Iron Maiden dump paper tickets

Iron Maiden have announced that their forthcoming tour is going to be "paperless":

Iron Maiden have announced their new UK tour will be their first in the country to use paperless tickets. Bruce Dickinson’s band are aiming to cut down the amount of tickets listed for “ludicrously inflated” prices on resale websites. Fans will not receive printed tickets for the group’s May arena tour, but will have to present photo ID and a credit card when they arrive at the show. “We do not want our fans being ripped off either by counterfeit tickets or through costly mark-ups on so-called secondary ticketing websites,” manager Rod Smallwood said in a statement.

It's the first UK paperless tour - although they did one in the US.

Not clear what happens if your change credit cards in the nine months between buying tickets and the gig, though. Or what happens if you plans change before the gig.

1Xtra ticket sale falls apart

You would have hoped that the BBC would have enough tech savvy to avoid a 'ticket sale fail', but...

Two hours ago they put their Liverpool 1Xtra tickets on sale:

🚨🚨🚨#1xtraLive tickets are now ON SALE to see @Stormzy1 @duttypaul &more

Don't miss out ➡️ https://t.co/hRGbBipRws pic.twitter.com/aLw6Wdc8Qy

— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) September 5, 2016

And the system fell over almost instantly:

We are currently having a few technical issues with the #1xtraLive ticket website. We are working to solve the problem as quickly as we can!

— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) September 5, 2016

So they pulled the sale:

⚠️ Due to this we are suspending sales until the issue has been fully resolved. We'll let you know when the tickets are available again 2/2

— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) September 5, 2016

Trouble is... they'd already been on sale sort-of long enough to cause problems:

@1Xtra if money has been taken out of my bank does that mean I already have my tickets ?

— clare (@ClareW25) September 5, 2016

And that really needed a clear answer. But all it got was this:

@ClareW25 We can't tell you how sorry we are for these issues 😥 We'll have answers tomorrow when #1xtraLive tickets will be back on sale

— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) September 5, 2016

- which doesn't really answer the 'you have taken my money, have I got tickets' question.

And, unsurprisingly, people are pissed off with not just the flop, but the lack of any real clarity about what's going on:

@1Xtra how you going to put them back on sale when people don't even have the tickets and have basically been robbed 😂

— Gem (@Gemhickey) September 5, 2016

The BBC is struggling to keep an audience with younger people. This isn't the way to build that trust.

Ticket fraud is growing

Hey, guess what? As buying tickets for big events becomes ever more a process of sitting staring at the messages servers make when they're overloaded, ticket-related cons are on the rise. Whoeverwouldhavethought, eh?

People in their twenties are most likely to be affected by buying tickets that don't exist:

Chris Greany, Police National Coordinator for Economic Crime, added: “The fact that people in their twenties are most likely to fall victim to ticket fraud is concerning as this is the age-group who are known to be most ‘cyber-savvy’. If this group is falling victim it suggests that the fraudulent tickets sellers are very convincing and have the ability to exploit just about every type of internet user.”

It's perhaps a sign of the struggle we're up against that the man in charge of fighting ticket fraud seems surprised that the demographic most likely to be going to gigs is most likely to be hit by ticket fraud; although it seems in part that he's bought the 'digital native' bollocks which implies that somehow being able to use a touchscreen means you have magic powers allowing you to avoid negative experiences online.

Glastonbury tickets sell out "in record time"

The story everywhere about Glastonbury tickets selling out "in record time" actually should read "Glastonbury ticket sale more robust than previously". Doesn't look like the servers melted down in quite the traditional way - which is a step forward - although there are a number of complaints from people who somehow went from having tickets to not having tickets in the time it took them to enter their credit card numbers.

Annually, I ask this: why do Glastonbury turn what is already an increasingly elitist event into one which rewards people with the most resilient internet connections and highest number of devices? Why fetishise the 'ooh, we sold out in x minutes' when they could have an actual lottery.

Glastonbury sells out

Alright, not completely, but the first tranche of tickets did (notice each year it's ever more like a share offering - by 2018 there's going to be a Glastonbury Tickets Pathfinder Prospectus...)

They were the the tickets bundled with coach travel; these have to be sold a few days early as the coach stops so bloody far from the festival site you'd be best off setting out now in order to arrive in the decent campsites before anyone else gets there.

The traditional ticket scramble is due for Sunday. It's not clear if they've improved the system for purchase this year, but Twitter say they're confident they can cope with the upswing in complaining tweets from people who get frustrated by the process.

Scalper turns asshat when challenged

So, Brand New are doing some dates in the States, and their popularity, unfathomable though it may be, has brought out the scalpers.

One disgruntled fan contacted one of the profiteers and took issue with the size of the mark up.

The scalpers response? He created a Craigslist advert with the complainant's details on, apparently offering tickets for sale.

