{"id":1784,"date":"2009-03-16T13:42:24","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T21:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2009-03-16T13:42:34","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T21:42:34","slug":"1784","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/16\/1784\/","title":{"rendered":"More Scalping"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m reading today’s "Wall Street Journal" about the fakokta situation with Michael Jackson scalping his own tickets at the 02<\/p>\n

\n
AEG Accuses Ticket Agent Of Scalping Jackson Show<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and I’m wondering, is this story ever going to make it to the general public?<\/p>\n

Not all news is equal.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 But it appears that the story’s got no traction.\u00c2\u00a0 I was fearful it was going to fade.<\/p>\n

And then along comes Trent Reznor.<\/p>\n

The "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" went Web today.\u00c2\u00a0 Although it’s a shadow of the old printed paper.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be focused more on local news, with a much smaller staff.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, traditional media is dying in front of our very eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re hiring a PR person to get the story in the paper, you\u00c2\u00a0 might as well be paying for billboards on the space shuttle.\u00c2\u00a0 Your target audience isn’t going to see the story!<\/p>\n

And it’s funny to watch the writers and publishers scrambling.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying newspapers must not die and that people must pay and if not the public, the government.\u00c2\u00a0 I read an interesting aphorism the other day, "journalism must survive, not newspapers".\u00c2\u00a0 Does journalism need to be done by crusty old guys paid by a fat cat publisher?\u00c2\u00a0 Absolutely not.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s more meat, more truth in Trent Reznor’s explanation of ticket scalping than there’s been in any mainstream story.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because he’s at the center, he truly understands!\u00c2\u00a0 He’s not reporting, he’s LIVING this story!<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you get the news from the act itself!\u00c2\u00a0 Each band’s Website is its own little news source.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about servicing other outlets, but training your fans to come back to your site, by providing constant updates, by providing community.<\/p>\n

You can read Trent’s piece here:<\/p>\n

\n
TR thoughts on ticket re-sellers \/ scalping<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But the essence is this:<\/p>\n

\n
"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."<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the selling side doesn’t want to reveal truth to the buying side.\u00c2\u00a0 Acts are fearful of the stain on their reputations and therefore lie to their fans, ultimately risking backlash.\u00c2\u00a0 We need an ability for true fans to get good seats at good prices.\u00c2\u00a0 Trent addresses this.\u00c2\u00a0 However, his is an inherently inefficient model.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least we could put ALL the tickets up for sale, except for maybe the 10% going to dedicated fan club members.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 People understand you pay more for what’s desirable.\u00c2\u00a0 They just want some truth in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

We’re moving to dynamic pricing, it’s just a matter of when.<\/p>\n

As for the stain on Ticketmaster…\u00c2\u00a0 It’s now becoming a stain on the concert industry.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the entire music industry functions in a back room, gangster-style.\u00c2\u00a0 But now we live in an era of sunlight.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you live on a desert island, alone, your every move is catalogued online.\u00c2\u00a0 So you’d better be honest.<\/p>\n

Irrelevant of how many tickets Trent sells, he’s got a hard core audience that reads his every word and then spreads the information.\u00c2\u00a0 Trent Reznor is now the one breaking this story.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the power of one act in the Internet age.<\/p>\n

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So I’m reading today’s "Wall Street Journal" about the fakokta situation with Michael Jackson scalping his own tickets at the 02 AEG Accuses Ticket Agent Of Scalping Jackson Show and I’m wondering, is this story ever going to make it to the general public? Not all news is equal.\u00c2\u00a0 If the economy weren’t in turmoil, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-1784","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1786,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}