To hate the process for buying concert tickets☹️

My husband hates getting concert tickets, and I'm always the one who has to be responsible for that. I got the Oasis tickets on Seatpin. It was the only place they were available at the time.

I just bought tickets for one of the Take That London shows. From clicking on See tickets website at 9.31 to purchasing tickets took 14 mins. Didn’t get the cheapest seated tickets but the price was clear when selecting the ticket tier cost. Reasonable prices, not hanging on website all day and one happy daughter.

Ticket master have a lot to answer for the greedy gits!

Oh man I could lament this for days. People take whole days off work just for the privilege of sitting in a ticketmaster queue behind 100,000 other people for hours. Surely this can't be a satisfying process for anyone? I just think about how many collective hours have been wasted in that virtual queue only to be let in, accused of being a bot and locked out again when the map isn't even showing any tickets anyway (no matter where you are in the queue).

I was 5000 in the queue for Ariana Grande presale tickets yesterday so was optimistic. Could I get a single seat? No. Same thing with Coldplay - I went through presale (even preordered the album), general sale, checking back for resale and finally managed to get a single ticket on resale when they changed the date through blind luck. Nearly a million people went to that show.

It shouldn't be this traumatic and time consuming.

I think it would be good to bring back paper tickets - some countries in Europe still use them. The allow only say 6 tickets to be mailed to a physical address.

Agree with this, absolutely shocking live

If it helps, I adore Bob Dylan but he was the worst gig I’ve ever been to.

Having said that I would kill to see The 1975 in concert!

Ticket master is a nightmare. Tips I’ve found useful:

if you go in and tickets you want aren’t available keep refreshing tickets are held and released all the time during the initial sale.

Use a computer over a phone if possible.

Get A Mastercard, pick up an O2 phone next contract change. Join live nations mailing list for pre sales.

Dont panic- keep an eye on ticket master for resale tickets nearer the time at face value

Join the fan club and become involved- often people will selltickets to other fans if they can’t make it also for presale code, early notification of new tickets

Look for production holds closer to the time. Note some are excellent seats held by he band for guests, others aren’t great sight lines. Get to know venue seating plan before the sale.

If you can, travel. Different places have different sales profiles. The USA tends to buy late. France also. Look for countries with multiple dates, you’re more likely to get a ticket.

Dont use unofficial sites. If you do, get there when the doors open in case a ticket has been sold multiple times.

If you’re determined enough you’ll nearly always get tickets. If in a group be prepared to buy standing tickets in singles as they become available or be prepared to split up round the venue.

Best bet is to go on your own. Love going to gigs by myself (although with the type of music I like nearly always know someone else going to meet up before or after. Once the music starts it doesn’t matter who you are stood/sat next to. Stay in the bar until last minute with your mates.

Never not got a ticket for a gig I was desperate to go to.

It should be a ballot system, with a period of time to apply, as happens for international test and one day cricket matches.

Make it law, dressed up as either safety reasons (so you know who is there in case anything happens), or to reduce ticket touting (a form no doubt of tax evasion as I bet profits are never declared).

I remember one Radiohead gig years ago where we had to take proof of address. It was an attempt to stop touts and must have been over 20 years ago. The problem has got so much worse. I remember just phoning up for tickets.

Oh yeah, I'd MUCH rather go to a see a band in the smaller venues. Much better atmosphere, you can actually see the band rather than only see them on a screen because you're way at the back and they're just a dot on the stage, usually much better acoustics, and yes, because of all that, people seem to enjoy it better and be more engaged. It's often hard for some frontmen (or women!) to get a good rapport going with everyone in the audience when you can't even see them cos they're so far away.

Massive Radiohead fan. I've spent thousands on them over the years. I saw them seven times in 2006 and have seen them around 20 times altogether plus Thom Yorke solo twice and The Smile twice. Neither me nor my husband got a code. Unfortunately this new system has not stopped the touts

Yes, I remember just walking into a ticket Scotland and buying tickets! Sometimes there might have been a queue but you could usually get them and saw A LOT of concerts in the late nineties early 2000’s. Now it’s a complete nightmare if you want to see anyone even remotely popular. Resale sites buying them up to sell on at double the price or more and sometimes they don’t even sell them all and there are empty seats in the arena. Completely unfair. Ticket pricing should be standardised and resale sites should be illegal.

100% agree. YANBU. It is so depressing. I tried for Oasis and ended up feeling so cross and sad about the whole experience.

