Concert Go'ers We Have a Problem

Have you ever wanted to go to a concert, and eagerly waited for the "pre-sale" on official date with great anticipation that you will be able to score tickets to see a show you really want to see? I was in this situation when I learned Radiohead was going to play the Hollywood Bowl in 2008, and even though I logged into ticketmaster at the stroke of 10:00am, I wasn't able to get tickets. Where the hell do 15,000 tickets go in 2 seconds!?

Trent Reznor, had the following to say:
"'The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management, and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the reseller,' Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor wrote on his blog recently. 'This is a very common practice that happens for often than not."
NIN: Ticket Scalping and Re-selling

Up to 30% of tickets to popular touring acts are funneled to secondary market websites such as eBay, StubHub, Ticketmaster's own TicketsNow and TicketExchange leaving the general public little chance to get a good seat at face value.

Ben Sisario at the New York Times continues on this topic...
"the ticket marketplace has become a fiercely competitive game in which major corporations compete over resale prices with the fan next door, scalpers have a Washington lobbyist and thousands of tickets disappear in a fraction of a second."
Online Sales Make Hot Tickets Harder to Get

Ticketmaser CEO Irving Azoff called the secondary concert-ticket market a "mess", but his company owns TicketsNow and is merging with Live Nation, one of the nations largest concert promoters, and venue owner. Irving offered little to those fans who wanted to purchase Bruce Springsteen tickets who were immediately redirected to TicketsNow when he stated it was simply a "glitch".

This is the best a CEO has to offer to thousands of fans who get redirected to an online ticket scalper? The man whose company is profiting from these astronomically inflated price has quite the limited vocabulary when people want answers. Hey Irving here are two other words "Fuck" and "You". As much as I hate the idea of paying for scalped tickets, I will go to eBay or CraigsList for tickets before I ever use TicketsNow.

Unfortunately, I don't think enough unification of fans who are against secondary markets can be formed to boycott all the scalpers sites. The solution is going to have to sit with those who have some leverage against the promoters and ticket vendors, and this is where the artist must step in. Tom Waits, AC/DC, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Spingsteen, and Pearl Jam all have ideas on how to stop the madness, but time will tell if they are successful. I support their effort to cut down on the secondary market ticket sales, and hope additional artists will join them so fans who can't or won't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars can still the show.