Posts filed under ‘Press Releases’
A vision of the future? But where are the crowds?
This press release pushes a pretty sexy new toy, however only for the venues that can afford it currently. But we do know affordability improves with accessibility.
Ticketmaster and Iomedia Deliver Interactive Ticketing Technology
Some other competitors already offer seat views by way of photos for sections of seats, but this seems to be the next step.
Check out the demonstration video
I was entertained by some of the cited features:
Select your seat interactively by criteria such as:
- chanting or singing
- consumption (alcohol I presume)
- soccer knowledge etc.
You can check out the view from your seat using a variety of criteria:
- daytime vs nighttime
- shade by time of day
You can even compare the view from two different seats.
It started to get a little spooky when it started showing some of the product placement opportunities for advertisers … oops sponsors.
The only thing missing was the audience. Lots of views of empty seats. It is a shame it does not give an option for view with crowd and view without. But then I guess it would need settings for half full vs half empty and with or without really tall person sitting in front 
No promoters, no fees … too good to be true? Try up to 20%
I am all for cutting out the middleman and producers or event owners dealing directly with their fans/patrons/supporters etc. It is encouraging to see Topspin assisting music artists to develop a relationship with fans by providing a variety of online marketing tools
However, here is a very questionable example of ‘journalism’ Matt Rosoff on CNET.com regarding Topspin. It looks like Matt bought the press release and blog entry hook line and sinker. No research, no clarification or verification and definitely no industry knowledge.
Here is part of Mark’e breathless enthusings:
“Here’s the brilliant thing: the show had no promoter and no ticket broker. No service fees, no big markups. Topspin explains the details in a blog entry and video posted Thursday morning.“
hmmm “no service fees“? See below. “No big markups“ maybe no outside charges, but there are inside charges. Read about the inside fees on the Topspin site.
“Direct-to-fan ticketing isn’t going to take over right away: artists planning massive stadium tours will probably still need to use a ticket broker like Ticketmaster to serve large numbers of customers quickly, and Live Nation does a lot of marketing to build demand. But in five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if most touring artists are using platforms like Topspin’s to sell their tickets directly to fans, no middlemen required.“
I guess he has not heard of venue exclusive ticketing contracts?
Some more background to the misunderstanding of “no fees” is provided by an interview on Hypebot with Topspin CEO Ian Rogers.
“We aren’t public about our pricing yet because to be honest we don’t know what our pricing will be long-term.“
“As far as our pricing right now, we’ve been taking a rev share of 20% of retail which decreases as volume increases.“
Ian Rogers is quite in frank in this more balanced journalism and an actual interview:
“I agree we’ve been a bit over-hyped, actually. … We’re just a young company, building software, working with artists, trying to figure out what marketing and distribution looks like in the future, just like y’all. But we’re also a good group of music-loving people who have been very approachable — if you have issues with how we’re pricing, let us know. There’s nothing secretive or shady going on here.“
Sounds like Topspin may be worth watching and we wish them luck.
WordPress Integration Makes A Lot Of Sense
But there is more …
They have also released a ticketing plug-in that works with sites built on WordPress and that is clever, as Front Gate Tickets describes it “a fully integrated website, ticketing and social marketing experience“.
WordPress offers significant functionality for free or low cost and can offer an affordable CMS for many small to medium organisations. This affordability does come at the cost of functionality however, in fact, WordPress is a simple means to offer a great deal of Social media integration and avoid much of the current double entry of content between different systems.
Front Gate seems to be leaping ahead in a few areas “connection of its web-based ticketing system and websites to Google Analytics, on-demand multi-channel sales reports, web-based event building tools, automated ticket count alerts, on-demand customer data reports, stored credit cards to encourage repeat purchases, localized portal promotions at www.frontgatetickets.com, and automation with social networks“.
More about Front Gate Solutions online>>
Read Front Gate Tickets goes mobile and plugs-in to WordPress article.
Mobile Ticketing Starting to Gain Traction
Festival goers go mobile – Trinity Mobile provides mobile ticketing for UK festivals
After a surge in airline mobile tickets Trinity mobile is moving on to music festivals building on its penetration of the night club market.
Everyone is rarely without a mobile phone these days and fraud and security seem to be key selling points for this new ’ticket medium’. However, I am sure Ticketmaster will try and persuade us with the assertion that mobile tickets cut out touts and the ‘illegal’ secondary market.
Trinity Mobile supports all the major 2d and 1d barcode standards (QR Code, Datamatrix, Aztec, EAN, UPC and more), so a wide range of scanners are supported.
Price Transparency is a Consumer Right … Surely
I am afraid that do not share Ticketmaster’s enthusiasm for its newest innovation the “total view pricing tool“.
Providing a summary of all the additional charges and fees charged by an agent on top of the event price is a good thing. But, it should not be seen as a new or unique enhancement to the “fan’s ticket buying experience”. It is a basic consumer right in all other industries, why not ticketing?
Increased transparency of pricing is a good thing, but it should be seen for what it is – increased accountability being imposed upon agents like Ticketmaster as a result of competition and the resultant threat of regulation.
It is not purely semantics, Ticketmaster and other ticketing agencies are agents. Agents act with the permission of the Principal selling tickets for the event owner, the Principal.