Oddly, the victim seems more pissed off with the band than the person who orchestrated the stunt, which is akin to blaming Tony The Tiger if you got sick eating an out-of-date box of Frosties.

Met ticket fraud report finally appears

A couple of weeks ago the Mirror suggested the government was sitting on a report from Operation Podium for dubious reasons:

Last month we revealed that Operation Podium, which was set up to stop ticket touts disrupting the Olympic Games, has warned of a "policing void" when it is shut down.

MP Sharon Hodgson, who has been campaigning for new legislation to regulate and tackle touting, asked the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to put copies of reports they had received from Operation Podium in the House of Commons Library.

But Sports Minister Hugh Robertson and Home Office Minister James ­Brokenshire told her the documents "contain sensitive information which cannot be published".

Which is strange, because the one we wrote about states it is "not protectively marked" and is suitable for publication.

Well, the report - or parts of it - has now been published.

It's worth remembering as you read the details that Operation Podium's main remit was to police Olympic ticket fraud, and is about to be wound down. So a conclusion that ticket fraud is rife, and something must be done could have an element of job creation involved.

Still, here's what the Met team say:

Detective Superintendent Nick Downing, who leads Operation Podium, said: "Experience shows that fraud is the most prevalent form of ticket crime and causes the greatest harm - conservatively estimated at £40 million per year. Criminals involved in this are also highly likely to be involved in other crimes.

"We also know that it is extremely under reported, and there is a lack of public awareness and understanding which means that people find it difficult to distinguish between an authorised, unauthorised or fraudulent websites. For these reasons it is important that ticket crime is properly tackled and the awareness is raised on how the public can take steps to protect themselves from becoming a victim of these crimes."

I'm a bit lost as to what other forms of ticket crime - beyond fraud - there is. That time the people rolled an Anfield post box round and round to get Cup Final tickets out the slot?

I'm not totally sure I buy the idea that ticket fraud costs £40m a year, either. It's hard to put a figure on these things, but Retail Research suggested that all credit card fraud across all retail sectors in 2011 amounted to £120million; it seems unlikely that ticket fraud occurs often enough to reach one-third the level of every dodgy Switch and Visa transaction in a UK shop.

We are the robots.txt

All you need to know:

7.30am: Tate Modern puts Kraftwerk tickets on sale. 7.31am: entire site crashes.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) December 12, 2012

Glastonbury 2013: they've got it down, right?

They've been doing Glastonbury online ticket sales for years. They've had a year off, so 24 months to prepare. So this year they stand a good chance of ticket sales not being a fiasco, right?

Wrong.

It's not just the computers causing problems, but The Independent points out an extra zinger waiting to shake people down:

We're hearing some complaints that callers may be charged just for reaching the engaged tone, and with many hitting redial repeatedly, be careful, this could be expensive. The note on Glastonbury's small print reads:

Please note some network providers will charge for an engaged tone

Paying to hear Glastonbury not answer its phones. Charming.

A less-than-welcoming Coldplay experience

Samantha wanted to go to the Coldplay gig. Let's not judge her for that, a lot of people like Coldplay.

Trouble is, Samantha needed accessible tickets. And that's where things get bad. Very bad indeed.

She's tried to get tickets for London - where tickets for disabled people have to be ordered through the post, take a third of a year to arrive, and are tossed out without any regard to what the requirements of the gig-goer are (it seems the assumption is that you'll use a wheelchair, not that you might have vision problems, for example.)

So she tried for Manchester, and things were even worse, where the website does at least have a number for "ambulant disabled" [their term] gig-goers to call - not that anyone on that number can help, or appears to even be expecting the calls.

It's a pretty shabby tale from start to finish. I don't think any of us have much in the way of expectations of Ticketmaster or gigsandtours, but this is a new level of misery creation.

Boyzone: Louis Walsh finally comes round to our way of thinking

Louis Walsh has washed his hands of Boyzone and told them to split up, according to the News Of The World this morning. Digital Spy has paid to peek over Murdoch's paywall:

Low ticket sales for their latest tour and Ronan Keating's affair with a dancer were blamed for the move, the News of the World reports.

"Louis has told Boyzone they're finished. Ronan doesn't want to accept it but without Louis they have no chance," a source said. "The affair changed everything for many fans. It destroyed the family-friendly image that made the band popular.

"They kept a diehard fanbase but the 'Brother' tour earlier this year wasn't a big success. Louis didn't bother seeing a single show. [They] just couldn't compete with the Take That comeback and lots of tickets weren't sold. So Louis decided it was the right time for the band to finish."

You suspect that Keating's extra-curricular diddlings have nothing to do with the decision, but gave the News Of The World a chance to lob some sex into a story which otherwise would be "clapped-out old warhorse put out of its misery".

The downside is that Boyzone are choosing to plough on anyway. It's not like any of them have got proper jobs they could do instead, is it?

