YowMaScroow said:

I didn't realise the ticket scam was SO big. Just watched Despatches - Viagogo the great ticket scandal on You Tube ( thanks to who posted the link earlier). Viagogo pretend to be a fan to fan ticket selling website. But they buy shit loads of tickets themselves, double the face value and then rip off fans. Wow. The really really sad thing is they make so much money from this they don't need to sell all the tickets, so every night tickets get thrown in the bin. The love of money eh.

It gets worse. Ticketmaster middle management takes a portion of the tickets (often a large portion depending on the popularity of the show) and sells them on the ticketmaster-created "fan to fan" reseller site at many times face value, before the tickets even go on sale on ticketmaster.

It's one of the perks to employment there. I know somebody who is doing this.

NorthC said:

I stood in line an entire day to see him in the Melkweg in 2011. (It was summer, that makes it easier.) Lots of great people there, not just die hard fans. And that's my problem with the idea of a new NPG club: concerts shouldn't be a "members only" event! Concerts are for everybody who likes the artist well enough to pay the ticket price. And when a celebrity plays in a small venue (The Stones, Lenny Kravitz and Sting among others have all played in Paradiso) there will always be a hassle surrounding tickets sales. Scalpers should be stopped, but a club with membership isn't the solution. [Edited 11/15/15 5:49am]

I've spent all day in a line before and it was fun. I'm not in a job that easily allows me to do that now though, unless it's weekend. It's also virtually impossible for me to be online on a Friday at 9.00 am for tickets as well. Truthfully, I don't know the solution - I've paid high prices for Prince and been really disappointed and next to nothing for some of the best concerts I've ever experienced. I liked NPGMC and would welcome it again; if Prince wants to play small venues AFAICT he really does only have two choices: charge a lot more in the first instance (hence alienating fans) or build some kind of new fan site. Personally I'd prefer he still played big venues with smaller venue aftershows for the fans but I'm afraid I've seen the last of those.

TheEnglishGent said:

antonb said:

still no proper statment from the prince camp? Disgusting.

Its not that disgusting at all - with the combination of the tout issue plus the events in Paris, it will have thrown the whole thing up in the air. Which means its going to take a bit of time to figure out alternatives.

I've read allot of posts on here from people defending Prince for trying to stop the touts and re-sellers 'allegidly fan to fan' sites and lots of fans also accusing prince of poor planning/mis-management.

I think its abit of both, this is all Deja Vu to me, The last Prince gigs I saw were last year in the UK, I went to London Hammersmith, it was announced Sunday Lunchtime for that night, I jumped in my car with no ticket (I am in Manchester) and drove straight to London with no ticket or guarantee of a ticket, joined the queue at 4pm and got in the gig at 7:30pm and saw a great gig, leaving around 11:30pm and getting home at 3:30am. Luckily, I could go in Work late the Monday and I had cover that I could drop everything family wise and get to London at very short notice on 'a chance'. The main reason given for these on the day shows was to cut out the touts, which works, but menas allot of fans just cannot make it, I was lucky it happened when it did and I had the funds to take the risk, if the gig would have been cancelled or sold out when I got there, it was an 8 hour round trip (plus queu time) with fuel/parking/food that came to around £100+ with nothing to show for it.

I then went to both Manchester Acadmey gigs, I was working away when the gigs were announces at the Brits and sold out in minutes, so I had no chance to buy a ticket, pretty annoying based on what I did to see him on the gig above and the Manchester gigs were 4 miles from my home !!! I was lucky that a work friend had a sister who bought an extra ticket for a friend for the Friday gig who couldn't make it, so I bought her ticket for a £30 surcharge, so £100 which felt a good deal but wrong in principle to get in the gig, once again a great gig and I had a great night and met some orgers in the queue as we wrote numbers on our hands at the front of the queue, lots of, if your number 87, your ecnip98??? on the org.

