »

aczerepinski wrote: post #88
827a wrote: post #5

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

The only real solutions to scalping are to impact supply/demand by increasing supply (extra show in each city) or lower demand (raise prices). As a jazz fan I don’t know much about shows that sell out and attract scalpers, but I’m curious why the artists don’t double prices to cut out middlemen.

> but I’m curious why the artists don’t double prices to cut out middlemen

That is essentially what they have done. Ticketmaster is basically "We take PR heat to make you more money".

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#252

Post by LeoPanthera »

ssl-3 wrote: post #236
seandoe wrote: post #227

It seems like a step in the right direction to combat scalpers. I've wondered though... Why not have a non-transferrable ticket system? If you can't go then you return your tickets to the pool and if they sell you get your money back.

Non-transferable tickets suck for their own reasons. Someone in a group gets sick or otherwise can't make it? Their seat is now either empty, or their ticket goes back to the pool. They can't give that ticket to someone else. That's a big deal for a whole slew of reasons. Let's pick just one reason and run with it. Five 11-year-old-ish girls want to go see Olivia Rodrigo. These kids haven't ever even been inside an a…

The UK is proposing a law that will make it illegal to resell a ticket for greater than the face value.

That honestly seems like a very pragmatic solution to me.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#253

Post by ssl-3 »

registeredcorn wrote: post #240
ssl-3 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-transferable tickets suck for their own reasons. Someone in a group gets sick or otherwise can't make it? Their seat is now either empty, or their ticket goes back to the pool. They can't give that ticket to someone else. That's a big deal for a whole slew of reasons. Let's pick just one reason and run with it. Five 11-year-old-ish girls want to go see Olivia Rodrigo. These kids haven't ever even been inside an a…

If there were a caveat for something like that, like say, "adult supervision for minors is required. Transfer between legal guardians is permitted, provided they can prove ..." or some kind of language like that. Are there other common cases that would apply? I assume there are probably some other situations, but I can't think of what they might be. I also find it hard to understand why a little bit of leeway couldn'…

So how do those rules work, exactly?

How do we even prove that the kids are kids? How do we prove that the kids even exist?

> or some kind of language like that.

There's nothing accomplished here but handwaving and added burden.

---

> Perhaps something as easy as "If one friend can't make it, you can give it to a different friend." Then, at the door, the guards can look at the ID of someone and ask basic questions; "What is (person)'s name? What town does (person) live in?" Etc.

In this second scenario, scalping goes like this: "For sale: Two tickets to $hot_show. Entry instructions provided upon delivery."

And then the buyer buys the tickets at whatever that price is, and goes to the show. They give their ID, the "guards" ask them basic questions, and they answer those questions. After that, they get turned loose inside like every other concert-goer.

This is just handwaving and extra burden, as well.

---

Unless... unless we make it totally Gestapo-like. Because the best part of going to see a show is the lengthy interrogation that happens beforehand. (If the goal is to make shows less popular, then this is a sure-fire way to improve that metric!)

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#254

Post by theptip »

etrautmann wrote: post #248
4d4m wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the artists set aside tickets specifically for resale. At a company i worked at we did this on behalf of the artists and content-rightsholders directly to maximize their profit. Your favorite artist loves money and resale more than affordability

How does resale help the artist? By inflating expectations for ticket prices for the next show?

If the artist sells them directly at the market price set by the resale auction, they get more than if they sell at face value.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#255

Post by riffraff »

alternatetwo wrote: post #171
bradleybuda wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferring tickets to friends is functionally indistinguishable from scalping

isn’t scalping selling at profit? if i sell to a friend at the same i paid it’s not really scalping …

Yes, but you can't know if the transfer happens at a profit. You can always ask the person to pay you extra on top of a "monitored" transfer.

UEFA limits this for football games by allowing you to purchase only two tickets and changing only one name, and the two tickets must go together. Or you sell back the ticket to the organization and they sell it back to random fans.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#256

Post by TylerE »

saghm wrote: post #62
bradleybuda wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fewer people go to concerts Scalpers don't buy tickets and not sell them. The most scalped concerts are obviously the most attended > fans can’t afford the tickets See above. I assume what you are upset about is that rich fans are the ones going. > less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall I think you need to explain your logic here.

If I bought 100 tickets, sold 20 of them at 10x the value I paid for them, and then ate the rest as a loss, I'm still making a tidy profit, and the artist/venue/etc. still make the same amount of money as if 100 individuals bought them and attended, but there are now 80 fewer people in the audience (edited to add: and potentially 80 people who could have afforded the original price but not the absurd upsell). I don't…

> the artist/venue/etc. still make the same amount of money as if 100 individuals bought them and attended, but there are now 80 fewer people

No they won't. The venue now has 1/5th the people buying booze. They're gonna HATE that night.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#257

Post by rendaw »

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…

Are the people who pay lots of money not fans?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#258

Post by ssl-3 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #252
ssl-3 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-transferable tickets suck for their own reasons. Someone in a group gets sick or otherwise can't make it? Their seat is now either empty, or their ticket goes back to the pool. They can't give that ticket to someone else. That's a big deal for a whole slew of reasons. Let's pick just one reason and run with it. Five 11-year-old-ish girls want to go see Olivia Rodrigo. These kids haven't ever even been inside an a…

The UK is proposing a law that will make it illegal to resell a ticket for greater than the face value. That honestly seems like a very pragmatic solution to me.

"Great news, gentlemen! We've made [drugs/gambling/guns/scalping] illegal! That problem is solved!"

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#259

Post by riffraff »

rglover wrote: post #74
827a wrote: post #5

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

Go back to the old way. Get in line physically and go get the tickets. This is one of those "technology should help here but actually makes the problem worse in weird ways" type of situations. Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor did this in 2018 and it was infinitely better (I also met a lot of people just standing in line—we recognized each other at the show later and ended up throwing each other around in the mosh pit—a g…

I lived through the '90s when all presales were physical and scalping absolutely happened.

It's actually a lot easier, the scalper would just hand a wad of cash to the teller and walk away with a stack of tickets to resell.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#260

Post by LeoPanthera »

ssl-3 wrote: post #258
LeoPanthera wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is proposing a law that will make it illegal to resell a ticket for greater than the face value. That honestly seems like a very pragmatic solution to me.

"Great news, gentlemen! We've made [drugs/gambling/guns/scalping] illegal! That problem is solved!"

This seems unnecessarily cynical.
Post reply on HN