Week off, unexpected Prince gigs at one of my favourite venues - The Roundhouse, so looking forward to it. Then Tueday 12pm came, about to purchase my seated tickets for my girlfriend and I (she's 5.2" - no chance of a view there), then my computer crashed - un-fucking-believable. Rebooted, back up again at 12.05 and...of course...no seated tickets left. Tried again a few times with no luck, so went for standing tickets and, yes, none left there either. Was not a happy chappy, resigned myself to checking sporadically during the day trying again and again and again...no joy. Every now and then the Org (thanks 'jamilkj' for trying to help) would say more tickets were being released, soon as I got on it - nothing doing again. This cycle of events repeated yesterday, still no joy. I gave up the ghost, but tried at 9.40pm and got through finally where I could've got standing tickets or Row C tickets - but of course I couldn't have got there - I live in Dartford. So...FUCKING...annoyed - sitting indoors watching "Springwatch" and "Coast"...bit of a poor substitute.

.

So my question is was it just bad luck or Ticketmaster? Why can't Ticketmaster just sell the tickets in one lot - or tell people when the next batch will be released? Why do they do this, leaving the ticket page constantly open, teasing you into wasting more time trying to get through that incredibly annoying visual 2-word-code-thing you have to decipher. And releasing tickets at 9.40pm?!!!

.

Forgive me for spitting feathers, but would like to know their strategy for the future.

.

That said, I hope if you attended you had a blinder (sounded like you did) - and please don't tell me it was better than Shepherds Bush Empire - the only London gig I went to!!

.

Phew...feel better for that!

[Edited 6/5/14 5:17am]

I know what you're saying - some are good, a lot bad. At Shepherds Bush, coming back from the toilet to the floor, through a throng of girls on the steps - all giving me dirty looks - and virtually pushed me as hard as they could on the floor - and I'm 6.3 - 15 stone!! Man, if any of those girls had accidently fell over and impaled their face on a large iron spike, I don't think I would've shed many tears.

(Or had their heads grated off with a large industrial mechanical cheese grater.)

(Or forced their bodies into a very small box.)

(Or...

[Edited 6/5/14 6:20am]

Farce. Very similar experience to Lordy. Shouldn't be that difficult.

Yeah, the worst thing is, is that I've had a feeling prior to the gig and more so now, that'll be it for the London shows now. Really hope not, but expect that to be the case.

Lordy said:

I know what you're saying - some are good, a lot bad. At Shepherds Bush, coming back from the toilet to the floor, through a throng of girls on the steps - all giving me dirty looks - and virtually pushed me as hard as they could on the floor - and I'm 6.3 - 15 stone!! Man, if any of those girls had accidently fell over and impaled their face on a large iron spike, I don't think I would've shed many tears.

(Or had their heads grated off with a large industrial mechanical cheese grater.)

(Or forced their bodies into a very small box.)

(Or...

[Edited 6/5/14 6:20am]

this literally made LOL

Lordy said:

Yeah, the worst thing is, is that I've had a feeling prior to the gig and more so now, that'll be it for the London shows now. Really hope not, but expect that to be the case.

actually me too and I think someone else said the same on another thread. I think this is it for the UK in fact.... I don't see him doing anything more here this year....

Hope we are wrong!!!

Ticketmaster, and the whole industry is a crooked as nine bob note.

Ever since the Americans got involved in the UK industry, its been about maximum extortion from fans.

Of course they hold tickets back, to create hype and panic. Every sold out gig these days have last minute 'production' seats released right before the event. Which is the released of the good seats they failed to shift at quadruple the price on the secondary market, which they either own (i.e Ticketmaster own GetMeIn, or have deals with (i.e. Seatwave).

They conciously sell the poor seats first, know that either fans will buy more, or to tempt the casuals after the initial rush.

Then they market it up with stupid fees.

Lets not forget all these 'Premium' packages that usually throw in a regular seat, a crappy goody bag and some nibbles.

If ever there was an industry that needed regulating, its this one.

My heart sunk when I saw that Ticketmaster were involved. Utter garbage.

I went down to the Roundhouse yesterday at around 8pm hoping they might have tickets, and guess what? At £95 including booking fee they had seated seats for the second show! For a supposedly sold out show I tried to buy tickets for several times during the day on their site!

It's a different, but thoroughly avoidable, type of chaos. That includes people touting at stupid and ridiculous prices. According to watchdog, the UK government aren't interested in getting involved in the secondary selling market (stubhub and the like), probably because their mates run those sites!

If the venue was selling tickets direct, surely that would cut the crap? Sold out would mean sold out.

In 2014 is it really that hard to reliably sell tickets online?

SquirrelMeat said:

Ticketmaster, and the whole industry is a crooked as nine bob note.

Ever since the Americans got involved in the UK industry, its been about maximum extortion from fans.

Of course they hold tickets back, to create hype and panic. Every sold out gig these days have last minute 'production' seats released right before the event. Which is the released of the good seats they failed to shift at quadruple the price on the secondary market, which they either own (i.e Ticketmaster own GetMeIn, or have deals with (i.e. Seatwave).