On the way home after the Friday gig and having had a great time, I couldn't get it out of my mind that he was playing another gig down the road on Saturday, so I decided to go for it and try and get a ticket for the Saturday night Academy gig, I was working the Saturday so queuing for the 'on day sales' tickets was not an option as I couldn't get to the Academy till 6pm'ish, so I decided to check Stubhub, they had £70 tickets available for around £250 late Friday, I kept an eye on the prices during the day Saturday and bought one at around 4pm at £120, so a £50 surcharge but something I was willing to pay based on the previous nights gig. I got the ticket electronically and attended the gig, its probably the best of the Prince gigs I saw last year, so no regrets (incidently I complained and got a £50 refund from Stub Hub as the ticket should have been sent to me by email by 4:30 as it stated delivery in 30 mins), the ticket arrived at 5:30, so I complained as it was GA, this stoped me getting the view I paid for as I was delayed in setting off for the Academy and joining the queue outside, as it was, I elbowed my way past the casual fans and joined the orgers I had bumped into at the previous gigs when we wrote the nunbers on our hands !!! I had no moral quandy getting my £50 surchage back from Stub hub .

I then bought 2 tickets from Ticketmaster for the 2 gigs at the MEN arena in May, I paid the top price tickets (think it was £175+fees so around £190), for this I sat to the side block of the stage, decent view but nothing like the feeling/intenseness/experience of seeing Prince centre from row 2/3/4 at the Academy (we jumped around abit!!!).

So, ironically the top price I paid was the legit ticket and the worse gig/experience I saw of the 5 dates last year. But without the aftersales market, I would not have been able to see some these gigs.

The annoying thing about the way the latest gigs were handled (I was on F5 Friday at 10am with the rest of ya) is that Prince/his people have seen all this before. The only way to truly stop touts is pay on the door and walk in, so no ticket, no way to sell your entrance on, but this is pretty impractical for most fans who do not live local and cannot drop life commitments, lots of us have been following Prince for 30 years and have familys/jobs, so they cannot just be dropped, there is an element of planning/saving that most of us have to do.

I think the only way to do fair sales for the fans is have some sort of fan access to buy, like pre-sales, so the true fans don't miss out, going back to when I went to Parade/Lovesexy/Nude tours in the UK and Europe, I often bought my tickets through Controversy/Reviolution fan clubs, a few weeks before a tour you got a list of gigs and returned your choices with a cheque and you was pretty much gurarnteed decent tickets for these gigs in 20,000 seater arenas like Wenmbley/Earls Court/NEC etc. Prince has tried this with his own fan clubs but they are always a mess and collapse, they need to be ran by a fans network who handle it all, Prince just needs to arrange access to tickets that he can arrange with the gig/tour promotor. This would also reduce the touts/fan sales activity, the only fans that are willing to pay 2-4 times the original sale price are the hardcore fans, your average casual fan will not pay £150+ for a £70 ticket, so it should help stop this after sale market.

I think it is fair people can sell on tickets if they cannot attend due to Work/SIckness/unexpected commitments, charging for costs is fair enough, but it should not be excessive, so you are not buying to tickets to subsequently make a profit with no ontention of attending the gig.

Hopefull the tickets will be better organised if these gigs ever go ahead (very doubtful in my opinion), good luck to everyone getting a ticket !!!!

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Eye have a feeling is going to create a massive,MEGA,self ticket site just 4 his fans to go & purchase tickets 2 c him. He's done it b 4. He will do it again.
B patient...

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Eye have a feeling is going to create a massive,MEGA,self ticket site just 4 his fans to go & purchase tickets 2 c him. He's done it b 4. He will do it again. B patient...

Clearly that's what's going to happen. Prince is busy programming the code for that site right now. I hear through the purple grapevine that you will be able to "click" on some sort of rodent thing that plugs into your computational box and by doing so buy tickets. It's all way above my head, but it's the right thing to do and Prince *always* does the right thing.

It's just so odd that out of the blue for these shows, Ticketmaster created all of these secondary market websites that they own. It's very strange that they never did this before for any other artists, or for all of Prince's shows for the last ten years at least. And thankfully, Ticketmaster has never been known to be crooked, and twenty fucking years ago Pearl Jam (whose music I don't like, but who were HUGE at the time) certainly didn't decide to use another vendor for one of their big tours.

(Can you tell how hard it is for me to be as delusional as you? And it seems to come naturally to you, too - quite the impressive feat).

