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*** Official Music Thread ***

Bullet said:
Did you read the post above yours?


Anyway, it is simple economics, sell the tickets for whatever you can get, makes perfect sense if some idiots are willing to fork out £400 for 2 hours of old hits.

PS - do they actually send out paper tickets nowadays, or is it all on an App and thus impossible to resell them (like the Spurs tickets that change QR code every few minutes so you can't take an image and get into the ground)
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Yes, I read the post above mine. It appears to be a statement by TicketMaster saying that TicketMaster has nothing to do with the pricing strategies in use by TicketMaster on the TicketMaster website. How surprising that they’d deny all knowledge. I find this claim dubious. Does the band also decide which algorithm to use in order to decide when tickets are popular enough to start raising the prices? Does the band help TM to strangle its website so it crashes every five minutes ‘due to phenomenal demand’, thus allowing the price increases to kick in?

Broadly speaking I agree with your point: it’s supply vs demand. However, when you start a process expecting to pay a set amount (say, £150) and then emerge at the other end of seven hours of queuing only to be told that the price is now two and a half times more (say £370), I feel like there are some very unfair practices going on, such as a total lack of transparency and constantly moving goalposts during the transaction.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with it. Until more major acts push back, the cancerous growth on the music industry that is the LiveNation/TicketMaster monopoly will continue to bleed people dry. As far as I’m aware, the only major bands that have tried to stop this are Pearl Jam and U2. I saw an interesting interview with the former Bloc Party drummer (Matt Tong) the other day and he had absolutely nothing good to say about this company, following many years of dealing with it (as well as others like it).

Regarding your question about QR codes or paper tickets: you could choose either. But you’d pay extra for a ‘souvenir ticket’. Hilarious.
 
stratnumberone said:
Yes, I read the post above mine. It appears to be a statement by TicketMaster saying that TicketMaster has nothing to do with the pricing strategies in use by TicketMaster on the TicketMaster website. How surprising that they’d deny all knowledge. I find this claim dubious. Does the band also decide which algorithm to use in order to decide when tickets are popular enough to start raising the prices? Does the band help TM to strangle its website so it crashes every five minutes ‘due to phenomenal demand’, thus allowing the price increases to kick in?

Broadly speaking I agree with your point: it’s supply vs demand. However, when you start a process expecting to pay a set amount (say, £150) and then emerge at the other end of seven hours of queuing only to be told that the price is now two and a half times more (say £370), I feel like there are some very unfair practices going on, such as a total lack of transparency and constantly moving goalposts during the transaction.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with it. Until more major acts push back, the cancerous growth on the music industry that is the LiveNation/TicketMaster monopoly will continue to bleed people dry. As far as I’m aware, the only major bands that have tried to stop this are Pearl Jam and U2. I saw an interesting interview with the former Bloc Party drummer (Matt Tong) the other day and he had absolutely nothing good to say about this company, following many years of dealing with it (as well as others like it).

Regarding your question about QR codes or paper tickets: you could choose either. But you’d pay extra for a ‘souvenir ticket’. Hilarious.
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If people are stupid enough to spend most of their Saturday in a virtual queue, and then pay double what they were due to, then I’ve got little sympathy tbh.

The only way to stop that happening is for consumers to say no by refusing to be caught up in it all - otherwise these companies will continue to take the p iss.

Today has been one massive marketing exercise, with the media acting as the major driver.

It feels more than a bit sad to see a band who sold themselves as working class heroes apparently being complicit in this sort of thing in the midst of a continuing cost of living crisis for working people.
 
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Mikey10 said:
If people are stupid enough to spend most of their Saturday in a virtual queue, and then pay double what they were due to, then I’ve got little sympathy tbh.

The only way to stop that happening is for consumers to say no by refusing to be caught up in it all - otherwise these companies will continue to take the p iss.

Today has been one massive marketing exercise, with the media acting as the major driver.

It feels more than a bit sad to see a band who sold themselves as working class heroes apparently being complicit in this sort of thing in the midst of a continuing cost of living crisis for working people.
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Each to their own, no? I spend most Saturdays driving minimum 3 hours to get to a football match and then another 3 hours home again. Sometimes it’s as much as 12 hours door to door for 90 mins of expensive football, following a club that doesn’t exactly win much. I’d say that’s pretty stupid. But it’s what I choose to do.

You’re absolutely right that this is a massive marketing exercise. Oasis themselves should also be embarrassed to be part of fleecing their rabid fans so badly. It exposes their oft-mentioned ‘working class hero’ status as utterly fraudulent. Maybe once upon a time they were such people, but not any more. That’s probably why they lost their way musically in the first place… but I digress.

