Recently, I watched this video from the music website Consequence of Sound, it was about ticket scalpers and how they affect ticket buying. The video began with a story about a women who tried to buy tickets for her daughter to see Radiohead and she couldn't get the tickets even though she was on the website right when they went on sale. I also tried to buy Radiohead tickets and they were gone in an hour. Ticket buying is becoming harder and harder, especially for larger scale concerts ( Adele,TOP,Kanye West etc.). Ticket scalpers have always been a problem but now the problem is getting out of hand and people are noticing.
You most likely know the drill you get on your computer way before the tickets go on sale and load the page. Then 5 minutes before you return to the computer and refresh the page until they go on sale. Sometimes you get the tickets that you want, but most of the time the page just ends up saying there are no tickets that match your search and you try again. Eventually you get so mad that you give up and go check secondary websites. Not only is there a lot of tickets on the secondary website but they're also double the normal price. This is the result of ticket bots and scalpers.
The Consequence of Sound video shows some startling numbers, pointing out that in 2015 a ticket bot purchased 1,000 tickets in 1 minute for a U2 concert. That’s 1000 people that now have to buy tickets for 2 times as much as U2 tickets already were and let me tell you, U2 tickets aren’t cheap. The question now is how do we stop these ticket bots?
The answer is that our government needs to pass stricter laws to stop bots from buying tickets. California fines bot users $2,500 dollars, and they can also receive up to 6 months in prison. New York charges $1,000 and up to 1 year in prison. Sen. Chuck Schumer from New York is trying to pass a nationwide bill to put a $16,000 fine on anyone who uses a bot to buy tickets. Sen. Schumer partnered with Lin Manuel-Miranda from the musical" Hamilton" and they introduced the BOTS act to the House Of Representative’s in February of last year.
Bands have taken steps to stop ticket bots as well, and give their fans chances to buy tickets. Most tickets go on pre-sale before they go on general sale and a lot of bands will only give out the pre-sale code in emails which only go out to email list people. Bands also keep tickets from going on sale and then they release them closer to the concert date.
Not getting tickets to see your favorite band because you can’t get tickets is not a good time. As a giant music fan myself I really hope that this is taken care of soon.
