There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship.
It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people.
The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher than face value. That was implemented some years ago here, and scalping is a minor issue now. Fans are generally very good at self-policing and reporting price-gouging scalpers. Ticket prices did increase slightly over time, but certainly not on the level of $50 becoming $500, as posited in the article.
They do touch on that, but I don't think the solution is to completely stop resale. Just limit it to face value or less.
If artists were only interested in short-term profit, they would jack up the prices and only sell to their richest fans. But most of them look at the long perspective, the fact that there's a lot more to be gained in the long run by having a loyal fanbase that doesn't feel exploited.
For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
If events get sold out, the onus is on the organizers and artists to either book additional shows, or come back again in 6 months or a year, possibly at a bigger venue.
If someone is a true fan, they'll be bummed about missing out, but also adamant to not miss out next time. And they certainly don't fly across the Atlantic for a Broadway show without having somehow secured a ticket beforehand. That's just silly.
> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
These same arguments are / were used in favor of unpaid internships. Except, of course, that it takes a certain level of financial freedom or support to do things like wait in lines for concert tickets. Just because your paying time instead of money in these queues, does not mean that it doesn't carry a cost.
I don't it's the same as unpaid internships. You can never completely eliminate the cost, as there is a limited supply and you can't give away the tickets for free. But you can certainly minimize the costs.
The tickets have to be put up for sale at some specific time that is usually advertised well in advance, which allows (most) people to plan for it. For some artists, a number of tickets are sold earlier to members of the official fan clubs and so on.
What is the alternative? Putting the tickets up for sale as a slow drop? I'm pretty sure that would significantly harm sales.
That's the entire point. Anything other than random chance means that someone has "priority". Priority which is typically decided by spending resources. Either time by waiting in queue. Or money by buying at higher than face value from a scalper -- who probably waited in queue, thereby exchanging their time for money.
If the principle being striven for is fair, then most fair to me would be to allow all potential attendees to participate in the sale. If there are more participants than tickets, then the most fair mechanism which does not reward time-rich participants is random lottery, not a queue. A queue rewards those who happen to be available for registration the moment it opens.
Fans don't want a lottery, though. They want to be 100% sure they have a ticket to the show. It's a gratification thing.
Not everything can be 100% optimal and profit maximized. The current ticket sales method works great, if you eliminate the rent-seeking scalpers, through simple regulation.
However, ideally we should also consider it shameful to buy from scalpers. You run a high risk being scammed, they can resell the same ticket multiple times, and you have no recourse.
Your original response was that there wasn't a similarity between unpaid internships and concert ticket sales. And now your response is that more optimal systems are less desirable, which is a fine answer. But it's certainly a choice to choose the less-optimal system, with the understanding that that choice is going to lock out some people due to resource constraints. And the current method rewards time-rich people in a very similar way as unpaid internships. They receive access to experiences that others can't "afford".
Isn't a better system to just hold a lottery? Yes, maybe now you have fans with dedication, but it just feels like an enormous waste of time for everyone to be online refreshing a page for an hour when it will boil down to luck anyway who will get a ticket
Do I have to pay to play the lottery? If that case, it's practically equivalent to a ticket price of (lottery price)*(probability of winning), so you haven't really solved anything, the scalpers will buy many lottery tickets. Double more so if the lottery is free, then the price becomes expressed as the grinding of multiple identities, straw buyers, etc. into fooling the system to give them more chances; scalpers are even better positioned to game a free lottery since they have the economies of scale to produce a very large number of straw identities.
Any friction you introduce other than "being a fan" is just a convoluted way to hide the real market prices, and that's exactly the margin where scalpers operate. As for "being a fan", it's very hard to quantify and operationalize.
Well what are you trying to fix? What are you trying to do? Profit maximize? Or ensure that only people that are going to watch the concert buy tickets?
Why not a blind auction? Have everyone who wants a ticket choose any value above $10 (including $10). The highest 10,000 (presumed seat capacity) priced bids get their tickets. If there is a tie at the end, sort by first come, first serve, excluding excessive bulk orders.
It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people.
The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher than face value. That was implemented some years ago here, and scalping is a minor issue now. Fans are generally very good at self-policing and reporting price-gouging scalpers. Ticket prices did increase slightly over time, but certainly not on the level of $50 becoming $500, as posited in the article.
They do touch on that, but I don't think the solution is to completely stop resale. Just limit it to face value or less.
If artists were only interested in short-term profit, they would jack up the prices and only sell to their richest fans. But most of them look at the long perspective, the fact that there's a lot more to be gained in the long run by having a loyal fanbase that doesn't feel exploited.
For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
If events get sold out, the onus is on the organizers and artists to either book additional shows, or come back again in 6 months or a year, possibly at a bigger venue.
If someone is a true fan, they'll be bummed about missing out, but also adamant to not miss out next time. And they certainly don't fly across the Atlantic for a Broadway show without having somehow secured a ticket beforehand. That's just silly.