"When Is It Gonna Be My Turn?” in the virtual queue: the wrath of the modern reseller

It was a chilly spring morning in Rotterdam, the Netherlands when I sat down in a café with strong WiFi so that I could secure some Lana Del Rey tickets. She had just announced a surprise show in Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome on July the 4th, and as a long time Lana fan I just had to go. So, I did what any superfan would do and got the presale link. Presale links by design are supposed to give you a better shot at securing those tickets you (I) have been waiting years for. In my case, I was initially going to see Lana on tour in 2020 but her concert got cancelled, so there were stakes and emotions involved when it came to July’s show. My brother was considering flying over for the surprise show as well, so I needed to really try my best to get just two or even three tickets if I was lucky. So imagine my absolute horror when the moment the presale opened, I found myself in a virtual queue of 70,000 people. The tickets sold out in seconds. The general sale? Completely sold out from the get-go.

The tragedy of the sold-out-in-seconds presale tickets is not unique to me; most of my friends could also not secure tickets. It was truly a lost battle that we didn’t even get the chance to fight in. This phenomenon has really become incredibly common these days, especially with websites such as Ticketmaster. Perhaps, most notably there was the Taylor Swift Eras Tour controversy (thankfully, we secured tickets for these but only because of the Verified Fan status that’s just a precursor to the whole presale bonanza). Ticketmaster found themselves to be in a bit of kerfuffle because they may essentially (definitely) be exploiting their monolithic position in the market - facilitating their iron-grasp on the ticketing industry. Their monopoly-like existence could be considered a violation of antitrust laws. In addition to this, bots and resellers have been an absolute menace: buying tickets in droves at the get-go to sell them for an insanely inflated price afterwards. The prices can be absolutely ridiculous with some Reddit users even alleging that the General Admission pits of Lana Del Rey concerts in the US leg of her tour were not even remotely full due to the reselling issue.

In the olden days of buying tickets from a physical seller, scalping would just be likely right before a show. Furthermore, people had a fairer shot if they just waited it out the most physically. Now, it’s a matter of chance and money. There is a certain tension that is being cultivated in the fanbase for artists like Lana Del Rey. Many people lament – including my friends – that they should have gotten the tickets because they were true fans of hers, and that the people who got the tickets did not deserve it because they probably love “Say Yes to Heaven” and that’s it. The point is this: concert-going has become a matter of competition and animosity between fans. That’s probably the worst thing about all of this: it creates a rift between fans. Above all this, tickets have become so expensive that it’s also become a matter of if you can afford the tickets (both original and at reseller prices). This is absolutely a product of post-COVID prices and inflation in which practically everything leisurely has become inaccessible to large swathes of society.

Music connects people, but now it feels like it’s pushing people away from each other because of these ticketing scandals. That’s also not even mentioning recent etiquette at concerts which both concert-goers and artists have noted a decline in. As the linked article suggests, it may have to do with people going to concerts for the first time after a large amount of time in which they could not (the pandemic). That issue may warrant a whole piece in itself. However, the main issue I want to highlight in this piece is that concerts are becoming increasingly controversial in terms of accessibility. Some artists such as Robert Smith of The Cure fame have combatted the issue of reselling heads on, whilst others such as Taylor Swift addressed issues with Ticketmaster on social media. The truth is, everyone is quite bothered by the whole situation.

Despite this, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. A perfect cadence at the end of this dissonant song. The fact that both audiences and artists have expressed their outward frustration with concert tickets is a good sign because now the issue is two-fold. It’s also quite helpful that it has become a matter of legal responsibility as well, the Department of Justice is looking to seriously investigate Ticketmaster for claims of violations of antitrust. After all this, what can we do as concertgoers?

First off, we can be more understanding of other fans in the community for it is not their fault the system is flawed. There are also alternative platforms such as DICE which is used by a lot of especially London-based artists and/or indie artists in general. DICE takes several measures to combat resellers such as selling tickets which cannot be sold on third-party platforms, making tickets fully available only on the day of the event, and actively taking combative measures such as account/ticket removals if a bot/reseller tries to do what they do best – scam. There are some pretty cool events on there in the near future: Decklan Mckenna, Maisie Peters, the list goes on… I myself got a ticket for Alaska Reid at Rough Trade! Step by step, we can try. There is hope, my dear friends. Perhaps concert-going will not end in a state of no concert “Summertime Sadness” for us.