Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes • Hacker News Board

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#631

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #590

account42 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining yes, but how many people are actually putting their foot down? As for bands, they may actually be profiting from this scheme where ticketmaster ensures higher prices while taking the blame. If they really cared enough they could chose not to deal with Ticketmaster. Sure, that would limit their choices in venues which could mean lower potential for profit. Probably not going to be a real issue for the the…

The bands are absolutely profiting. Ticketmaster is basically “customer punching bag ad a service”.

The bands at the top are absolutely not profiting, they’re losing money over it. Instead of a healthy ecosystem of promoters willing to pay them market rates, they’re dealing with a monopsony that depresses earnings. They HAVE to go through TicketMaster venues, because TM has locked up 85% of large ones, which means they have to accept whatever fee the promoter (LiveNation, same company) is willing to pay them. That’s part of why AEG sued them, they are a giant international promoter who is effectively boxed out of the American market by TMs stranglehold on venues and vertical integration.

Venue owners are profiting. LN/TM can pay them a lot for exclusive rights thanks to their monopoly-inflated profits.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#632

Post by NickC25 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #436

Ocha wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

That's the secret. If nobody used them, they would go away.

That might have been true in decades past.

They now, having merged with LiveNation, have effective ownership of all major and semi-major venues around the country. They also aren't just doing concerts, they're doing sporting events and other live entertainment as well.

They aren't going anywhere. They are just too big, and too ingrained.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#633

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #461

mattmaroon wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our options shouldn’t be see no concerts from successful musicians or pay monopoly pricing. This is something government should solve.

You're right, of course, those shouldn't be our options. But that's just how it is. If you aren't willing to stop playing, the game will never end.

Again, not true, that's a false dichotomy. Political pressure is an alternative. The justice department is already suing. Clearly it can be done.

You writing your congressperson is more likely (albeit, still not at all likely) to make a difference than you not going to your annual concert.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#634

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

notpushkin wrote: post #526

lotsoweiners wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why though? Lord knows I hate Ticketmaster as much as everyone else but “airline model” sounds fucking terrible. I hope I never see the day where I’m removing belts and shoes to get into a concert. To be fair though I always get at least somewhat reasonable concert prices by doing presale. Sign up for the artist’s “presale club” and/or get the credit cards that have presale as a perk. Get in queue ahead of time. You…

Belts and shoes doesn't have much to do with ticket sales, does it?

I was just going to ignore it since they obviously missed the point entirely (and it's not a hard one to get) or were being disingenous.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#635

Post by financltravsty » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #604

rundev wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. If you are first to market and still can't make money off your amazing invention, that might be a skill issue. 2. Patents wouldn't be as forceful if they didn't last that long. A decade or more is basically forever in a fast-moving field like tech.

> If you are first to market and still can't make money off your amazing invention, that might be a skill issue. Sounds like something a VC would say. Have you considered that inventing things and selling them are two different skill sets? The patent system needs reform, not elimination.

Why would you artificially encumber a significant invention from benefitting the world just because you don't have the wherewithal to sell it?

Seems awfully self-centered.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#636

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

digging wrote: post #629

Dylan16807 wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can try to word it better? You said when people look at moral situations, they use their own values to round their measurement. And I thought that was a good way to describe things. Then for some reason you acted like "rounding" turns things into strawman-level black and white. The slightest blemish (not hiring a specific good person) qualifying as evil. Let's say a scale of 0 to 10. If people disagree whether some…

Appreciate the explanation. > Then for some reason you acted like "rounding" turns things into strawman-level black and white. The slightest blemish (not hiring a specific good person) qualifying as evil. This was in direct response to the top-level comment making that very assertion (via a blog post). If I'm understanding you correctly, I think we're actually agreeing that it's absurd. The CEO of a "good" company in…

I'm saying that your argument is absurd, but the one in the blog post is not absurd. You made a strawman.

"A good person is obligated to quit a bad company." is a far more reasonable statement than "A good company is obligated to hire every good person."

> Also, with regard to your scale - you've given the question too much credit. The question doesn't ask "how much are you good or bad?", it asks and receives a binary answer. And the vast, vast majority of people can't be assigned one of those binary categories of "good" and "bad".

You can pick a threshold. Your strawman would categorize 99.9% of things as bad, which is obviously the wrong threshold, and very obviously not what the OP meant. The failure of that method doesn't make the entire idea of judging companies invalid.

I'm not giving it "too much credit" to take a sane and quite obvious interpretation.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#637

Post by wildzzz » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

jirf_dev wrote: post #388

yellowapple wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but how many business flights are actually last-minute like that? Whenever I've flown for work reasons the tickets were bought at least a week in advance, and usually 3+ weeks in advance. Likewise, there are plenty of non-business flights booked last-minute like that, too - like, as a personal example, needing to book a same-night flight to help a family member drive cross-country with her kids and personal bel…

I would guess most of your exposure to business travel is within tech or consulting, which rarely require last-minute booking. I would imagine most last-minute bookings for business travel come from people in sales. I’ve seen many sales people find out a prospective client is open to meet and immediately hop on a flight just to potentially make a sale. The opportunity cost is worth it even for small businesses. My ex…

About half of the work trips I've been on, the tickets were booked at most a couple days in advance. The most expensive ticket I've ever bought was an economy United cross country flight to LAX for $1500 (booked about 14 hours in advance) and I've done a lot of vacations to Europe. We booked it last minute because we didn't know when the project would be ready to deliver and once it was, we had to deliver ASAP. I was on the ground in LA for about 12 hours before flying home. Awful trip. Largest ratio of dollars spent to enjoyment received I've ever experienced.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#638

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

lotsoweiners wrote: post #467

mattmaroon wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should have thought of that when you bought the tickets I guess. Any change to the system to fight scalping is going to inconvenience regular users too. As a frequent concert goer, I’d happily have to arrive with my group if it meant no Ticketmaster.

So that makes it a shitty system that is really solving nothing. If I hypothetically have a group of 14-15 year olds that I buy Taylor Swift tickets for, does that mean I have to accompany them up through the line? Just dumb.

There are really two options. Tickets are non-transferable, which means you need the name of the person and to check ID, and there's no scalping, like airlines. Or tickets are transferable, and you don't need names or IDS or whatever else but scalping occurs.

If you think scalping isn't enough of a problem to balance out the inconvenience of having to plan the ticket purchases better, well, uh, that's just like, your opinion, man. We'll agree to disagree. But it does mitigate a problem, scalpers inflating prices.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#639

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #559

shiroiushi wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting the US government to properly handle monopolies and anti-trust issues is a fool's errand. It's like saying the US government should solve the issue of gun proliferation in the US: it's simply not going to, in our lifetimes.

On the contrary, the US government is probably a lot easier to influence than an entrenched monopoly.

It probably would require less money.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#640

Post by treyd » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:41 PM UTC

Steven420 wrote: post #574

silexia wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly is the keyword here. Ticketmaster and Boeing and all the other nefarious companies here use PATENTS to prevent competitors from eating their lunch. Patents need to be done away with to allow free competition, don't believe the propaganda about patents helping creators

If you don't have a patent on an invention then how do you protect it from people who will just steal what you have spent time/money creating?

This is what patents used to do, but the economic and technological circumstances under which they did have changed dramatically over the last couple hundred years. All they really do now is entrench the power of the massive corporations with the capital to buy them up and sue anyone that they think encroach. It's not promoting innovation anymore, it's stifling it.