Posts filed under ‘Ticketmaster’
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 
16 November, 2010 at 11:03 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
A Serious Competitor for TicketMaster?
Outbox Technology Inc. plans to announce, former Ticketmaster Chief Executive (1982-98), Fred Rosen as the CEO of a new U.S. subsidiary, Outbox Enterprises LLC. You may remember the seven part interview with Rosen that was featured on FULL HOUSES last year.
The new company is a partnership among the Canadian company, Mr. Rosen and Cirque du Soleil Inc., for which Outbox has provided the ticketing technology for several years.
“Instead of listing and selling tickets for thousands of events on a single, centralized website, the new company plans to offer a so-called white-label service that will enable clients such as concert venues, festivals and sports teams to sell tickets to consumers directly from their own websites.“
“The middle-man model is dead, … You have to evolve.” says Rosen
Whilst it is great to see another option that is allowing producers to deal directly with their customers and via a pretty sexy interface as well, the challenge is still to get past the barrier of venue exclusive ticketing contracts. It was easier for Cirque du Soleil to get past that handicap as they controlled the venue, in many instances their own tent.
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE Ticketmaster Ex-CEO to Lead a New Rival>>
12 October, 2010 at 8:15 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 3 comments
Hang on … who runs the venue – The venue management or Ticketmaster?
It may be me being thick, but this article seems to continue the confusion over who runs a venue, who hires the venue and owns the act and who is just an agent.
This article would be amusing if it were not for the large number of annoyed customers and fans judging by the comments.
Just because you can gouge some customers does not mean you should disadvantage all customers. This is a shortsighted tactic that hopefully will be discouraged by consumer backlash.
Or am I just being naive?
Some classic quotes for your amusement:
“Ticketmaster, the official ticket agency for the O2, tells fans that using “market-based pricing” for tickets will give them a better chance of seeing their favourite groups than using set prices.“
“The most expensive price of all – £675.03 for a pair of tickets in block A1 – was charged by Simply Red, the Mancunian band fronted by Mick Hucknall, the Labour-supporting singer whose songs include ‘Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)’.“
Why do we charge £200 a ticket? Because the touts do, says the O2
30 September, 2010 at 3:50 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
iTunes teams up with Live Nation/Ticketmaster
Thanks to Karl Vosper in the UK for pointing out this story.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster have jointly announced that they will be powering the Concert Listings feature in iTunes 10. However, there is no confirmation from Apple that there will be any ability to buy tickets as well!
Robin Wauters questioned this on TechCrunch in Live Nation To Power Concert Listings, Ticket Sales In iTunes 10
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think CEO Steve Jobs
left that part out of his keynote, although the official press release does mention Live Nation briefly, indicating only that the company will be providing tour info for Concert pages.“
FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT Live Nation Statement on Apple iTunes® Concert Information
Like this:
7 September, 2010 at 10:10 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 1 comment
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
27 August, 2010 at 1:47 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
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’
25 August, 2010 at 10:10 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 2 comments
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.
31 July, 2010 at 12:17 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticketmaster Chief Wants More Transparency
“The elephant in the room is the service fee, … The data says you sell more tickets when you bundle it all in.” – Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard
I am sorry but I have to feel very cynical about Hubbard Suggesting or even blaming ”practices that insult buyers’ intelligence” for the softening of demand for live events.
He, as CEO of the largest ticketing company worldwide, is soley responsible for the practice of add-on fees for ‘convenience’ through to charges to print your own tickets.
Surely, even they get embarassed by the self-serving nature of such contradictory nonsense.
READ FULL ARTICLE Ticketmaster Chief Wants More Transparency>>
25 July, 2010 at 4:36 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Ticketmaster functionality catching up?
I find it indicative that Live Nation Entertainment is making big noises about ‘improvements’ to the Ticketmaster online functionality, but rather than highlighting better service it is all about increasing revenue.
“Live Nation is readying some new online features it hopes will improve its e-commerce revenue.“
Additionally, the wondrous new functionality is pretty well standard already for most other ticketing software:
- Shopping Cart
- Seat Maps
- Social Media
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE: Ticketmaster Prepping New Online Features>>
20 July, 2010 at 12:26 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Restrictions of Paperless Tickets Policed
The State of New York has set an interesting precedent enacting a law that requires artists, promoters, sports teams and venues to purchase traditional paper tickets if the seller does “not allow consumers to transfer their tickets independent of the operator.”
Transferability is the issue here and the right of consumers to pass on the right to attend an event if they so choose and to whomever they choose.
It is interesting that the technological innovation of paperless ticketing has been hijacked by Live Nation Entertainment as a means to block the secondary market. I am not commenting on the validity of the secondary market and the potential downsides of scalping and touting. However, it is a good start that the rights of consumers are being protected here, the right of transferability.
In addition, strategic limitations upon the increasing market power of Live Nation Entertainment can not be a bad thing. Great concern has been expressed over the dominance of the vertical integration of the Ticketmaster ticket agency and the Live Nation venue and artist management business. While the merger has been approved, it makes no sense to also allow Ticketmaster monopolise the control, of inventory down to the individual consumer level.
Lets hope that the issue of the secondary market is not used by Ticketmaster and Live Nation to justify a reduction in the rights of consumers.
READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE NY Law Puts Restrictions on Paperless
19 July, 2010 at 11:44 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
