Ticketmaster announce plans to make buying tickets even more miserable

The live music cash cow fell over and died last year, with bands and promoters and ticket agencies getting greedy and managing to kill off demand for the bit of the music industry that had been buoyant.

Clearly, something must be done.

Rather than reducing ticket prices back to a sensible level, or cutting the egregious made-up 'service' charges, Ticketmaster have decided to have a go at dynamic pricing.

Oh, yes, knowing that you'll pay £30 to see Spiggy And The Spocks clearly doesn't work any more:

The world’s largest purveyor of live-event tickets said Monday that it had partnered with MarketShare to help adjust ticket prices for its shows. Ticketmaster will begin rolling out the “dynamic pricing” sometime this year, initially for major sporting events and concerts, and for arts and theater at a later date.

Now, in theory, this could mean that gigs which are selling slowly will see their prices go down. The bit that Ticketmaster will be interested in, though, is that if a concert is doing well in sales, it can jack the price up.

For years, the only worry about a big gig has been if you'll be able to buy your tickets before the system selling them goes down. Now, you're going to need to factor in whether you're buying them at the right price or not.

Yes, make buying tickets an even more unpleasant experience, with the chance you wind up paying way over what everyone else in the room is paying. That'll bring the crowds back, Ticketmaster.