Archive for August, 2010
How Do You Measure a Hit?
Is a hit a show that is sold out and you can’t get a ticket for?
But how long does it need to be sold out?
Alternatively, is a show a hit if it makes its investment back? Or is that just a hit with investors?
Interesting comments from readers that explore the differences between “financial success”, “commercial success” and “artistic success”.
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE How Do You Measure a Hit?
In Mobile Payments, It’s PayPal 2, Google 0
Even more talk about turning your phone or mobile device into a payment system, or electronic wallet. It looks like the mobile commerce area will be the next big thing, very soon!
I am not so sure about the discussions regarding cheques, but there is plenty more to watch in the competition between PayPal and Google. Nothing like a bit of competition to spur innovation.
I am intrigued that Google is heading down the device specific path with the Checkout payment system for its Android phones. Surely one thing we have learnt by now is the importance of openess and ubiquity, maybe not, it seems the pursuit of competitive advantage and domination overcomes such logic each time.
Although there is “rumored talks between PayPal and Google to make PayPal a payment option for buying apps on Google’s Android phones. PayPal is the payment system behind Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry App World and is an option for buying apps on Apple’s iPhone.“
One to watch for the nfp sector - PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc., will add a charitable-donation feature to its app for Apple Inc. iPhones
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE In Mobile Payments, It’s PayPal 2, Google 0
When Will Ticketmaster Catch Up With Social Media?
A pretty damning article in the SF Appeal that details recent blunders of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in the Social Media space.
“Monday morning and throughout the day, fans of the band The Swell Season received emails from Live Nation asking them “How Was The Show?” as part of a rating system. The problem with those emails, of course, is that those same fans witnessed a suicide at the very show they were being asked to rate by Live Nation.“
“With examples like these, Live Nation and Ticketmaster aren’t doing much to avoid remaining an example of a business who doesn’t do it “right.” It takes more than a blog, Facebook page, and a newly tweeting CEO — without social media grace, strategy, or a staff who demonstrates enough passion for the concert industry to work on weekends when an emergency arises, Live Nation and Ticketmaster add to the myth of industry conspiracy which is nothing more than the old music business attempting to ape a revolution happening today – right here in San Francisco.“
READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE Ticketmaster Just Can’t Get Social Media Right
Forget the iPhone as a ticket, maybe use your credit card?
Soon after the announcement of the potential of iPhones as tickets comes the announcement from Visa that it is rolling out its variation on admission control. We are heading toward systems one way or another that validate an admission by a unique identifier attached to the source transaction, as opposed to an anonymous paper ticket. The next big step will be the widespread adoption of scanners at the point of entry at venues. Stay tuned for innovation and commodity pricing to accelerate adoption there.
“Visa has already implemented multi-application prepaid cards around the world that enable card use for personal identification, building access, health care and government benefits, medical and school discounts, and money transfer.“
Of relevance here is that the multi-application prepaid cards can be used for admission to ticketed events.
“Visa is launching the card in conjunction with this month’s 2010 Youth Olympic Games held in Singapore. The cards were used for admission to the event’s Aug. 14 opening ceremony, and will also be used for entry to Thursday’s closing ceremonies.“
An important aspect is that the Visa prepaid cards allow funds from different sources (ie different agents, promoters, venues and events are possible) to be used on the same card.
It looks like Visa is looking to innovation to support its business as it finds the marketplace changing rapidly. “Visa says 70 percent of the transactions it handles are now made with debit or prepaid cards.“
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE New Visa card can be used for transit, ticketing
Ticketmaster: Transparency or Attribution?
CEO of Ticketmaster Nathan Hubbard has launched a blog called Ticketology which appears to be part of the parent company Live Nation Entertainment’s efforts at greater transparency.
“We get it — you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for.“
The mooted transparency appears to be more a case of attribution, however. Prices are not going down, fees are not being reduced and other than specifying some fees a little earlier in the sales process – the final price paid per ticket is still inflated by a diversity of fees and charges.
“Most of the parties in the live event value chain participate in these service fees either directly or indirectly — promoters, venues, teams, artists and, yes, ticketing companies.“
The promised “all-in-pricing” heralded by Live Nation Entertainment chief Irving Azoff still seems beyond his reach and the current sales process used by Ticketmaster gets in the way of that as suggested by Azoff on Twitter.
READ FULL ARTICLE Ticketmaster’s new blog: ‘We get it — you don’t like service fees’
Cheaper Tickets and Cheaper Fees Seem Back to Front?
The mistaken commodity emphasis of much of the discussion regarding ticketing and its inherent preoccupation with ticket price and fees ignores the rest of the marketing tools available to artists. But more importantly, to presume price is the one and only variable is to diminish their creative asset and discount their other great asset their relationship with fans and the impact of loyalty.
