daylight Wrote:Because they can be. People are paying it, after all.
That's sort of it. There's always been a price gap between what bands charge and what people are willing to actually pay for the tickets. Especially the good tickets up front. If bands charged the optimal price, then where would be no scalping (arbitrage) opportunities. All scalpers is buy something priced below it's value and sell it at it's value. The platinum tickets up front thing allows bands to price out those tickets and get the market price for them. Thus the band captures the money instead of scalpers. I guess it's one way to do it. I like Pearl Jam's way of getting all the best seats in the house, selling them to their fan club members, and making all the tickets "will call" day of the show. If you're not able (or going to) regulate the best seats in the house, you may as well be the one profiting from them. It also looks like the Hip's last tour, so I hope they all make enough to support their families and what not.
Well, after trying mostly non-stop throughout the day, I took a nap. Just woke up about 10 minutes ago and decided to go through the process again, and found a lower bowl seat in 1 of the 2 middle sections directly across from the stage in Rogers Arena. Still can't believe it. I hope other people are still trying. I pass my luck onto you all.
Gunn Wrote:A whole boatload just opened up in the 300's for the first Edmonton show.
Don't be fooled by the 300's either. I've been to, what feels like, 100's of concerts at Rexall and there isn't a bad seat in the house, IMO
I got floor seats for this one bud, see you there!
Zod Wrote:daylight Wrote:Because they can be. People are paying it, after all.
That's sort of it. There's always been a price gap between what bands charge and what people are willing to actually pay for the tickets. Especially the good tickets up front. If bands charged the optimal price, then where would be no scalping (arbitrage) opportunities. All scalpers is buy something priced below it's value and sell it at it's value. The platinum tickets up front thing allows bands to price out those tickets and get the market price for them. Thus the band captures the money instead of scalpers. I guess it's one way to do it. I like Pearl Jam's way of getting all the best seats in the house, selling them to their fan club members, and making all the tickets "will call" day of the show. If you're not able (or going to) regulate the best seats in the house, you may as well be the one profiting from them. It also looks like the Hip's last tour, so I hope they all make enough to support their families and what not.
How are you so sure "the band" benefits more from platinum seats?
Wouldnt they just be listed in the regular pricing if so?
You contradicted yourself.
I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
jcshades Wrote:I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
It's online if anyone wants to watch: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational">http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational</a><!-- m -->
jcshades Wrote:I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
I don't exactly understand what the "troubles" were. This happens with basically every band.
I hate to be critical of The Hip with what's gone on the past week, but a few things need to be said.
- the band, and/or their management, half-assed it with this presale. Letting anyone sign up for a free fan club, right until last night, and then emailing out a generic password for all shows was just asking for scalpers to infiltrate the sale. They should have cutoff fan club sign ups as of when the tour was announced, or each person on the mailing list should have been emailed a unique code (not one of the three words in the title of their upcoming release).
- secondly, people are complaining about Platinum tickets and this is on the band, not Ticketmaster. Bands have a choice and sign off on letting Ticketmaster offer many of the best seats at highly inflated prices so they profit on these secondary market prices rather than scalpers.
The Hip can do what they want and they have excersided that right. I don't know if there are a lot of Hip fans that don't go to many concerts, but all this that happened today is unfortunately the norm. Much of this could have been remedied from the two points I made above.
I have seen every Hip tour since 1996. Since 2002 when they started various forms of fan club pre sales I haven't been outside the first 10 rows, sometimes purchasing as many as 8 tickets (2004 and 2007). I realize demand was much higher for this tour, however the best I could do was row 19 and it was a battle, whereas I was in and out of ticketmaster in 10 minutes for all the other tours.
Rye Wrote:jcshades Wrote:I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
- secondly, people are complaining about Platinum tickets and this is on the band, not Ticketmaster. Bands have a choice and sign off on letting Ticketmaster offer many of the best seats at highly inflated prices so they profit on these secondary market prices rather than scalpers.
Where is this information? How do you know that?
I agree 100% band/band management could have handled way better.
I downloaded the hip app for the first time and without signing in, the presale password was listed.
So anyone with the app could have the password too.
MountainHip Wrote:Rye Wrote:jcshades Wrote:I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
- secondly, people are complaining about Platinum tickets and this is on the band, not Ticketmaster. Bands have a choice and sign off on letting Ticketmaster offer many of the best seats at highly inflated prices so they profit on these secondary market prices rather than scalpers.
Where is this information? How do you know that?
I agree 100% band/band management could have handled way better.
I downloaded the hip app for the first time and without signing in, the presale password was listed.
So anyone with the app could have the password too.
You think bands don't have a say that ticketmaster is selling "platinum" seats at 5x face value? Come on man...
Rolling Stone and a few other publications have done articles on platinum tickets. Basically, the artist allots a certain number of tickets to sell through this channel at market-value (whatever that is) prices as opposed to face value. This was done to bypass scalpers so the artist benefits from the markup instead of scalpers.