There's no easy solution to fix the broken ticketing industry, but for any of us to act as if Prince hasn't been aware of these exact same issues for the last 20 years is disingenuous at best, and at worst, just fucking moronic. This is the same man you like to label as a "business genius" (which is one of the funniest things that I hear about him), yet you honestly believe that he didn't know that tickets for the Louisville Hit 'n Run tour last year (to use on example of which I have personal recent knowledge) were available on StubHub at 700% the original price, hours before they went on sale through Ticketmaster?

I would think Apple / Android has the means of coming up with a solution to at least dampen abuse..

You use an app to purchase the right to have a ticket for $X (the face value of the ticket) and that allows you to download a token/cookie to your smartphone that would be tied to your unique security features (fingerprint). When you get to the venue you use the token + fingerprint security (apple pay) to verify you are the original person who purchased the ticket and gain entrance. Only the person with the combination of the token and fingerprint can gain entrance. The token could not be resold or transferred to anyone else as without the original associated fingerprint it is invalid which would cut scalpers off at the knees.

A lot of Apple's new services are not intented to be wildly profitable just bring value and stickiness to the ecosystem. Something like the above could put Ticketmaster and scalpers out of business.

theblueangel said:

BE PREPARED FOR HUGE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES NOW!!

http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/concert-industry-plans-changes-in-response-to-attacks/

PurpleSpirit319 said:

mikeyaddict said:

PurpleSpirit319 said:

BE PREPARED FOR HUGE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES NOW!!

http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/concert-industry-plans-changes-in-response-to-attacks/

. Interesting. I guess being Asian that means I'll be singled out for special searches at gigs just like at airports!

And when they read the numbers on our hands we have written on to keep place in the queue, we will become an active cell to them !!!!

2funkE said:

I would think Apple / Android has the means of coming up with a solution to at least dampen abuse..

You use an app to purchase the right to have a ticket for $X (the face value of the ticket) and that allows you to download a token/cookie to your smartphone that would be tied to your unique security features (fingerprint). When you get to the venue you use the token + fingerprint security (apple pay) to verify you are the original person who purchased the ticket and gain entrance. Only the person with the combination of the token and fingerprint can gain entrance. The token could not be resold or transferred to anyone else as without the original associated fingerprint it is invalid which would cut scalpers off at the knees.

A lot of Apple's new services are not intented to be wildly profitable just bring value and stickiness to the ecosystem. Something like the above could put Ticketmaster and scalpers out of business.

....which is great, in theory, up to the point where I can't get time off work/ a babysitter / etc and therefore can no longer go to the concert. I can't sell the ticket anymore (face value or otherwise!) and I can't return to the original seller...

PurpleSpirit319 said:

BE PREPARED FOR HUGE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES NOW!!

http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/concert-industry-plans-changes-in-response-to-attacks/

It's not enough that these nutjobs have taken so much away from people, but now they have to taint music, too...

So now the Tour has been cancelled, another Victory for the Terrorists.

tour is cancelled / postponed

https://www.facebook.com/konzerthaus/posts/10153657111982492

I must say, I have more respect for Madonna. Don't let the terrorist win!

[Edited 11/16/15 1:45am]

purplethunder3121 said:

powersoul99 said:

So now the Tour has been cancelled, another Victory for the Terrorists.

.

Says who?

udo said:

udo said:

udo said:

powersoul99 said:

So now the Tour has been cancelled, another Victory for the Terrorists.

At the moment it's postponed as opposed to flat out cancelled. According to the promoters anyway.

http://www.nu.nl/muziek/4165827/prince-stelt-europese-tournee-aanslagen-parijs.html

De Amerikaanse zanger Prince heeft besloten zijn Europese tournee voor onbepaalde tijd uit te stellen als gevolg van de aanslagen in Parijs.

do your own dutch to whatever google translation.

the tour is postponned:


the danish tour promoter Kim Worsøe from ICO tells the same.. the tour is postponned due to the tragic attacks in Paris:

Source: the danish music site gaffa.dk

http://gaffa.dk/nyhed/101393



quote, from gaffa, google translation:

As we wrote last week, the plan was that the Prince should go on solo tour in Europe with two Danish concerts before Christmas. Now Princes Danish agent Kim Worsøe from ICO, however, issued a press release in which he writes that the tour has been postponed.

"On top of the tragic events in Paris concert organizers decided to postpone the tour so far," writes Kim Worsøe.

[Edited 11/16/15 3:37am]

[Edited 11/16/15 3:38am]