The ticket agent does not own the ticket for the event they are selling and undertakes no risk, like a normal retailer. As a result, the event owner should set total prices for its events, not an agent acting on its behalf.
CTS Eventim Partners With iTunes On Ticket Offers
CTS Eventim will use its Internet portal, www.eventim.de, to provide concert promoters with promotional opportunities aimed at iTunes customers. The tie-up began with Universal pop-rock act Tokio Hotel’s Humanoid, where fans pre-ordering on iTunes received a code to buy tickets before the general sale date.
Hmmm … this adds all sorts of new potential for iTunes Genius, particularly when eventually tied to geolocation. Such an innovation is surely very likely to be of interest to a concert business like LiveNation.
CTS Eventim seems to challenge Ticketmaster (as the much vaunted partner to be of LiveNation) with this integration. The language in the press release (as below) seems to echo this challenge.
“Concert promoters and record labels have been working closely together for many years in joint efforts to boost the popularity of their artists. Our service is tailored precisely to such cooperation“, said Malte Blumenthal, VP new media at CTS Eventim. “We are inviting every promoter and record label to experiment with these new marketing opportunities and to reach out to new target groups.“
LPA Releases 2008 Ticket Attendance and Revenue Survey
While valuable information, this survey still does not account for any of regional Australia, stand alone (non-agency) ticketing operations and the increasing number of small online ticketing operators (e.g. Moshtix, HeatSeeker, QJump and so-on).
The issue not addressed in such anonymised data is repeat attendance, so there is no indication of the number of actual people (not attendances) that $1 billion total revenue applies to.
“Live Performance Australia’s Ticket Attendance and Revenue Survey 2008 released today, showed that the live entertainment market is still strong with revenues exceeding $1 billion. The commercial sector, as expected, continues to lead in terms of total revenue. “
“While ticket sales declined overall, they returned to 2005 levels, reflecting that 2006 and 2007 were peak years in the current economic cycle.”
“The largest revenue-generating categories were contemporary music (37 per cent); musical theatre (24 per cent); classical music (10 per cent) and theatre (8 per cent). These four categories accounted for 79 per cent of the total revenue from live performance during 2008.”
Concert & Ticket Info Hub – Livekick
I found this press release interesting today.
Particularly relevant for the future of any b2c Web 2.0 initiatives:
- personalized concert calendar which you can easily export to your Outlook or iCal calendars
- Widget, downloadable to a PC or a Mac scans the fan’s computer daily for new music files and adds new artists you listen to on your computer to your Livekick account
Concert & Ticket Info Hub Livekick Leaves Beta
Concert recommendation and ticket search engine Livekick jumps out of beta today. The free site helps fans discover local live concerts and then helps them get the best deal on tickets. The Livekick search engine includes 75,000 U,S. concerts of 20,000 artists performing in almost 40,000 venues.
Based on profile and location, Livekick sends updates on tours including presales and promos like today’s Live Nation announcement. Updates are delivered online, via email, Twitter or personal RSS feed. Once fans find a concert, Livekick searches for the best available tickets online. Their search engine continuously scans direct and reseller ticket sites including TicketMaster, LiveNation, StubHub, Tickets.com, TicketWeb, TicketCity, TicketsNow, eBay, and MySpace Music.
Fans can add their favorite artists or import them from iTunes, their computer, MySpace, Last.fm, Pandora, iLike, blip.fm or Rhapsody. Livekick then creates a musical profile and automatically imports new artists from your music services as you listen to new music online.
Video & More After The Jump
Additional Livekick features:
- Your Concerts provides a personalized concert calendar which you can easily export to your Outlook or iCal calendars;
- Your Artists tracks favorite artists with complete tour listings, user-generated videos from their live concerts, links to artists’ web sites, and more;
- The Livekick Desktop Widget, downloadable to a PC or a Mac scans the fan;s computer daily for new music files and adds new artists you listen to on your computer to your Livekick account
- Social network sharing enables fans to share concerts with friends via Facebook and MySpace.
Web site developers can also use the free Livekick API to add local and up-to-date and tour information to their sites.
Top Comedy Clubs Leverage Social Media Ticketing to Increase Ticket Sales
A little bit breathless as is the way of Press Releases, but an interesting trend and with the beta of Google Wave on top of many other recent developments, I suspect we will see continuing innovation in this arena.
“One of the most popular features of TicketBiscuit is the ability of the system to instantly post event details to a client’s Facebook Page and keep them updated. Another feature, Promotozoa, enables web visitors and ticket buyers to share event information quickly across over 30 popular social networks and web sites.“
TM uses Mobiqa to Impress Virgin Mobile for the V Festivals
30 November 2007
Like many other ticketing software vendors and agencies, TM is now working with Mobiqa.
“We offer our clients the best in ticketing technology.” breathlessly enthused Matt Huxley, Chief Operating Officer Ticketmaster Australia and New Zealand.
Problem is that TM is well behind other software and agencies in offering this functionality in Australia and internationally. Then again, Australia is probably the test market for a latter US roll out for TM. You don’t have to be first when you are a dinosaur, just loudest