Vodafone goes to Glastonbury

Talking of companies with grubby tax records and Glastonbury, has Vodafone been trying to pretend it was able to get its customers into the festival?

Back in February, this message appeared on the Glatowatch forum:

Hi there,

I'm Natalie S and I do PR for Vodafone, and we wanted to share this link with you: [link to Vodafone video]

It shows Jenson Button & Lewis Hamilton setting up camp at their favourite music festival early... very early.

If you want to get your hands on tickets for some of Britain's hottest festivals this summer before they go on general sale, visit [link to Vodafone website]

Now, it's a bit spammy - Natalie S hadn't posted before, and hasn't posted since; and Vodafone don't have any tickets for Glastonbury so it's a bit off-topic for a Glastonbury board. But, to be fair, there was no suggestion there that there would be Glastonbury tickets for Vodafone customers.

The linked video was this one, which shows Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton setting up a tent in a field having arrived early for a festival. Like how Vodafone customers get their tickets early. Aaaaah.

Again, the video is scrupulous in not claiming that there are any Glastonbury tickets available. Because they don't.

But hang on... what's this down in the tags on the Official Vodafone YouTube channel?

Let's look a bit closer...

Yes, Vodafone have added the word "Glastonbury" to the tags, which means while their video has been scrupulous in not pretending to have tickets they don't, somehow they're still hoping to drag people to their site using the Glastonbury name.

It's not illegal, but it's certainly murky behaviour. And those events who Vodafone are sponsoring might feel a bit miffed that the company thinks their brands aren't interesting enough to merit a tag on the video. It's a bit like discovering your husband has written someone else's wife's name in his wallet.

Glastonbury resale: It's happening now

How can you tell that the resale of leftover Glastonbury tickets is going on right now?

Because the SeeTickets infrastructure is falling over.

You can try and get on.

To be fair, at the moment it does appear to be failing gracefully, giving this message:

Sorry, this site is currently receiving very high volumes of traffic. You're seeing this holding page because we've reached the maximum number of transactions we are able to handle at one time.

You are being held at this holding page until a space on the booking page becomes available.

This holding page will automatically refresh every 20 seconds to try to obtain access to the booking page. (You can also manually press refresh if you choose.

That's some sort of improvement, I suppose.

LCD Soundsystem: Scratching the scalp

James Murphy has got the hump with scalpers who bought up the entire allocation of tickets for the LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Gardens in seconds. (Although, as Bob Lefsetz points out, the "allocation" was probably around 1,000 tickets per show.)

Murphy has announced five extra New York shows to try and compensate, while railing at those who swooped down to mop up the tickets:

we tried calling our lawyer about the ticket scalping. “it’s legal”. no joke. it’s fucking legal. i tramped around with friends and band getting insane. i wanted to buy some expensive tickets and then track the seller down to BEAT him. i acted stupid. i did some classic, shakespearean vain “fist shaking”, etc. i made angry tweets. (i’m wondering now what on earth could be less effective and more of a first-world spoiled idiotic move than “angry tweets”? jesus.)

Impressively, Murphy wants the fans to be able to buy the tickets, at face prices, and not be ripped off.

And he seems genuine.

There is one small question, though: if Murphy was interested in fans being able to get hold of the tickets, why was priority given not to, say, Facebook followers or people on an LCD Soundsystem mailing list, but, erm, people who happened to have an American Express card? Shouldn't at least some of our rage be directed at this new habit of hiving off tickets to be part of some brand's market USP?

Apparently you should just sit and take it

@Glastowatch is annoyed about people expressing their frustration:

And so begins the moaning

They link through to a Facebook group which more-or-less grunts its frustration:

glasto ticket fiasco thousands left unhappy people gloating about getting 16 on one person ACCOUNT YET 1000'S TURNED AWAY PREHISTORIC COMPUTER SYSTEM 1 COMPANY TO HANDLE IT..SURELY THIS IS AGAINST WHAT THE TRUE MEANING OF GLASTONBURY IS...JOKE IS NO BETTER THAN TESCO A FILTHY GIANT

Is that really "moaning"? Isn't it understandable frustation? Sure, not everyone who wants tickets will get tickets, but is it really necessary to force them to spend hours on a Sunday morning battering a fallen-over computer system in order to let them down? Is it moaning to expect a company selling tickets that cost well over a hundred quid - and who extracts a healthy 'booking' fee - actually works? Does Glastowatch really think you should just shut up and shrug?

Perhaps if someone took notice of the 'moaning' in the previous years, there wouldn't be a bunch of these ungrateful, whining ticketless ingrates around now?

[UPDATE: This post originally started with a reference to Michael Eavis attacking Seetickets, which was actually me being duped by a fake account.]

