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

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#81

Post by ascorbic » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

iamalizard wrote: post #58

lbreakjai wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This would make sense if they were an airline and only need to maximise profits. An artist – even one who really wants to make as much money as they can – still needs to think about other things, like atmosphere (that gig with one very rich person won't be much fun), and happy fans. If she sells all tickets at $10k each then maybe she'd clear the market, but she'd piss off a lot of fans, so maybe there won't be as much demand next time.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#82

Post by basisword » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #5

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

Two options, both of which seem to work well in venues near me:

1. When an event sells out you can join the 'waitlist' and people can offer their tickets back to the ticket company who give the person at the top of the waitlist the opportunity to purchase. All at face value. Good for the artist too as there is less chance of empty seats when people can't make it.

2. QR code tickets that rotate meaning they can't be screenshotted and sold.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#83

Post by basisword » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #78

rglover wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back to the old way. Get in line physically and go get the tickets. This is one of those "technology should help here but actually makes the problem worse in weird ways" type of situations. Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor did this in 2018 and it was infinitely better (I also met a lot of people just standing in line—we recognized each other at the show later and ended up throwing each other around in the mosh pit—a g…

That excludes all fans who don't live in big cities. A lot of people travel just to go to shows.

Not really. In the past you could buy tickets in tonnes of places. Ticketmaster had physical 'stores' all over and most of the big music retailers also sold tickets. Admittedly these aren't widespread anymore which poses a problem. It's also a terrible solution because it excludes people with jobs.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#84

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

UntitledNo4 wrote: post #53

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…

It's trivially easy for scalpers to game that system.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#85

Post by arjie » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #5

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

FIFA’s solution seems reasonable. The tickets are auctioned. EDM festivals usually have an earlier round for people who attended previous iterations which is similar to this approach by Spotify.

One way is to run an auction and provide every attendee on site with a credit code they can apply to next year’s auction. That way you tip the scales slightly towards previous attendees in a way a scalper can’t reliably access.

Another way is to run separate auctions: one for previous attendees, one for fan club members, and one for GA.

The aversion to auctions transforms everything into a lottery but I can see why they do it. The event operator takes all the heat and the artist keeps much of the benefit.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#86

Post by Barbing » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #74

827a wrote: post #5

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

Go back to the old way. Get in line physically and go get the tickets. This is one of those "technology should help here but actually makes the problem worse in weird ways" type of situations. Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor did this in 2018 and it was infinitely better (I also met a lot of people just standing in line—we recognized each other at the show later and ended up throwing each other around in the mosh pit—a g…

I like it. Your last bit is good marketing against those who think paying a linesitter / spot holder is all upside.

Also economics of paying linesitters make it relatively much less attractive than all-digital scalping. So I think you have a solid plan. Should greatly reduce scalping.

Reminds me of technologically-inclined woman who pointed out the flawed thinking behind a grocery store handing out first-gen iPads to their shelf stockers. “I love my iPad at home but this will cost them so much time compared to pen and paper.” (Gotta go find out whatever happened to putting an RFID tag in every product, maybe they needed to hit 1/10 of a cent instead of a penny or something)

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#87

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #78

rglover wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back to the old way. Get in line physically and go get the tickets. This is one of those "technology should help here but actually makes the problem worse in weird ways" type of situations. Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor did this in 2018 and it was infinitely better (I also met a lot of people just standing in line—we recognized each other at the show later and ended up throwing each other around in the mosh pit—a g…

That excludes all fans who don't live in big cities. A lot of people travel just to go to shows.

> That excludes all fans who don't live in big cities. A lot of people travel just to go to shows.

Not really. The place that sells the tickets doesn't have to be the performance venue itself.

This sort of distribution was quite common pre-Internet. In theory it's even easier now, because so many of the venues have (unfortunately) consolidated under vertically integrated ownership (e.g. directly owned by Live Nation). Which incidentally, after scalping, is the biggest reason that ticket prices are so high in the first place.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#88

Post by aczerepinski » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #5

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

The only real solutions to scalping are to impact supply/demand by increasing supply (extra show in each city) or lower demand (raise prices). As a jazz fan I don’t know much about shows that sell out and attract scalpers, but I’m curious why the artists don’t double prices to cut out middlemen.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#89

Post by ribosometronome » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

something765478 wrote: post #46

joshl32532 wrote: post #10

This is the problem with public listed companies that need to "maximize shareholder values" and look for infinite growth. I just want Spotify for music (playlist, recommendation, lossless audio). I don't need their podcast, audiobook, ChatGPT, concert tickets etc. This just makes their app bloated for features I will never use.

I disagree; Spotify is good at serving up sound, so it makes sense for them to also serve audiobooks and podcasts; just like it makes sense for video streaming services to have both movies and tv shows. Similarly for concerts; people who listen to a lot of music are probably interested in going to see their favorite band live. Mind you, I definitely have complaints about the app (like notifications interrupting music…

I have definitely become informed of concerts I’ve then gone to by way of Spotify. They know everyone I listen to and are well suited to advertise the artists I’d actually like to see to me.

Re: Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

#90

Post by Izikiel43 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

This is a nice feature to have, it already tells you if an artist you like is coming to your city, and redirects to Ticketmaster for tickets, but it doesn't have the data to know if you already bought a ticket, so it keeps pestering you. Also, some competition against Ticketmaster is welcomed.