Audio By Carbonatix
Last week I told you about a story in the Wall Street Journal about Artist approved scalping. Well over the weekend Trent Reznor of NIN posted in the NIN forum on his website a long explanation of the current situation from the perspective of some one in the middle of it. His explanation is brilliant, straight forward, to the point and nails the complexity of the problem in a way only he could.
“Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is
the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a
real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of
some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants
to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who
would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for
various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come
off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its
value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the
promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers
really know this. So…
” – Trent
This sums up the whole problem as simply as can be explained. later in
the post Trent explains the stance NIN has taken on this issue.
“NIN gets 10% of the available seats for our own pre-sale. We won a
tough (and I mean TOUGH) battle to get the best seats. We require you
to sign up at our site (for free) to get tickets. We limit the amount
you can buy, we print your name on the tickets and we have our own
person let you in a separate entrance where we check your ID to match
the ticket. We charge you a surcharge that has been less than
TicketMaster’s or Live Nation’s in all cases so far to pay for the
costs of doing this – it’s not a profit center for us. We have
essentially stopped scalping by doing these things – because we want
true fans to be able to get great seats and not get ripped off by these
parasites.I assure you nobody in the NIN camp supplies or supports the
practice of supplying tickets to these re-sellers because it’s not
something we morally feel is the right thing to do. We are leaving
money on the table here but it’s not always about money.
Being completely honest, it IS something I’ve had to consider. If
people are willing to pay a lot of money to sit up front AND ARE GOING
TO ANYWAY thanks to the rigged system, why let that money go into the
hands of the scalpers? I’m the one busting my ass up there every night.
The conclusion really came down to it not feeling like the right thing
to do – simple as that.” – Trent (emphasis mine not Trents)
It is understandable why other artist are not explaining to their
fans how this works if they have decided to embrace this new scalping
system, like the acts we mentioned before,
it can be hard to come out and say that to the people who will never be
able to buy the good seats. But there should be more transparency in
the system. More acts should be honest like Trent with their fans.
It
is also noteworthy that Trent didn’t issue this explanation through the
press, through a publicist, he gave it straight to the fans on the
bands own message board where all the fans could see it and comment on
it directly. (As always we at Up On The Sun would love to hear your
comments as well).