A case in point is this article: Artists Realizing It’s Time To Offer Cheaper Concert Tickets Directly, And To Get Rid Of Annoying Fees
Again as stated previously, I am all for artists and event owners dealing directly with the fans that they have a relationship with, rather than being forced to use third party agents. It is not great lightbulb moment as these articles seem to present. Other industries have been leading the way for a while now with disaggregation and removing middlemen from the equation by opening the channels for customers to deal directly with them.
The growth and widespread adoption of the Internet has enabled a great variety of online channels and this is only growing all the time with the current blooms in the mobile and social media areas. All these developments are doing the same thing, increasing availability and access.
So we need to move on from a preoccupation with price and, yes, get rid of fees for the inconvenience of dealing through an agent and open up channels direct to the artist and event owner. We need to focus upon maximising the benefit of these technological enhancements and develop relationships directly with consumers and fans. we now have the tools, capacity and we just have to add the capability and intent to develop one to one relationships with our constituents.
Lets look at the larger demand equation, rather just focussing on price and arguing over the efficiency of using agents to deal with your customers and fans.
As Drucker said “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
Paraphrasing Drucker, no amount of efficiency will make up for a lack of effectiveness. So no surprise it is more important to be doing the right thing . “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Venue Exclusive Ticketing Contracts that force the outsourcing customer contact to third party agencies is no longer the right thing to do.
Is Loyalty the Opposite of Dissatisfaction?
“You can’t create a lot of loyal customers until you consistently eliminate areas of dissatisfaction, so start there.“ – Bruce Temkin of Customer Experience Matters.
Apple Adds to Future Ticketing Potential of the iPhone
Adding weight to a previous posting Apple is patently on the move into ticketing comes the announcement that Apple has hired an expert in NFC or described as “one of the big go-to guys if you’re interested in cell phone payment systems“.
Near-Field Communications (NFC) has been applied to public transport for contact free ticketing amongst other things. Qantas is trialling it at Perth Airport currently. “ NFC uses very short-range radio signals to send data between two system, typically with a flat spiral metal antenna–this is concealed inside those smart train tickets (or member card), since it’s both cheap and flexible.“
The difference is that developing this for iPhones may offer greater functionality and new service levels and services: “In high-tech NFC implementations, the antenna is hooked up to something much more powerful like a smartphone. When the phone is placed on or over an NFC sensor pad, much more complicated data can then be sent between the two systems, with data going to and from the phone.“
“NFC tech has been available for years, but it’s only really taken off in a few markets–like Japan–since the benefits have been pretty much limited to its contact-free nature. But now, with smartphones becoming the norm, the cleverer uses of NFC could mean the tech is about to explode into usefulness …“
Apple Hire Wireless Payment Guru, Prepare for iPhone Credit Cards
How to win friends and influence people …
Live Nation Entertainment executive chairman, Irving Azoff takes his subtle approach and unique perspective online via Twitter and gets slammed in response.
“Twitter is hardly the place to reveal a company’s strategy for dealing with the competing forces of rising artist demands and consumer demands for cheaper tickets, but blaming high ticket prices solely on piracy is disappointing.” Glenn Peoples on Billboard.biz
Azoff’s timeless rejoinder? … “glen peoples u r a jerk. …“
OMG! Ticketmaster head Irving Azoff throws down a Twitter gauntlet at Billboard journalist
Open Systems … not really
Tickets.com, Others Follow Google, Amazon Lead in Opening up
This article (well I suspect partly regurgitated press release) talks excitedly about Tickets.com opening its platform to third parties following the models of Google and Amazon.
However, the truth is that “Tickets.com isn’t making its APIs available to just anyone, though. “It’s not like we’re going to say, ‘here’s the API, go develop and have fun.’ Our clients aren’t asking for that, … They are asking for more flexibility and options, and we want to give them that.“
It seems the same old limitations upon innovation as practised by many other ticketing software vendors.
But innovation is being handicapped to ensure they make a buck, “My intent is, yes, to profit from this,“ said John Rizzi, vice president of product marketing and strategy at Tickets.com.
In stark contrast to this approach, Fractured Atlas has launched a project ATHENA Tix which is an open source, community-developed event ticketing system. With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, ATHENA Tix has some very interesting goals:
- “Sells tickets exactly the way your organization wants to sell tickets;
- Is built on the latest and greatest technologies and software methodologies;
- Integrates with all of the other systems you already have (or might want to get);
- Makes it easy to try new things and incorporate emerging best practices;
- Is affordable for small non-profits, and preferably is completely free”
As the ticketing software market becomes more and more crowded and individual offerings approach commodity status, the existing software will need to be cautious of such innovations built in the open source environment, with added benefit of community support – oh and free or at least not for profit.
The rest of the article Tickets.com, Others Follow Google, Amazon Lead in Opening up discusses Saleforce and how it works with third-party developers. I hope John Rizzi and his colleagues at Tickets.com read that as Tickets.com increasingly needs to be able to offer some decent CRM functionality and Salesforce would be a good option. Patron Manager CRM from Patron Technology has just done exactly that.
Tickets.com, Others Follow Google, Amazon Lead in Opening up
