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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

#271
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…

Tough fucking luck. I missed out on Alive 2007 because I was too young, on Lady Gaga because my partner got sick and we had to resell the tickets (at the exact same price we bought them for. And someone else bought them for that exact same price). Will I ever see Muse? Fuck if I know. > The end result of this is stupid: "Sorry, kids. None of you get to go to the concert that you already have a ticket for. Life is har…

Understood: Kids aren't important.

Or perhaps: The suffering is the point.

Copy! Over!

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#272
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perfect is the enemy of good. If a law can end the easier parts of the problem then the overwhelming majority of the issues go away. For example, the UK banned the private ownership of 'short guns' in 1997 and there hasn't been a mass shooting since. The second order effect of that was an increase in knife crime, but that's OK (in the sense that it's another problem to deal with). Trading fighting gun crime for fight…

The UK has done amazingly well at removing short guns from society. It was perhaps erroneous of me to include that.

But do you really think that selling/having illicitly overpriced concert tickets will have the same domestic ire as illicitly selling/having a short gun does? Will the incentive really be gone?

Or do you think that perhaps it will be seen ~the same as selling/having some weed is, instead?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#273
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough fucking luck. I missed out on Alive 2007 because I was too young, on Lady Gaga because my partner got sick and we had to resell the tickets (at the exact same price we bought them for. And someone else bought them for that exact same price). Will I ever see Muse? Fuck if I know. > The end result of this is stupid: "Sorry, kids. None of you get to go to the concert that you already have a ticket for. Life is har…

Understood: Kids aren't important. Or perhaps: The suffering is the point. Copy! Over!

Kids aren't important when you're trying to make everyone's lives worse, indeed.

I sure hope I wont't find anything in your history protesting against widespread surveillance, because as we know, its's to protect the children. But you're not a hypocrite picking and choosing your arguments to make shitty points on HN, right ?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#274
Don't really get why people are saying letting ticket prices rise to the maximum of what the market will bear, even if it's unaffordable to most fans, is the only solution. I've been attending shows by a certain Japanese artist since 2009, and e-tickets have pretty much killed scalping without preventing transfer to a friend (though it is a bit more annoying to do).

I suppose in theory some scalper somewhere could be demanding "venmo me $1000 in a separate transaction or I won't give you the ticket," but in practice it doesn't appear to be happening to any great extent, or to be a workable business model like standing outside the venue once was. I think it just feels a lot more of a scam-risk to the average person than meeting someone at the venue who is clearly holding a physical ticket. You don't have to 100% eliminate any possibility of scalping, just shrink the market enough to make it not worth the bother.

(And I say this as someone who kinda liked the option to overpay for tickets if I missed out on getting them at face value).

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#275
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An actual transfer is needed when selling to someone you don't know/trust. But for the moms in your example, handing over the ticket just means temporarily handing over the account: share the password (assuming no password reuse habits), send over the MFA OTP, whatever it takes. It's not ideal, but it avoids the scalping that comes from more streamlined transfers; scalpers can't easily sell burner accounts if account…

That doesn't work, either. We can't assume that mom-passwords aren't being reused. We can't assume that mom-phones are secure. We can't assume that the requisite moms are even aware of the same kinds of things that we here on HN are aware of. We can't assume anything, except this promotes a new friction. But even then: So we're letting anyone in with a valid ticket-holding account on a pocket supercomputer, without v…

Reminds me of how there are people selling single game steam accounts now, to take advantage of regional pricing.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#276

Honestly, this could turn out to be a really great thing. When artists become popular, they often complain that the people they are making their music for, their biggest fans, tend to be the people least able to afford the concert tickets. The artists are often totally willing to set aside a chunk of tickets at a much cheaper price, but they need to be able to guarantee that these tickets aren't just purchased by sca…

Isn't scalpers a solved problem with nominal tickets? I'm pretty sure some bands were doing this a decade ago. Even UEFA, among the most corrupt organizations in the world, does this for football tickets, you can buy 2 tickets and can change one name exactly once or sell them back to the organization. At this point if you allow scalpers it's a decision not a technical problem.

> ...you can buy 2 tickets and can change one name exactly once...

Unless you're forced to buy exactly two tickets [0], I don't see how that prevents scalpers? Pay people 100% of their purchasing cost and -IDK- 5% of the scalping profit to use their name to purchase the ticket and hand over the creds to do the ticket owner reassignment.

[0] In which case, I suppose it's a huge "fuck you" to people who aren't particularly social.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#277
post #9
post #5

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

Named tickets, like airplane seats? Sorry, I only thought about this for 5 seconds, but there are markets where scalping doesn't cause issues. We could look at those.

My first thought is a bunch of 12 year old girls that want to see Taylor Swift. They won't have national IDs. On the other hand, how does it work for children's airline tickets? Again, they won't have national IDs, but we know that children fly all the time -- with and without their parents.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#278

Honestly, this could turn out to be a really great thing. When artists become popular, they often complain that the people they are making their music for, their biggest fans, tend to be the people least able to afford the concert tickets. The artists are often totally willing to set aside a chunk of tickets at a much cheaper price, but they need to be able to guarantee that these tickets aren't just purchased by sca…

This sounds like what fan clubs and artists run communities are built for.

Does Spotify putting itself as a middle-man help much, considering the artist has become a big enough operation to have to care about the issue in the first place ?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#279
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understood: Kids aren't important. Or perhaps: The suffering is the point. Copy! Over!

Kids aren't important when you're trying to make everyone's lives worse, indeed. I sure hope I wont't find anything in your history protesting against widespread surveillance, because as we know, its's to protect the children. But you're not a hypocrite picking and choosing your arguments to make shitty points on HN, right ?

> Kids aren't important when you're trying to make everyone's lives worse, indeed.

Understood it the first time, thanks: Kids aren't important. Their feelings might not even be real; and even if they are real, then the disappointment will just toughen them up (the suffering is the point).

I do not agree with what I think you're repeating, but I do believe that I've heard it twice, now.

> I sure hope I wont't find anything in your history protesting against widespread surveillance, because as we know, its's to protect the children. But you're not a hypocrite picking and choosing your arguments to make shitty points on HN, right ?

Go ahead and dig around. My writings here are an open book. My words can live in your head for as long as you want them to.

You don't need me to tell you that you're free to make as many comparisons as you wish, regardless of any incongruity in those comparisons. You're a free-thinking adult like [most of] the rest of us here on HN are.

What say you?

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#280
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.

I don't know how naive the actual wording is, but fighting these kind of resells is an arms race.

If for instance they allow reselling the ticket at the same price, processing fees could be exempted from that calculation. So charging the nominal price, but with enormous fees that go to the seller's pocket in a roundabout way will work.

If processing fees are caped, the seller can request payment through a middle item that is nominally valued the same as the ticket but can actually be paid for more.

Or the reseller will accept generous tips in exchange for the ticket at the nominal price. etc. etc.

As long as there's someone willing to pay, money will find the way to the reseller.

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