A while ago I saw that Depeche Mode announced a concert in London and my sister and I decided to go (don’t judge us 🙁 ). We checked around on the internet and the major agencies seemed to have the same prices for the tickets we wanted, and we ended up paying about £100 each (like I said, don’t judge us).

Fast forward to now, and we finally got to download the tickets to find that the face value is 45 quid and they have someone else’s name on. What seems to have happened is that within a very short time (minutes) of the tickets being on sale, they were all bought by someone else and resold to the agency.

Probably I am being amazingly naïve, but it seems to be a major scam – that the tickets are immediately bought at face value and resold at another price – and a fixed level of price, not some random price set by the lucky purchaser. In fact – was the original buyer actually a member of the public?

As I said – probably I am just naïve, but this level of dodginess surprises me !

Massive racket, yeah.

Disgraceful that nothing has been done to regulate it better. But I guess young people don’t vote.

IME, you need to get in on the pre-sale to get tickets at face value today.

The other scam is the booking fees and now the ‘delivery charge’ for your tickets.

“But i don’t want them delivered, I’ll happily print the barcodes out at home.

“Certainly. That’ll be £2.75.

For the privilege of printing it out with my own ink on my own paper. FFS!

Yep same here – I just won’t buy them at anything other than face value – I’ve been lucky in that the few bands I’ve wanted to see in last couple of years have announced extra dates after the original dates have sold out – these tickets seem to be easier to get at face value

The other scam is the booking fees

I hate the ‘per ticket’ fees. At least delivery is ‘per order’.
A £40 ticket, with a £5 booking fee is a £45 ticket seeing as you can’t buy it without making a booking, it’s not like an optional extra.

I’ve got the answer folks! Go see new bands instead of old shite!
Last gig – £3 a ticket on the door. Venue the size of my living room. It was incredible.

You can thank me later when you’ve seen some young and spunky kidz playing their thrilling new soundz.
😀

*Awaits essay from CountZero in weirdly spaced text telling me why I’m wrong*

touts don’t particular bother me, they only exist if people are willing to by from them. capitalism init, rob people for as much as you can and get your fingers into as many pies as possible.

I refuse to pay anymore than 35 quid a ticket these days, if it cost more, fair do’s enjoy the gig, let me know how it was.

Its a legalised racket pure and simple.

The fact that the largest provider of tickets – Ticketmaster also owns two of the the largest secondary ticketing sites say it all.

I don’t go to a lot of gigs but if i can’t get them at face value I won’t bother

touts don’t particular bother me, they only exist if people are willing to by from them.

Thing is – when I bought the tickets I didn’t know they were from a tout. If I’d known that the face value was half what I was paying I’d have said “forget it” – illogical though that might be.

Yep, the whole reselling thing has got totally out of hand.
People using software to buy tickets the second they go on sale then putting them straight onto re-selling sites at huge mark-ups.

Awaits essay from CountZero in weirdly spaced text telling me why I’m wrong*

Weirdly spaced? Where, exactly? I’ve probably forgotten more about typesetting, kerning, etc, than you’ll ever know, however, I’ve got no control over how the site formats what I type on my pad.
I spent over thirty years in print, so I have something of a clue.
And I have no argument with going to see new artists, bands, etc; I do it all the time, and have done for over forty years.
That shouldn’t stop anyone from going to see an artist who’s music someone has loved for years, like I did with Lush and Belly last year, both for the first time in twenty years.
Ever heard of the Besnard Lakes? Seen them several times, including at Greenman last year, they’re playing a tiny little venue in Bristol on Monday evening, tickets cost £13.50.
They’ve been around since 2003, and released five albums so far, so are they too old for you to consider going to see?
I really don’t give a shit how long an artist has been going, all that matters is the quality of the music and their performance.
So I’m looking forward to Greenman in August, where PJ Harvey is the only artist taking part who I’ve seen before, most are people I’ve only heard one or two songs by, by the same token I’m going to see Suzanne Vega, Half Man Half Biscuit and Judie Tzuke later this year as well.
Back to the OP, did the tickets come from getmein.com, or similar? Avoid like the plague, they’re a scourge because they are owned by Ticketmaster, who facilitate the use of bots to hoover up large numbers of premium seats, then make extra profit on selling the tickets again at vastly inflated prices, which should be made illegal, and these sites either separated from the primary seller, or closed down.
The best bet is to register with the Fb page and registered web sites for favourite artists, that way you get presale notifications and codes which give access sometimes 24-48 hours in advance, for face value prices.
Which are often bloody expensive, but that’s uncontrollable, the Aimee Mann tickets I’ve got for later this year cost me £104 for two tickets, but it’s at the London Palladium, which I think inflates the prices a bit more, as it’s a theatre, rather than a regular concert venue.
It’s her only concert in the south, so I either had to suck it up, or forget it.
I love her as an artist and performer, have done since 1982, so take every, (infrequent) opportunity to see her.