If the band really cared they could have done what Pearl Jam does and just get the best seats in the house, as opposed to selling these platinum tickets and offer seats in the upper level during a fan club presale, however this is the route they've chosen and that's fine too. I just get miffed when I come on here or Facebook and people think Ticketmaster is the big, bad corporation when the band has a major hand in this.
I guess I just cant bring myself to think the hip would want and approve tickets to be sold at those prices.
I can see it as a way of thawarting scalpers of those tickets though.
Im still confused why they dont just advertise those in the price listing.
MountainHip Wrote:I guess I just cant bring myself to think the hip would want and approve tickets to be sold at those prices.
I can see it as a way of thawarting scalpers of those tickets though.
Im still confused why they dont just advertise those in the price listing.
You can think whatever you want but the bands and the management are in on it. Ticketmaster doesn't necessarily release the best seats first upon an on sale, then people panic (like today, without even trying the general on sale), and they pay crazy prices when Platinum seats pop up because they are emotional and think it's a "score" they got these tickets.
I'd wager anything there are ticket drops for all of these shows, except maybe Kingston, and people get awesome seats at face value 48-72 hours within the show time. And I wonder how people will feel after paying $500-750 per ticket and are sitting beside someone that paid $125? If you have the money that's great, but I've gone to enough shows that I've seen how this ticket buying game works.
Rye Wrote:I have seen every Hip tour since 1996. Since 2002 when they started various forms of fan club pre sales I haven't been outside the first 10 rows, sometimes purchasing as many as 8 tickets (2004 and 2007). I realize demand was much higher for this tour, however the best I could do was row 19 and it was a battle, whereas I was in and out of ticketmaster in 10 minutes for all the other tours.
This is my exact experience as well; although I read a comment on the Hip's Facebook page that someone spoke to a TM employee and they employee said only 100 tickets were released for the presale (I believe this was for the Kingston show). Also, it seems that the best tickets have not been released for the presale, which is a change from past ones. For the FC tour, I got 2nd row. For NFPA I got around 7th row (although I ended up doing slightly better on the public sale, single tickets though). For the WATS tour I scored 2nd/3rd row for all three Ottawa shows.
This time around, I got 18th row for Victoria and 25th row for Ottawa, while being shut out of Kingston (scored 4th row tickets when they opened the building through presale). I have to believe that most of the good tickets are being reserved for the public sales, which is frustrating for us diehard fans; although we certainly don't "deserve" the best seats, I find it strange that we don't have access to them on the fanclub presale, as we have in the past.
I am sad for everyone who,was,unsuccessful today, but at about 10:20 EST, I scored 3 tickets - row 12 floor - in Kingston! I don't know if it was the fact that I was looking for 3 (odd number) or that I was using the TM app on my iPad. Anyway, best of luck to everyone. Can't wait!!! :-)
Shneebs.
Rye Wrote:jcshades Wrote:I see the National is covering today's troubles with ticketmaster and hip tickets after the hockey game.
I don't exactly understand what the "troubles" were. This happens with basically every band.
I hate to be critical of The Hip with what's gone on the past week, but a few things need to be said.
- the band, and/or their management, half-assed it with this presale. Letting anyone sign up for a free fan club, right until last night, and then emailing out a generic password for all shows was just asking for scalpers to infiltrate the sale. They should have cutoff fan club sign ups as of when the tour was announced, or each person on the mailing list should have been emailed a unique code (not one of the three words in the title of their upcoming release).
- secondly, people are complaining about Platinum tickets and this is on the band, not Ticketmaster. Bands have a choice and sign off on letting Ticketmaster offer many of the best seats at highly inflated prices so they profit on these secondary market prices rather than scalpers.
The Hip can do what they want and they have excersided that right. I don't know if there are a lot of Hip fans that don't go to many concerts, but all this that happened today is unfortunately the norm. Much of this could have been remedied from the two points I made above.
I have seen every Hip tour since 1996. Since 2002 when they started various forms of fan club pre sales I haven't been outside the first 10 rows, sometimes purchasing as many as 8 tickets (2004 and 2007). I realize demand was much higher for this tour, however the best I could do was row 19 and it was a battle, whereas I was in and out of ticketmaster in 10 minutes for all the other tours.
This. I get why people are upset...but this happens every single time any major tour goes on sale. Ultimately, supply won't match demand for this tour and free market forces will have their way.
For the next tour (and dammit, I refuse to give up hope there's gonna be one) the Hip needs to do either unique passwords and/or box office pickup. Or do what Nine Inch Nails does: have fan club ticket holders pick their tickets up, literally, inside the venue. There are ways.
Not seeing the countdown to presale for the new shows. It was up for the other shows yesterday. On US Ticketmaster. Anyone else have the countdown?
EDIT: Nevermind, just showed up. :roll: