To hate the process for buying concert tickets☹️

[Onthemoooove]

First the Oasis debacle and now Radiohead.

DD is a massive Radiohead fan. Neither she or any of her friends were lucky enough to get codes which would allow them access to the booking site and, from what I hear, even those who did struggled to get affordable tickets or had countless issues with the site crashing, being kicked out under suspicion of being a bot etc etc. Getting tickets for any popular artist these days seems to be an extremely painful and complicated process!

I saw many big artists when I was younger and don't recall having much trouble getting tickets. For example, I saw Madonna at the height of her fame. I remember seeing it advertised, asking around my friends and 6 of us wanted to go so I collected their money and, as I worked near Wembley at the time, sauntered down to the box office in my lunch hour. It wasn't busy and I came away with my 6 tickets no problem.

While the Internet has certainly made many things easier, this is not one of them! Is the demand greater these days? Doubt it. It's so bloody frustrating!

That’s Earl’s Court though. As I said above, my Oasis tickets were £65 each, seated. When I purchased them, standing tickets were £120.

As I also said above, though, I’m in no disagreement that ticket costs are completely extortionate and resale is a real issue.

Radiohead tickets were up for resale already by yesterday afternoon for a grand +

Its disgusting.

I also didn’t manage Oasis or Radiohead tickets op.

It is insanity. My DCs paid £430 each for Heaton Park on Ticketmaster resale. They’re glorified touts, all while dictating that you can only buy from them in an effort to stop touting. They’re shameless.

A standing ticket too! Those are crazy money now. You can’t get a standing ticket for ANY band for £39, let alone Oasis, Radiohead and Coldplay.

Yeah, so it doesn’t sound like they’re equivalent tickets.

That aside, I am insanely jealous of you and PP for getting to see Oasis in the late 90s/early 2000s - very lucky!

I’ve been to festivals and seen countless bands over the years but last few times I’ve not been able to get tickets and I refuse to pay over inflated prices as that’s just contributing to the problem.
i tend to see more comedians these days and thankfully havent encountered the same problem

I think now bands don't tour so often and tend to do big arena venues

Most bands tour a lot more now, because for many uts the only decent income. There's no money in record sales any more.

It is insanity. My DCs paid £430 each for Heaton Park on Ticketmaster resale. They’re glorified touts, all while dictating that you can only buy from them in an effort to stop touting. They’re shameless.

It's insane of your children to pay that much. If everyone decided not to pay stupid money for tickets, the resale market would disappear. But while idiots are prepared to pay £430 it will continue.

I imagine it must be frustrating for the artists too, if those resale tickets don't sell (or do they always sell out? I don't buy resale) then the band will be playing to a smaller than expected crowd. I can imagine it's probably a bit disappointing to have a 'sold out' tour only to find it's 2/3rds full on the night! Though I suppose they've sold the tickets so they're getting paid either way, so maybe it doesn't bother them

I guess that's why they do presales, an extra step that fans are more likely to do than touts, so theoretically all those presale tickets are going to actual fans

Some artists have started putting restrictions on ticket sales, didn't taylor swift and Ed sheeran make it so they couldn't be resold? All bands should do it

The only thing worse than trying to buy tickets for gigs is trying to buy accessible tickets for gigs.

I was so excited when I got an email from RadioheadEurope on Wednesday, as I assumed I'd got a code...but the email was to say I hadn't got one!

I know eight people who got applied for codes. One got a code. None got tickets. We're all mid 40s so have been fans for decades. It's a real shame!

Big acts tour a lot because they can invest the money and they know people will buy tickets. Taylor Swift had two full equipment rigs travelling ahead of her plus two sets of staff. Insane amount of investment but she pulled in millions in profit.

Most acts can't do anything like that, obviously. Loads of them try, they do sell tickets, but cancel because it's just too costly. Being a support band is one of the ways to do it. Wolf Alice supported Harry Styles for months and basically did a world tour at a fraction of the cost. They are far more credible than he is (in my view) and been around longer but no way were they ever going to be able to do arenas just because of cost.

UK population 1987 (Who’s that Girl tour) 56 million
UK population 2025 69 million

An increase of 13 million people.

Thats not including the 42 million tourists the UK gets each year now.

You’re not alone OP, lots of people can remember when life was simpler and less competitive.