People are happy enough to pay for it though.

Just go and watch a band that costs alot less, or is free! You’ll get very much the same experience (live music and a crowd looking at their phones or ipads).

😆 That CZ, he never disappoints 😆

@count – viagogo

Absolute con, mate of my eldest works for one of the big names in the game and the stuff he talks about..

That CZ, he never disappoints

😀 more paragraphs than sentences.

Only thing that upset me was no mention of Kate Bush 😥

You’ve only just realised……..yup, you are.

Young people don’t go to Depeche Mode gigs

My band generally charges about £4 on the door and give you a 4 on the floor rocking good time!

Yes.

Full disclosure: I’m not a gig-goer, so it doesn’t really affect me…

Seems it happens like this: Band/venue pretend to charge £50 a ticket, tickets are only ever theoretically available at £50 because a reseller automatically buys them all and sells them on for £100 a ticket, resellers then (allegedly) split profits with band/venue.

If people are willing to spend £100 on a ticket, would they be OK with it *all* going to the band/venue? Is it just that the resellers don’t ‘deserve’ any of the money? Should the band make less money than they could?

Fact is if the gig practically sells out at £100 a ticket, that’s (near enough) the value of the tickets. The band/venue could sell them at £100 from the start. Why does the division of the money matter? Plenty of people get their cut who aren’t the band themselves and are merely part of the business making it happen.

If I went to gigs like that I suppose I’d be annoyed that it wasn’t more transparent, but really it’s like being frustrated that you can’t get wholesale prices for something you’re buying at retail – they just don’t sell to individuals at wholesale prices.

The only regulation I can see having an effect is that automatic buying and reselling is outlawed, at which point the venue ticket prices would immediately go up to the actual market value instead of the pretend value. There’s no way of using legislation to hold down the value of something people don’t need and will compete to buy below its market value.

If people are willing to spend £100 on a ticket, would they be OK with it *all* going to the band/venue?

I get that, which I why I said I admit to being illogical – if it’s worth it, it’s worth it, and at a certain point I decided it was worth it. But still I don’t like the feeling that someone has not really told me the whole story.

The gig I mentioned earlier was £3 for 3 bands. 2 3 pieces and a 5 piece. There were no more than 30 people (probably nearer 20) in the venue, a few who were with the band. Wonder where the division of funds is there? Truth is these bands tour and play because they care about getting their music heard and not money. £25 is my ticket limit and everytime I’ve gone near that, the band (and the audience) have been massively disappointing. Like Underworld going through the motions while the crowd chat all the way through about their babysitting and Miele dishwasher issues. Seriously, the more I pay, the less interested in the actual music the crowd have been!
Yeah, so anyway, I probably can’t relate to this thread in reality as my gig going is so different.

ps. anyone any idea wtf onlysteel was on about?

Sadly that’s the way it works these days OP. As for Depeche Mode friends saw them in Paris and said they where great

Promotors/Govt could stamp it out immediately requiring purchase credit card / ID upon event entry.

I’m with Dez on this point. I go to a small local venue at least once a month and watch new up and coming bands or old timers that just want to play but don’t draw the big crowds any more. We never pay much more than £10 and usually £5. Spent many nights drinking till the wee hours with the band we have just watched which can be a laugh. We had a good piss up with Slaves (2 piece new punk band) about 3 years ago.
Saw the Black peaks last week who were very good which cost £5 on the door and had a great night.
Having said that there are bigger bands I would pay £50 to see but that’s my limit and they aren’t 2mins walk from my house so it all involves faffing around and loads more cost to get there and back.