Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#51

Post by bradleybuda » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

arnvald wrote: post #30

kgwxd wrote: post #26

Why is scalping a problem?

Fewer people go to concerts, fans can’t afford the tickets, less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall. Artists lose, even if they get paid and all the tickets technically are sold out. Fans lose. The only people who win are scalpers who just abuse the system.

> 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.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#52

Post by xp84 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #28

827a wrote: post #5

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

so they're partnering with Live Nation, the same company that's part of the vertically integrated monopoly on ticketing, venues, and resale. Nobody is buying these tickets for cash from a scalper outside of the venue. My 2-min tought: tie use of the ticket to the payment method or id of the purchaser; allow limited transfers. If LN/TM actually cared they'd provide for risk-free transfer without charging ridiculous ma…

New idea: You have to tie a valid credit card to a ticket in order to transfer it, if the card doesn't authorize for $500 at the gate, admission is denied, and the ticket can be used to charge unlimited concessions and merch to the original buyer's card. If a scalper sells a ticket to a stranger, the customer could bankrupt them at the show.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#53

Post by UntitledNo4 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #5

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

I recently bought tickets to a concert in France (I live in Germany) and ended up not being able to travel and had to resell my tickets. Apparently according to French law you are not allowed to resell a ticket above its face value and so I had to resell it through the same ticketing company I bought it. They allowed me to set a price with up to a maximum amount which was less than how much I bought it (by a Euro or two) to cover their fees. It was also possible to name a specific buyer who would then get be able to buy your ticket.

Maybe there’s still another way for scalpels to game this system, I don’t know, but I’ve been to a few concerts in Paris and I’ve never seen scalpels hanging outside the venue selling tickets, which would be the norm in Germany, so maybe the system does work.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#54

Post by tylergetsay » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

The music industry works the way it does because a large amount of people involved are effectively working for free. Promoters, photographers, DJs, interns, writers, assistants, even some artists early on accept low or unpaid work because the industry offers networking, access, drugs, etc

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#55

Post by saghm » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:38 PM UTC

317070 wrote: post #9

827a wrote: 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.

On the other hand, airplane ticketing is also notorious for stuff like overbooking flights with the assumption people won't show up and then in the rare circumstances where too many do show up, forcing people to give up their seats (in some cases even by force). I don't disagree with your thinking, but I'm hesitant to consider "what airplane tickets do" a good model for just about anything.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#56

Post by xp84 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

bradleybuda wrote: post #51

arnvald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer people go to concerts, fans can’t afford the tickets, less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall. Artists lose, even if they get paid and all the tickets technically are sold out. Fans lose. The only people who win are scalpers who just abuse the system.

> 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.

Not OP but - I think one could make the case that if tickets were sold via a lottery and non-transferable, the average lottery participant would be a bigger fan of $ARTIST than the average person who can afford the scalped price for a ticket today.

Arguably if rich people are just buying the $1000 concert tickets just to flex and take pictures for IG, that's a seat that could be going to a 17-year-old who loves the band's music but can't afford more than $100. The 17-year-old meanwhile may never get to go to a show of any of their favorite bands due to this situation, meaning they miss out on this meaningful chance to connect with the music in a personal, in-person way.

Basically the case hinges on the assertion that the richest fans are not the same as the most serious fans.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#57

Post by saghm » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #47

ZeWaka wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still have the issue of transferring tickets to friends or such if you can't make it. Axios and some providers handle this.

Anything requiring transferring "to friends" will be attempted to be used for scalping of course. I suppose if we're requiring showing ID to attend anyway, it's not a lot worse to add an online ID verification step in order to be allowed to be a "sender" in the transfer system, and an identity is only allowed to have like 5 distinct "friends" in a rolling 12-month window. Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nati…

> Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.

My dad used to joke about how many signs he'd say at baseball games saying scalping is against the rules but somehow hearing loads of StubHub ads whenever he would listen to a game on the radio.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#58

Post by iamalizard » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

lbreakjai wrote: post #29

827a wrote: post #5

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

Why should anything be done? If people are willing to pay five times the face value for a ticket, then it signals that tickets are priced too low. Let the market price itself. Harry Styles is playing in my city, he's apparently very popular, but there's still plenty of tickets available for as low as 47€ for tomorrow.

I never understood the issue with scalping and reselling tickets for a higher price. At all. And I've read a bunch of opinions here and on other forums and articles. None make any sense to me. It's a good that's being resold for profit. Not an essential one like rare medicine during a pandemic.

I think some artists want to appeal to the poorer people so pricing their tickets higher or letting the free market work out the price would damage their reputation. So it doesn't seem to be a real problem we need to solve. It's a problem some artists feel they have. Let them figure it out.

If I was an artist and I expected a full venue with tickets that cost 10, I'd start selling them at 1000, then at 500, 200, 100, 50, 20 and finally 10. If someone buys all of them at 1000 and only that person shows up - awesome! Maybe there will be less drug sales because 1 person bought all tickets but that 100x per ticket could be used to pay the vendors.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#59

Post by xp84 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

6thbit wrote: post #38

but of course! why wouldn't you encourage bot accounts listening every kind of artist to scalp tickets? look at the monthly active users chart after this deal! promoted.

I was thinking the same thing. If there are very many seats available, it will probably be gamed by scalpers. If they are doing this, they should really do the math to try to make the expected ROI of an additional bot account doing 24/7 streaming, slightly below the cheapest Spotify subscription price.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#60

Post by saghm » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

bradleybuda wrote: post #50

johnpaulkiser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

willingness to stand in line for a ticket probably correlates well with fandom

Standing in line is (today) a digital process that a scalper can trivially scale

It seems unlikely they'd continue to do do that if they weren't able to flip it at a higher price later