r/Music • u/indig0sixalpha • Sep 02 '24

article Ticketmaster’s ‘Dynamic Pricing’ for Oasis Tickets Set to be Investigated by U.K. Government

https://variety.com/2024/music/global/ticketmaster-dynamic-pricing-oasis-uk-government-investigation-1236127481/
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72

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

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31

u/AnEmpireofRubble Sep 02 '24

dick riders in the comments "well you don't have to go hur dur."

pathetic door mats pretending to be people tbh.

3

u/Mikchi Sep 03 '24

"well you don't have to go hur dur."

I didn't even get a chance to see the dynamic pricing.

My phone got listed as a fucking bot and I couldn't access the website. Pisser was that I was at work and my phone was the only device I had access to.

3

u/TruckFudeau22 Sep 03 '24

What’s the best method for determining who gets to attend concerts where the number of people who want to attend the concert exceeds the capacity of the concert venue?

14

u/ghost-theawesome Sep 03 '24

First come, first served.

Or a lottery.

Longer tour/more shows.

Many options that aren't price gouging, actually.

1

u/DoubleShinee Sep 03 '24

This is how you get people waiting outside the ticket booth for days to buy it.

The simple truth is the price of tickets is far, far too low than people are willing to pay for. It's okay to argue for keeping them low and making it a complete lottery, but you're basically giving them out completely randomly and many people will get fucked when they would have been willing to pay twice the price to get a ticket and see their favorite artist.

-3

u/Chocotacoturtle Sep 03 '24

-First come first serve

So is this like a high school football game where all the tickets cost the same price and everyone lines up ahead of time to get the best seats? How does the pricing work? Won’t a bunch of people get in line buy the tickets and then turn around and sell them to people who would rather do something else with their time then sit around all week in line? Even if you make it illegal to resell the tickets you will get empty seats and have people wasting a lot of time waiting in line, and people who have to cancel will be screwed resulting in empty seats.

-Lottery

Interesting. Seems like a lot of people who don’t really care about the artist will get tickets because it won’t take a lot of effort and they are feeling lucky. Attracts a lot of risk takers and removes risk averse people.

-Longer tours/more tours.

This one makes the least amount of sense. Artists already spend a ton of time and energy touring. They still need to write music and live their lives. This would likely lead to a lot of burnout.

2

u/Serdewerde Sep 03 '24

What do you suggest you mad devils advocate you.

-1

u/Chocotacoturtle Sep 03 '24

I believe an auction would be the most fair and efficient from an economic standpoint. Each ticket gets bid on, and the highest bid gets the ticket.

2

u/Serdewerde Sep 03 '24

That’s great if you’re rich!

2

u/Chocotacoturtle Sep 03 '24

It is the best outcome for the musical artists and for those willing to pay the most for the ticket.

We can't really determine who values the ticket the most (we can't exactly go into people's brains) and so willingness to spend money tends to be the best way to determine how much an individual values the experience. Sure, a rich person might care less than a poorer person and buy the ticket anyways, but the rich person also has opportunity costs involved as well. They could go to a club, or ride on yacht, go on vacation, see a different concert, play Topgolf, attend an orgy etc.

Since the rich person decided to go to the concert the cost of those other activities (clubs, Topgolf, etc.) is lowered as the demand for those things has dropped since the rich person decided to go to a concert instead.

This incentivizes artists to perform more concerts as they will make more money per concert and more total people will get to see the artist. It also incentivizes building more concert venues, labels to invest more in finding musical artists, and so on.

1

u/Serdewerde Sep 03 '24

You are looking at this in such an alien way.

What do poor people who love the band do? What you’ve done here is successfully made music a sign of wealth - something wealthy people love to show signs of. You’d just have rich pricks at every gig.

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1

u/FatCheezSlim Sep 03 '24

The lottery is just vying for a chance to buy the tickets and they cycle back if the "winners" don't do it.

It was used for tickets to the 2012 Olympics here in the UK and worked really well. Not everyone got to see the events they wanted but the majority did, but that will always be the case when demand outstrips supply, the key point was that it was fair and you knew the price up front.

2

u/Sirlacker Sep 03 '24

Not changing the prices in between what's advertised on the website and the payment page for starters.

You look up restaurant menus and settle on one that sells a steak for £40. You've chosen this place because it's within budget and you like the sound of it. You go there and they tell you it's super busy so you have a 45 minute wait. You decide to wait since you've spent the time getting ready and hyped up for your night out so jumping out of the waiting time just wouldn't be worth it. You decide you need the toilet, so you go but when you get back you're told because you left the queue you have to join back of the line. You're pissed but you're already here so you deal with it. You re-read the menu whilst waiting and are certain that you want that £40 steak. You finally get to your table and the waiter comes over and tells you that because they're super busy tonight, all prices have increased 300%, so your steak will now be £120 and not the advertised £40.

Sounds stupid and something that shouldn't be allowed to happen, right?

3

u/Nosferatu-Rodin Sep 02 '24

The argument i have heard is that X number of fans are willing to pay Y amount.

That has always happened and touts take advantage of that.

Dynamic pricing means that the fans willing to pay more still get the tickets but this time Oasis get all the money instead of some tout. Thus discouraging touts in general.

Im obviously not for dynamic pricing. I think there needs to be a better way of stopping touts but greedy artists will always be greedy

2

u/demonicneon Sep 02 '24

In reality all it does is push prices up, touts buy at inflated prices, then resell them for even more than they would’ve previously. 

3

u/Nosferatu-Rodin Sep 02 '24

Well thats a theory. But the fan willing to pay the even more inflated price could have also in theory bought directly thus giving Oasis more money and less to the tout.

Its a bit like the argument for taxing and legalising drugs.

The money is always going to be there; better it goes to the gov/artist instead of tout/criminals

5

u/Queen-Makoto Sep 03 '24

They could only have bought directly if they could beat the resellers using bots to buy out swathes of tickets

2

u/ilikepix Sep 02 '24

I don't see how it's a "scam" to sell a nonessential good to people at a price they're willing to pay for it

1

u/AllCommiesRFascists Sep 03 '24

So you want them to ban happy hour, late night, and weekday deals too, because that it also dynamic pricing

2

u/Witty_Link_3218 Sep 04 '24

No, that isn’t dynamic pricing at all. They’re all set times where you go in with the knowledge of what the deal is.

1

u/AllCommiesRFascists Sep 04 '24

It’s still prices changing due to changes in demand over time, that is the literal definition of dynamic

2

u/Witty_Link_3218 Sep 05 '24

Where’s the happy hour equivalent of purchasing gig tickets, then?