Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

Post by ssl-3 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

lbreakjai wrote: post #360

ssl-3 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This utopia wherein everyone is completely law-abiding and eager to follow every rule does not exist.

What utopia? Each person can buy a maximum of 4 tickets. A ticket has a name on it. You can't use it if it's not yours. To change the name on the ticket, you need to go through the official platform, where you can only resell it for at most face value. It's not exactly a project Manhattan level of breakthrough we're talking about here. The incentives to scalp are vastly reduced. Sure, I could buy four tickets and res…

Post by tomhow » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #353

tomhow wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's not simply “a supply and demand problem” when you factor in downstream effects. The product is not merely the performance; the audience makeup and energy is a crucial part of the experience, and they also influence the artist's ability to deliver the best performance. It's no good optimizing for simple supply and demand in one year if it destroys the product and therefore demand in subsequent y…

I mean sure, you don;t want to drive away your audience, but the existence of a second hand market with much high prices clearly means you aren't pricing tickets correctly. The existence of the scalper with the 10 or 100x price is the second-order effect of under pricing, and everything Ive read already suggests that audience makeups are changing at music festivals as more tickets are bought second hand at these cons…

Post by mdhen » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #249

paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many solutions. For example - allow ticket resale only through the official platform and cap it at the original sale price. Another approach - check IDs at the door and only let the original ticket purchaser through. The real problem is that scalping is insanely profitable for Ticketmaster & co. They take a cut of the original sale and every subsequent transfer, most of them at highly inflated prices, from…

> allow ticket resale only through the official platform and cap it at the original sale price. That obviously doesn’t work because money can still change hands outside the official platform, unless you mean resale to a random buyer selected by the platform, in which case the resale is not terribly different from a refund and restock for any event where scalping is a problem. You simply can’t stop scalping if you all…

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

4d4m wrote: post #225

crazygringo wrote: post #41

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…

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

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, May 22, 2026, 11:15 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #326

thaumasiotes wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way that could possibly be true is if the price the scalpers charged was the face price they had to pay. In that world, there wouldn't be scalpers.

Are you unaware that scalpers are set up to hoover up as many tickets as possible before an actual person that wants to visit the event can get one? Because it seems like you are?