They conciously sell the poor seats first, know that either fans will buy more, or to tempt the casuals after the initial rush.

Then they market it up with stupid fees.

Lets not forget all these 'Premium' packages that usually throw in a regular seat, a crappy goody bag and some nibbles.

If ever there was an industry that needed regulating, its this one.

Well I feel your pain. It's been going on in America for years. I've always known that blocks of tickets get released within a day or two of the show. Some of it is understandable, venue and management reserve large numbers of tickets before they know their final guest list and media event and seatsd set aside for celebrities who might want to go at the last minute. When they finally sort their lists out 2 days before, they may have held back 200 seats and only need 150, so the other 50 get sold. They may also set up "Gold Circle VIP" packages costing hundreds of dollars and if those are unsold days before the show, they just stop those offers and release the seats at standard price.

But I too have noticed that close to show date, there may be ads stating "great seats just released!" That's obviously a deliberate hold of large number of seats.

One problem in the US is that even those artists who want to do ticketless entry are finding that it violates Fair Trade Laws which say, a ticket is property and can be sold for any amount the seller can get, and it's not fair for artists to restrain that trade. REM's manager once said, we used to spend a lot of time fighting scalpers, now we're being told we can't do anything to stop them.

So, I'm not sure "regulation" is the answer. In the US that would probably mean making life better for scalpers which now are a significant US industry.

bobzilla77 said:

SquirrelMeat said:

Ticketmaster, and the whole industry is a crooked as nine bob note.

Ever since the Americans got involved in the UK industry, its been about maximum extortion from fans.

Of course they hold tickets back, to create hype and panic. Every sold out gig these days have last minute 'production' seats released right before the event. Which is the released of the good seats they failed to shift at quadruple the price on the secondary market, which they either own (i.e Ticketmaster own GetMeIn, or have deals with (i.e. Seatwave).

They conciously sell the poor seats first, know that either fans will buy more, or to tempt the casuals after the initial rush.

Then they market it up with stupid fees.

Lets not forget all these 'Premium' packages that usually throw in a regular seat, a crappy goody bag and some nibbles.

If ever there was an industry that needed regulating, its this one.

Well I feel your pain. It's been going on in America for years. I've always known that blocks of tickets get released within a day or two of the show. Some of it is understandable, venue and management reserve large numbers of tickets before they know their final guest list and media event and seatsd set aside for celebrities who might want to go at the last minute. When they finally sort their lists out 2 days before, they may have held back 200 seats and only need 150, so the other 50 get sold. They may also set up "Gold Circle VIP" packages costing hundreds of dollars and if those are unsold days before the show, they just stop those offers and release the seats at standard price.

But I too have noticed that close to show date, there may be ads stating "great seats just released!" That's obviously a deliberate hold of large number of seats.

One problem in the US is that even those artists who want to do ticketless entry are finding that it violates Fair Trade Laws which say, a ticket is property and can be sold for any amount the seller can get, and it's not fair for artists to restrain that trade. REM's manager once said, we used to spend a lot of time fighting scalpers, now we're being told we can't do anything to stop them.

So, I'm not sure "regulation" is the answer. In the US that would probably mean making life better for scalpers which now are a significant US industry.

Before the US giants bought up all the event management, it was usual in the UK for the venue to hold the front blocks, and the phone lines would issue from front to back, first come first served.

The die hards could queue and bag the front row, by putting themselves out. Some fan club mechanisms used to work well, but again, that got hyjacked by the likes of Live Nation, who began signing the big acts.

These days, they seem to deliberately let everyone know that a pre sale is avaiable, but usually involves a fee to join a club. Then, the pre sale happens and fans often find out that didn't get the best seats.

You can look at the tickets on offer for King Crimson in LA right now and see what's going on.

The normal face price is $168 for front ten rows, $100 for the rest of the orchestra.

Right now there are unsold seats in the first ten rows that are marked up to $300 as part of the "VIP Package" deals. Sooner or later, they will realize that no one is paying $300 for an 8th row seat on the side. They will be released to the public for either $168 or $100. Eventually. If I was that diehard I would have to check TM several times a day between now and October 1, to see when they were released.

As it is, when I got in for the onsale, the "best available" seat was in Row T, and I don't want to pay $100 for a seat in the 20th row.

As it is I got 2nd row mezzanine seats for $75 and am happy with that.

I had an incident wth a Guns N Roses gig a few years back- standing tickets sold out and I didn't have one. Two days before the gig a friend of mine receiced an email from a film website (????) saying that free tickets were being given away to the show. He went along and got us a couple of standing tickets- we had a choice between those and some of the best seats in the building. For free.

So I tried to buy a ticket and couldn't becaise it was sold out- then received a ticket I couldn't buy for free. It's happened a few other times that I know of too.

Our only reasoning for this absurd state of affairs is that they gave shedloads to third-part profiteers who didn't shift them and it would have been embarassing/angering if the best seating areas were empty and the standing area was notably sparse at an allegedly sold-out gig.

The ticket selling business is as dodgy as it possibly could be.

[Edited 6/9/14 14:51pm]