This sorry show isn’t really the fault of the consumer, is it? Surely it’s more to do with greedy corporations and greedy artists. It’s pretty similar to the situation at football grounds up and down the country: complaints about high costs and constant price rises and the only way to stop it for people to walk away. But it needs everyone to walk away and that won’t happen.

Ultimately, if you don’t want to pay rip off prices then no one is forcing you to pay. But that’s not the only point here: I thought that £150 for a standing ticket was ‘reasonable’ and on that basis felt it worth braving the queue to try to buy one. To get to the end of the queue and be faced with a £370 ticket (with a face value of £150) is an absolutely atrocious, unscrupulous and immoral business practice, particularly when you’ve got seconds to decide before you get kicked off the site.
 
stratnumberone said:
Each to their own, no? I spend most Saturdays driving minimum 3 hours to get to a football match and then another 3 hours home again. Sometimes it’s as much as 12 hours door to door for 90 mins of expensive football, following a club that doesn’t exactly win much. I’d say that’s pretty stupid. But it’s what I choose to do.

You’re absolutely right that this is a massive marketing exercise. Oasis themselves should also be embarrassed to be part of fleecing their rabid fans so badly. It exposes their oft-mentioned ‘working class hero’ status as utterly fraudulent. Maybe once upon a time they were such people, but not any more. That’s probably why they lost their way musically in the first place… but I digress.

This sorry show isn’t really the fault of the consumer, is it? Surely it’s more to do with greedy corporations and greedy artists. It’s pretty similar to the situation at football grounds up and down the country: complaints about high costs and constant price rises and the only way to stop it for people to walk away. But it needs everyone to walk away and that won’t happen.

Ultimately, if you don’t want to pay rip off prices then no one is forcing you to pay. But that’s not the only point here: I thought that £150 for a standing ticket was ‘reasonable’ and on that basis felt it worth braving the queue to try to buy one. To get to the end of the queue and be faced with a £370 ticket (with a face value of £150) is an absolutely atrocious, unscrupulous and immoral business practice, particularly when you’ve got seconds to decide before you get kicked off the site.
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Of course it’s up to people to decide how they want to spend their time and money. I just struggle to fathom why anyone would sit in an online queue for a massive chunk of a Saturday, and then spend double the advertised price for an already inflated ticket. It’s madness for me - but obviously not for others.

On the football thing, as I mentioned a while ago on here (on this thread, I think ) I had a bit of a eureka moment after the Sheffield United game at home early last season. On the train home it came to me that the day was costing me the guts of £200, that the ticket prices were an absolute rip-off, and it was taking up 12 hours of one of my leisure days. So, I decided that was probably it for me attending games for the season…and it was! I resolved to spend the money on going to more gigs, and I’ve been to around 15 over the past year. The most I’ve paid for any single one is £49 (Ryan Adams, who played for almost 3 hours) and I’ve been to plenty that were under £30 quid - and most with my wife, or friends, or my daughter. So that has felt like a really positive change for me.

I reckon I’ve had 15 or so great nights out for the cost of attending a couple of Tottenham games, and probably spent a similar amount of time attending them all as I would have spent getting to and from only a couple of Spurs games.

As you say, different strokes for different folks. I’d had enough of being ripped off, so took some personal action - in the same way that sorting a dodgy stick over the past year has stopped Murdoch ripping me off too, and I watched every one of our games through that.

(That said, I was back at the Everton game last week… :))
 
Bedfordspurs said:
Always use website
Apps links into the website queue too
One tab
One queue
I chose seats too
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I will be on the floor night one Wembley, Cardiff two nights (schedule allowing) and one other of the unannounced dates in the US...floor for all. I want to sing.I'll be in some karaoke bars between now and next summer practicing!!!!!
 
thfcsteff said:
I will be on the floor night one Wembley, Cardiff two nights (schedule allowing) and one other of the unannounced dates in the US...floor for all. I want to sing.I'll be in some karaoke bars between now and next summer practicing!!!!!
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My mates wife is so small she wouldn’t go standing
 
stratnumberone said:
I also have no idea how this is legal. Make no mistake though: the bands are just as culpable as the absolute cancer of a company that is TicketMaster. My ‘favourite’ bit is that they threaten to cancel the tickets of anyone reselling at over face value. I’d argue that advertising tickets at £150 and then switching the cost to £370 at point-of-sale is at least as bad as touting. Actually, it’s worse: at least a tout or a resale website tells you the price when you ask so you can make a rational decision about whether or not pay.
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I think it's important to consider why this situation exists.
Touts and scalpers have created this situation. As has streaming. Bands no longer make anywhere close to the money they did from their actual recorded music, therefore live shows and merchandise are the two main drivers for any band. Touting/scalping/reselling at vastly inflated prices takes that profit margin out of the artist/promoters hands. They were always going to react as they were losing millions. Dynamic pricing allows that fat extra margin to go to the artist/promoters and not the touts.

For the record, I have always hated touts/scalpers. Whenever I have spares I either give them away or if I've bought them, sell for face value and not a penny more.

Further, In despise 'dynamic pricing' as it is essentially legal touting as driven by high demand and limited supply...BUT if you like the aggressive capitalist model then you can't complain too much. This is a direct result of steroided capitalism. And in such an environment, I'd rather artists and their employees get the unfair margins than touts/scalpers.

Here's hoping they design a different system/approach for selling future dates.
 
thfcsteff said:
I think it's important to consider why this situation exists.
Touts and scalpers have created this situation. As has streaming. Bands no longer make anywhere close to the money they did from their actual recorded music, therefore live shows and merchandise are the two main drivers for any band. Touting/scalping/reselling at vastly inflated prices takes that profit margin out of the artist/promoters hands. They were always going to react as they were losing millions. Dynamic pricing allows that fat extra margin to go to the artist/promoters and not the touts.

For the record, I have always hated touts/scalpers. Whenever I have spares I either give them away or if I've bought them, sell for face value and not a penny more.

Further, In despise 'dynamic pricing' as it is essentially legal touting as driven by high demand and limited supply...BUT if you like the aggressive capitalist model then you can't complain too much. This is a direct result of steroided capitalism. And in such an environment, I'd rather artists and their employees get the unfair margins than touts/scalpers.

Here's hoping they design a different system/approach for selling future dates.
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I see it slightly differently: I don’t think that touts and scalpers created the situation. After all, the tickets they were selling were still purchased by someone at face value at some stage - ie the price point set by the band/promoter/venue as fair recompense for the service that was going to be provided. Rather, the bands and promoters realised that they could muscle in on the touts greed and take a massively increased margin. Frankly, they’re as bad as each other.

As for bands earning less from album sales now, I’m sure that’s true. But it’s not small bands, struggling to make a living, that are benefitting from this ‘legalised touting’. They simply don’t have the pull and the demand to start the ‘dynamic pricing’ cycle. If a small band tries to mess its fans about with this ridiculous pricing strategy, no one will go and they will fail. Nope, it’s absolute behemoths like Oasis - already charging £150 for a standing ticket at a 90,000 capacity venue- that have the appeal and also think it’s ok to coerce an EXTRA £220 per ticket out of its most loyal fans - at the actual point of sale - without warning. If they want to charge £370 per ticket then That’s fine and it’s up to them. But be open and honest about it. It’s the dirty underhand way that this is done that winds people up, not to mention all involved parties denying responsibility or refusing to comment. Utter cowardice.

The working class heroes from Burnage, indeed!
 
stratnumberone said:
I see it slightly differently: I don’t think that touts and scalpers created the situation. After all, the tickets they were selling were still purchased by someone at face value at some stage - ie the price point set by the band/promoter/venue as fair recompense for the service that was going to be provided. Rather, the bands and promoters realised that they could muscle in on the touts greed and take a massively increased margin. Frankly, they’re as bad as each other.

As for bands earning less from album sales now, I’m sure that’s true. But it’s not small bands, struggling to make a living, that are benefitting from this ‘legalised touting’. They simply don’t have the pull and the demand to start the ‘dynamic pricing’ cycle. If a small band tries to mess its fans about with this ridiculous pricing strategy, no one will go and they will fail. Nope, it’s absolute behemoths like Oasis - already charging £150 for a standing ticket at a 90,000 capacity venue- that have the appeal and also think it’s ok to coerce an EXTRA £220 per ticket out of its most loyal fans - at the actual point of sale - without warning. If they want to charge £370 per ticket then That’s fine and it’s up to them. But be open and honest about it. It’s the dirty underhand way that this is done that winds people up, not to mention all involved parties denying responsibility or refusing to comment. Utter cowardice.

The working class heroes from Burnage, indeed!
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Trust me, we actually don't see it that differently at all, but I will say factually-speaking, I guarantee those are the reasons given for the whole shebang.
 
Lemonade Money said:
Oasis aren't my cup of tea, but if you are willing to pay over a grand to watch a bunch of has-beens on a big video screen, you are off your fudgein tits! You could watch an up and coming band every week for a year for that, see better gigs, and probably the next Oasis.
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lol - my band are charging £10 in advance and £15 on the door in Bracknell on Friday :tearsofjoy:
 
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