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Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

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Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#411

Post by 627467 »

nedt wrote: post #335
noodlesUK wrote: post #27

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

I wouldn’t bring my ID to a concert. I don’t have my wallet with me and even if I would they wouldn’t like me to have a backpack. I‘m coming as light and minimal as possible and also would hate to lose my ID jumping around at a concert.

...yet you have a phone (for the moving barcode and whatnot) which is heavier and bulkier than a card?

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#412

Post by IncreasePosts »

guhcampos wrote: post #143
lakerz16 wrote: post #94

I hate TM and ridiculous fees as much as anyone, but this article is overly hyperbolic. There's a section named "Pirating Tickets", that just explains how to re-create a barcode that you already paid for. You're not using this to rob anyone of anything. And at the end, "Have fun refactoring your ticket verification system". Why? There are no vulnerabilities here. A rotating barcode (even if following a known pattern)…

Piracy here just means you can use it to sell your ticket without using their platform, which is analogous to just sending someone the PDF or handing over the piece of paper as always. While this has the upside of breaking you free from TM's obnoxious practices, it also obviously opens up for scalpers and all.

Scalping is still possible without understanding the tech - you could just stream a video of the bar codes and sell the stream instead of selling the ticket.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#413

Post by [deleted] »

RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#414

Post by mellow-lake-day »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

Not sure why you are saying Taylor Swift's fans are 12 year olds because they aren't. The average age of a Taylor Swift fan is closer to 30.

And because of Taylor Swift there is now a DOJ investigation of ticketmaster. Taylor Swift is not on the side of ticketmaster like you are conspiracizing.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#415

Post by zer00eyz »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

> Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and ...

Face value on tickets for her last tour started at 75.

All that money went to Taylor. ALL OF IT.

How do you pay for support staff, trucking how do you pay to move t-shrits from one venue to the next.

This is where all those fees come in... It's not the manager grabbing the money (that bit is later), it's the promoter covering the cost of the tour. Paying for staff to haul and set up a stage at every venue, paying for band members, dancers, people to run lights...

The Management (and the artist) will then "hold back" tickets. Most of the best seats are sold one of two ways. Fan club packages, where you pay 3000 bucks to meet the artist, get a photo and get a good seat. - OR - they go directly to the secondary market. This used to be scalpers (who "worked" for management) but now is secondary sales sites.

There are still two more bits: Consessions. Most artist get a pretty hefty kick back after covering venue staffing. These contracts can be weird, but artists, managers and promoters LIKE Ticketmaster being a one stop shop. It lets them negotiate a single deal (and one that is better for the artist) for the whole tour. Then there is merch, this is a gold mine for the artst and management too. Again there is a staffing component but that is covered by the concessions (mostly).

IN a lot of cases a venue will not sell out, and that is FINE. What happens is that the "fans" ran to the front of the line and paid too much for tickets, bought on the secondary market to get good seats. IN many cases there was so much money made at this stage that the monetary value of the rest of the tickets drops to zero....

At that point no one wants an half empty venue... So it gets papered over. They give away tons of free tickets, they "leak" a late box office hold being released... but it's now a fire sale. The nose bleed seats are selling for 5-10 bucks (even in today's market). Because assess in seats sells beer, t-shirts, and a full venue makes it an "experience"

This is the model that Bill Graham built and the vision of the industry he was going towards. TM is still, at its core, Bill Graham Presents.

I used to work in the industry, it's a hot mess and every one is greedy.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#416

Post by cryptoegorophy »

RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

The worst are the programmers of the mobile games for kids.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#417

Post by tesrx »

deamanto wrote: post #409

I'd also like to highlight another bad practice by Ticketmaster. When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket. On the buyer side, you purchase the ticket from the marketplace and it gets added to your ac…

Excellent point. I wonder if Ticketmaster profits by making interest off of holding those funds?

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#418

Post by [deleted] »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#419

Post by [deleted] »

RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#420

Post by futevolei »

benced wrote: post #394
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

I don't think this is accurate. Ticketmaster/LiveNation control most good/big venues so artists have to deal with them in some way. Artists generally don't want to charge market clearing prices to their fans (for niceness and PR reasons) but Ticketmaster is happy to be the bad guy and do that via exorbitant fees. I'm very in favor of breaking up Ticketmaster but we should be clear-eyed about what that will do: it wil…

There was an article in the LATimes article a few years ago with the former ceo of Ticketmaster who explicitly confirmed the above. Ticketmaster does a deal with the band to charge as much as possible and take all the negative blowback or whatever about it and then gives them a kickback.
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