I didn’t see them in the 90s and not seeing them now – I’m gifting these tickets. The 2000 tickets I’m comparing to were Green Day and The Offspring.

Wembley Stadium seated tix would have more than £30 in 2000.

Madonna in 2001, Earls Court, was between £45-£85.

There’s not a single Coldplay / Oasis / Taylor Swift / Ed Sheeran concert that’s only two-thirds full. There will always be people willing to pay ridiculous resale prices.

And it’s the ticket touts who are sweeping up tickets in the presales, which is why they are on resale websites for 5x the price literally minutes after the presale goes live. As PP pointed out, presales are usually 10am on a weekday - there are whole swathes of the population who can’t step out of work (teachers, surgeons, police officers, baristas, to name but a few) to get in an online queue for an hour. Whereas this is a ticket tout’s source of income so he/she is logging in pronto, often with multiple accounts, buying the maximum 4 tickets per account.

Unlikely to have been more than £30 in 2000 tbh. They were £40 in 2009. I don’t think anyone can say that concert ticket prices have not considerably outstripped inflation. And this is just face value prices. Resale is a whole other horror show.

YANBU. I was hoping to get Radiohead tickets too. I didn’t even get the code and was disappointed but glad I didn’t really as it sounds like the actual purchasing process was every bit as infuriating as it has been for all the big gigs in recent years. The system is an absolute shit show. I’m going to have to stick to seeing less popular retro bands in local venues. We’re seeing Turin Brakes in November and I’m looking forward to that.

DH and I were talking about this just this morning. He saw Oasis at Knebworth in 1996, and got tickets from HMV by queueing up first thing.

I’d have loved to have seen Oasis this summer, or Peter Kay on his recent tour. I tried both times, but I was 100,00s down the queue and unsuccesful.

Do they not bother for slightly less popular artists? I know they don't tend to bother with the smaller alternative bands (I've never had a problem getting papa roach tickets, and I can still buy face value tickets for atreyu now for a gig in a few weeks). But a mainstream artist who doesn't pull in the numbers that swift/sheeran/oasis do - do they have an issue with touts? Those were the artists I was thinking about rather than the hugely popular ones

I guess that's true re the presales, I assumed they had a way of reaching just the fans and touts wouldn't bother joining fan clubs and stuff - if proper fan clubs are even still a thing!

I’ve been going to concerts / gigs since 1979 and yes it was much easier getting tickets back in the day and you could generally get to see who you wanted . Surely the only answer is to make every concert strictly no resale and cancel any tickets that have been resold . Fortunately the type of people I still want to see are easy to get tickets for .

Don’t join in the presale/onsale nonsense…it’s literally designed to cause an absolute uproar - and of course it’s free advertising for the venue/artist.

Let it all die down and then 2-3 months out from the date start looking. You’ll find resale tickets of people that got caught up in the drama and now can’t go for whatever reason.

I got 4 great seated Oasis tickets for Murrayfield 3 weeks out from the event, £204 via Ticketmaster.

But in 200 or whatever Radiohead were a decent band, not the legacy act they are today. Tickets would have of course been cheaper even allowing for inflation.

Someone said upthread tickets are more expensive anyway because album sales no longer generate the income. No wonder pop stars are doing perfumes and vibrators as a side hustle.

I never said that they haven’t outstripped inflation. I said that they have!

I don't really understand this point about access. I started buying gig tickets in the mid-90s. Always called the ticket line as opposed to going to the box office or buying in a record shop, which were the other ways of purchasing. I don't know of anyone who could afford a ticket who couldn't avail themselves of one of those options. And apart from the most popular acts or the best seats, you didn't need to be booking as soon at sales opened, either. I can only recall doing this once yet always managed to get decent to good seats or standing.

People travelled to see bands then too. That isn't new.

There is a much greater access issue now. Price and hassle is making gig-going less accessible and more unattractive now.

Preach. The Ticketmaster shite site has never once shown me available access tickets. I much prefer going through the venue. Doesn’t always work that way.

I got Taylor Swift tickets for last year by ringing the Liverpool hospitality line. I was on hold an hour but got them.

I appreciate not everyone can do that but to some extent the price was worth the lack of stress.

Like a PP said — don’t drop off if there is nothing - lots will drop out if baskets after 10 /15 minutes so you can often get them if you hang around. Problem is if you click too many times it ‘Bots’ you!