I managed to get tickets for Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey by the skin of my teeth as my daughter is a big fan but it wasn't without the stress. Almost more stressful when trying to get them for her as I so want my kids to experience live gigs and shows in the way I did when I was younger. My brother and I used to wander over to Wembley stadium box office on a Sunday morning and leave with relatively reasonably priced tickets - compared to now.

The extortionate cost and 'dynamic pricing' just adds to the insult of it all. I didn't go for Radiohead tickets but I'm sad to hear that things haven't improved since the Oasis debacle.

The fact that the sellers are so cagey about the prices beforehand and then they can just shoot up whilst you're in the queue is just outrageous. I've heard the arguments for it but it still seems excessively unfair to the fans.

I also really hate the introduction of 'special codes' etc. Just further ridiculous, time wasting hoops to jump through.

Definitely worse than when I was a regular concert-goer 20 years ago. Tried to get Deftones tickets for DH & DS, tickets kept going on and off, most were only available if you use a Mastercard. Took me an hour of refreshing to see tickets that we could book. I used to just go online and get them, done.

At least with Oasis it was obvious whether you were in or not. Radiohead ticket holders getting cancelled after purchase is nuts. AXS must have double sold the seats.

Yes, it’s ridiculous. Radiohead was even more of a shitshow than Oasis.

In the last two years I’ve been to about five smaller gigs seeing more niche artists, so literally within metres of them. They have all been amazing and tickets were about £35 each. Yet last year I saw a huge, ridiculously talented band play at Wembley Arena for £130 a ticket, and it was a very underwhelming experience in comparison - no atmosphere, surrounded by not particularly nice people, so many of whom were constantly coming and going with food and drink. It felt more like a (rather dull) sports event.

DH and two friends go to a metal festival in Europe every year. There's three they like, they try for tickets for the first one, and if not move onto the second etc. (Saying Europe as they are in different countries!) Because there's three of them, they have to have two people successful as you can only buy two tickets. They sell it within 30mins... then they have to try various travel agencies instead. The whole process seems mad.

They got lucky with ACDC but missed out on Ozzy.

But... I remember spending a couple of hours in my late teens with my Mums credit card at the computer being festival tickets for my cousin and her friends (all agreed amongst the actual adults) as all the parents were at work so couldn't join the virtual queue. (University holidays or post Alevel) so this has been going on for 20 years. Its got worse lately but isn't new.

Gigs are better than they used to be to be honest though which increases demand. Modern screens and lighting mean even those at the back can see what's going on. I don't think I saw more than a split second of Madonna or Oasis back in the 90's, I wasn't tall enough to see above the crowd in the standing area.

I've just applied for the Wimbledon ballot. Took 3 minutes, I didn't have to queue or take time off work. I wasn't accused of being a bot either.

I was saying this the other day when I was trying to get my daughter tickets for The Weeknd, I didn’t care which night I got tickets for, any night at Wembley was fine, but you have to just pick one date and hope that works, it’s annoying, why can’t we just pick a venue and say ‘any date’!

They should ban advance tickets, you just queue on the night and pay at the door.

Its not just viagogo or bots... it's the fact that the whole system is owned by one company now.. ticketmaster sell the tickets, livenation own the venues and the artists... there's no competition to keep tickets low. In the US bands have tried to take them to court.. but no one can break thier huge monopoly.. this article explains it well Link to article

Demand for tickets has become insane since the pandemic. There were always bands you'd have to be online when they went on sale but it wasn't normally that stressful or expensive.

It is increase in population, and the bots, but the whole social media fueled experience thing is a big factor. You can see people chatting casually through gigs or watching the whole thing through their phone (and the more popular they are on tick tock the more this is the case).

Last time I saw Radiohead was 2017 and I don't recall it being that difficult to get a ticket (Lancashire CCC so not a great venue). That said, it was moderately difficult when I saw them in 2000 and 2003 (but smaller venues and cost about £25) but then it would probably behave been queuing for the box office or on the phone at a specific time. I didn't try this time because travel, costs, stress etc.

There are lots of decent smaller bands out there playing venues playing small to medium size venues where it's not that stressful and cheaper. For anyone saying there aren't that many artists these days, maybe it is true but all this huge artists started somewhere and lots of fairly well known artists can be seen under £50 still. I do get that it's frustrating not to see the big names though when you're a fan.

Yes it’s got really bad and soul destroying trying to get tickets.

Glastonbury used to still have tickets in the week running up to the festival, now sold in 20m.

IMO Radiohead should be playing at Wembley stadium though as they were so massively oversubscribed - much bigger capacity if they wanted to give more fans a chance to go.