More Scalping
So I’m reading today’s "Wall Street Journal" about the fakokta situation with Michael Jackson scalping his own tickets at the 02
and I’m wondering, is this story ever going to make it to the general public?
Not all news is equal. If the economy weren’t in turmoil, if Bernie Madoff didn’t plead guilty and go to jail last week, maybe the mainstream news outlets would have picked up on the "Wall Street Journal"’s story about major acts scalping their own tickets. But it appears that the story’s got no traction. I was fearful it was going to fade.
And then along comes Trent Reznor.
The "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" went Web today. Although it’s a shadow of the old printed paper. It will be focused more on local news, with a much smaller staff. Last week, the "Washington Post" announced it was folding its stand-alone Business section, commercial news would now be featured in the main, first section. In other words, traditional media is dying in front of our very eyes. If you’re hiring a PR person to get the story in the paper, you might as well be paying for billboards on the space shuttle. Your target audience isn’t going to see the story!
And it’s funny to watch the writers and publishers scrambling. Saying newspapers must not die and that people must pay and if not the public, the government. I read an interesting aphorism the other day, "journalism must survive, not newspapers". Does journalism need to be done by crusty old guys paid by a fat cat publisher? Absolutely not. There’s more meat, more truth in Trent Reznor’s explanation of ticket scalping than there’s been in any mainstream story. Maybe because he’s at the center, he truly understands! He’s not reporting, he’s LIVING this story!
But what I find fascinating is that maybe two people e-mailed me last week’s "Wall Street Journal" story on scalping, and a dozen have already forwarded me Trent’s explanation. Now you get the news from the act itself! Each band’s Website is its own little news source. It’s not about servicing other outlets, but training your fans to come back to your site, by providing constant updates, by providing community.
You can read Trent’s piece here:
But the essence is this:
"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."
In other words, the selling side doesn’t want to reveal truth to the buying side. Acts are fearful of the stain on their reputations and therefore lie to their fans, ultimately risking backlash. We need an ability for true fans to get good seats at good prices. Trent addresses this. However, his is an inherently inefficient model. Nothing prevents the scalper from doing a ticket exchange inside the building, buying cheap seats for customers and upgrading them to expensive ones once they’re inside. But at least we could put ALL the tickets up for sale, except for maybe the 10% going to dedicated fan club members. If people truly thought they had a chance for good seats, they’d be less pissed when they found out that they’ve got to pay a fortune for them. Arguably, this would incentivize people to see the band on the way up, when tickets were cheap, the buildings were small and you could be up close and personal. People understand you pay more for what’s desirable. They just want some truth in the marketplace.
We’re moving to dynamic pricing, it’s just a matter of when.
As for the stain on Ticketmaster… It’s now becoming a stain on the concert industry. Hell, the entire music industry functions in a back room, gangster-style. But now we live in an era of sunlight. Unless you live on a desert island, alone, your every move is catalogued online. So you’d better be honest.
Irrelevant of how many tickets Trent sells, he’s got a hard core audience that reads his every word and then spreads the information. Trent Reznor is now the one breaking this story. That’s the power of one act in the Internet age.
