I'm not even taking part in these on-sales but I'm still feeling
the tension and exasperation that I've come to associate with any on-sale. Log
in at 9:55 for a 10am on-sale, refresh, refresh, refresh, the page finally
loads, scan for tickets, nothing available, search again, nothing available,
something pops up, take it, whatever it is, the tickets disappear out of the
cart, start over, credit card not accepted, password not accepted, event sold
out. The clock reads 10:05.
It's starting to feel like those were the good-old days. New
aggravations have been added in to make the experience even more terrible. Are
you verified? Will the website accept your verified code? Will any tickets show
up? Will you be immediately redirected to resale tickets marked 10 times or
more above face value? And don't forget the fees.
How I dearly wish Pearl Jam had succeeded in its attempted
takedown of Ticketmaster more than 20 years ago. If more bands had joined in,
maybe things would be different today, but TM prevailed, grew and grew and
grew, merged with an organization that operates venues and sells tickets and
sells merchandise, and entered the resale market. It's their world and
concertgoers are just living in it.
This isn't news to anyone who's ever bought a ticket. Even
when we were waking up before dawn to line up for ticket sales, there were
flaws in the system. More than 20 people in line? Time to pull out the random
wristbands. Oh, and there's a wristband fee! If the store didn't open precisely
at 10, computers logged into the TM system, no one at your location would get a
single ticket.
Now we're fighting it out from our desks and phones. We have
multiple devices and screens open, friends on standby, fingers crossed that
we'll be one of the lucky ones to make it from event page to ticket request to
payment page to confirmation. We also have the TM-supported resale tickets to
contend with.
I'm 100-percent in favor of fans who can't use their tickets
being able to sell their tickets to other fans at face value. I've been on both
sides of this transaction — happy to attend an event thanks to access to a
spare ticket and happy to pass my ticket along to someone else when I couldn't
use it. I'm not in favor of scalpers taking advantage of fan club, radio
station, credit card and other presales to scoop up tickets that they
immediately release back into the TM system at huge markups. TM charges fees on
both the original sale and resale, so of course doesn't care that fans are
being shut out or taken advantage of. Artists get their cut, too.
This is all business, I realize it. TM's main concern is its
bottom line, and customers and all other concerns rank much, much lower. Over
my three decades of concert-going, though, I have contributed to that bottom
line. I know if I step back, if I refuse to go to big shows, if I don't join
the fan club, if I won't jump through the hoops to get "verified," if
I promise to never buy an overly inflated resale ticket, that there are
thousands of others ready to fill the tiny void I leave behind.
Maybe this is what Pearl Jam faced back in the '90s, five
guys yelling themselves hoarse as everyone around them shrugged their shoulders
because dealing with these frustrations is just the cost of being a touring
artist, the cost of being a fan. It shouldn't be, though, I shouldn't have to go
broke and go gray just because I want to attend a concert. I shouldn't feel
like this whole thing is a giant rip off. It is, though. So, what can be done
about it?
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