Rihanna tries to avoid a soaking

More misery from the US live music scene, where greed-and-Ticketmaster-LiveNation have combined to suffocate a golden goose: Rihanna is axing dates across the US rather than turn up to empty rooms.

The Denver date has followed Phoenix, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Dallas and Washington down the drain; Simon and Garfunkel have also been paring back their itinerary as people decide not to pay silly money for a night out.

The Rihanna tour is going under the banner The Last Girl On Earth; ticket sales are so slow she might have wound up The Only Person In The Arena.

Lilith Fair tickets about as popular as Lilith Crane

Lilith Fair is coming back this year, with The GoGos and The Bangles coming back as part of it. The only people not coming back, it turns out, are people willing to pay money to see it:

As Sarah McLachlan prepares to resurrect the Lilith Fair after an 11-year break, she acknowledges that ticket sales for the female-centered package are "pretty soft" right now.

It might be something to do with the decent seats being ridiculously expensive. McLachaln thinks not:

There has been some grumbling about ticket prices, which are more than $250 (before fees) in some markets.

"There's about 300 seats out of 16,000 or whatever that are $250," she says. "Then there's 9,000 that are 25 dollars, so come on. We're working our hardest to have reasonably priced tickets so it can be accessible for everyone and that people will want to come. We might get slaughtered, I don't know, but I kind of have blind faith in the fact we're putting on a really great show and we always have, and that will bring people in the end."

The trouble is that having any tickets offering some sort of ill-defined luxury package sits uncomfortably with the ideals of the Fair, surely? It's a celebration of the power of sisterhood and identity, but one where a huge proportion of the audience have paid considerably more to have a much better experience than the throng.

Gordon in the morning: GaGa Ker-ching GrrrGrr

You'd have thought that, since Gordon was running the story about how Lady GaGa managed to make a loss on her US tour, he'd be able to bring some perspective to the doubling of prices for the extra dates on the UK GaGa tour.

But no; there are angry people to be listened to, and we know that The Sun can never offer perspective when there's a lynch mob to be listened to:

LADY GAGA fans are furious after her concert ticket prices doubled in the space of months.

Her "Little Monsters" are being charged £50 to £75 for May and June UK gigs.

Yet entry to recent Monster Ball shows, which ended in Birmingham on Friday, cost between £27.50 and £35.

Complaints have flooded her website.

Oddly, given these complaints "flooding" her website, Gordon struggles to find anything juicy to share with his readers:

One fan, Mannisrai, raged: "It's disgusting. We made both albums number one and this is how she repays us."

Another fan, Barley 142007, added: "This is steep."

And, erm, that's it. "This is steep" hardly sound furious, and Mannisrai is just hilarious, as his comment really boils down to "we were daft enough to buy the same album for a second time to get a few extra tracks, and yet she thinks she can treat us like marks to shake down for more cash for the same thing."

Surely, though, even the angriest of GaGa fans can't expect her to make a loss on the tour; oddly, Gordon doesn't seem to have found anyone saying "why doesn't she keep it to one costume change and lose the dancing lobsters or whatever she's got planned?"

Coachella call single-day visitors "clogging"

Charming. Coachella have axed their one- and two-day tickets for this year's festival. As, you'd guess, is their right. But the official reason is a little unflattering:

"The thing is," [Goldenvoice leader and festival architect Paul] Tollett [told the LA Times], "there’s a lack of hotels in the Coachella Valley, and most have a three-day minimum. Many times what happens is people get a hotel for the three days, and only go to Coachella for one or two of the days. They hit Friday and Saturday, and go home or rest at the hotel on Sunday. That’s no problem, but the problem with that is that there are people who want that hotel and are going for three days. The single- and two-day people are clogging up the hotels and making it so people who want to go for three days can’t find a hotel."

I'm not quite sure this actually makes sense, does it? There aren't going to be any fewer people going to Coachella - the day passes are being absorbed into the number of whole-festival passes being offered - and there aren't going to be any extra hotel rooms.

So this sounds like there aren't enough hotel rooms in Coachella Valley; and that's being used as a problem so that pulling a popular ticket option can be presented as if it was a solution.

Gordon in the morning: Worth the entry fee

It's one of those days where Gordon confounds expectations and runs a decent story, albeit one copied off the Bon Jovi message boards:

BON JOVI face a backlash from furious fans over the £1,300 price tag for the best seats at their O2 residency next June.

The New Jersey rockers, who make much of their working-class roots, are set to play a string of gigs at the East London venue.

It's not just the top tickets which are eye-wateringly expensive; the crappest part of the venue will cost you forty quid.

New album The Circle from the quartet fronted by Jon Bon Jovi tackles issues such as the recent global financial downturn, and the irony is not lost on fans.

Oddly, Gordon doesn't use any of the contacts in his rolodex to bother getting any response from the ticket agency, the band, their management, the venue or even "sources close to". But at least it's a point worth raising.