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!

What really annoys me is when you get to the gig that you sat hours in a q for and then there are sections of empty seats. I took DD to see One Direction at height of that madness in the Cardiff stadium and there was a whole block opposite us where there were only a few people. Someone must have bought up those tickets then tried to offload them as a reseller. I know they will have taken a financial hit but that also there were lots of young people that would have liked to have the chance to see that show.

Yanbu, I preferred it when you could go and queue. DS really wanted to see Radiohead but now he says he won't bother with another of these stupid lottery things and will focus on smaller bands.

Tix are more accessible because almost everyone has access to a mobile phone and the internet almost anywhere they are – at home, on train, at work, in a field, whereas the only access used to be going in person or landline phone.

No one said people didn’t travel to see bands, but cross-county or international travel is now also more more accessible for anyone wanting to go from further afield.

The access to try and get tickets is better, but the capacity is still the capacity, so the percentage of trying people successful is smaller.

This is what the Foo Fighters did today. Tiny gig, in person tickets only, 2 tickets max, both people with Id need to be there. it will be epic!!! And $30… yes $30!!!!

I got tickets to Glastonbury Festival 1 hour before they went on sale in the early 2000’s and rocked up to underwood in Camden for a tiny Foo’s gig without a ticket and paid £15 on the door at a similar time. There was a real excitement back then, now ticket buying is a anxious business and you need a mortgage to get a ticket.

the problem is that in the past there was money to be made in making and selling music, now the money is in the touring and merchandise. Grass routes bands struggle as do small venues. People have less disposable income so will go to less gigs.

the touts need to be stamped out, but the large organisations are often no better. When Taylor Hawkins died tickets were refunded, but the booking fees weren’t - absolutely disgraceful on the booking agents part.. they would have been insured no doubt, but made money anyway.

R.e. travelling to see bands. No it is not more accessible now than in the 90s and 2000s, train fares and flight prices are much higher now, and have also outstripped inflation. Long gone are the days you could get a budget European flight for literally a few pounds. If a flight to Barcelona was £10 instead of £150, I would gladly travel to see a band I wanted to see. But I only do that if I can build a holiday around the concert, to justify the price of the flight.

I got Coldplay tickets in 2022. I logged onto ticket master as soon as they went on sale and iirc i was 22,000 in the queue. Waited about half an hour and got them. For the concert last week, I did exactly the same thing and was 150,000+ in the queue and got nowhere. DD eventually got tickets but we tried for hours between us over multiple days

Massive Radiohead fan for over 30 years here. Had 16 (!) friends and family register for codes, only one got one. She tried for 2 hours on Friday morning, got kicked out, told she was a bot etc etc, finally got through and all that was left at about midday were nosebleed seats for over £250 per ticket. She called me and much as it pained me, I had to tell her to leave it as I couldn’t justify that price.

Then about 5pm yesterday, she had another quick look just to see, and managed to get x4 standing tickets for £90 each.

But the majority of them are not being bought and re-sold by people who genuinely cant go. They are snapped up by tout companies

Back in the day when you had to physically queue up outside the ticket agent it was the genuine fans who would queue up sometimes camping outside. I’m not saying I fancy doing that but it certainly meant that those who really wanted to go got tickets.
The current situation is awful, and it’s such a drama with pre sales and presale codes. I was getting tickets for Laufey for DD last week and when you get in to actually get tickets you get so stressed you barely know what seats you are even buying

See I would say that among my group of friends (millennials), people may have less disposable income due to COL, but are not going to fewer gigs as a result. They are cutting back on “stuff” (shopping for clothes and shoes on a regular basis seems to have dropped off everyone’s agenda, for example), but they’re spending more than ever on travel and experiences. There was a thread on the Holidays board where a poster talked about investing in making her home nice with lots of lovely furniture and decor so that staying in is a more pleasant experience (and therefore not spending on holidays or going out). The concept of forgoing travel and socialising for the sake of nice furniture is completely alien to me and my social group, but I am not sure if that’s generational. It would be interesting to see some stats on leisure spend as a proportion of income by generation.

International travel is A LOT more accessible now than it was in the 1990s. Budget airlines like Ryanair and easyJet made flights much cheaper/more frequent, and online booking and travel apps mean people can plan trips quickly and easily from their phones. Airports have also become more efficient with automated border controls and systems, cutting down waiting times. Laws and regulations now mean travellers get greater help they need. flying internationally today is faster, cheaper, and more convenient than it was three decades ago.

Similar with cross-country travel – disabled accessibility, infrastructure, convenience, booking and ticketing, service availability has all improved.

You seem to be bringing ‘accessibility’ back to a singular point of ‘affordability’, which is a bit murky and not the bigger picture. Outstripping inflation has to be weighed against the cost of the improvements, not to mention that, on average, people have more disposable income than they did in the 90s (average disposable income has risen by 2% a year). All in all, the average price per passenger mile has only risen by 6.7% after adjusting for inflation since the mid-1990s.

And yes, I got flights to Barcelona for £29 last summer from Holiday Pirates …

With the exception of oasis I’ve always got tickets for what I want, just log in 30 minutes before on sale time. Even Taylor Swift was not too stressful, had them 40 minutes after they were released for the venue and rear standing we wanted. Pulp was a breeze, had them bought at 1 minute past 9am. Didn’t try for Coldplay or radiohead, seen both in past and not bothered about again

Ok. I'd interpreted your comments as saying certain sections of the population were cut out by an access issue. Whereas we were all equally caught by the need to be near a landline. Or computer. I don't remember the situation being radically different when online sales started, but this was before smartphones.

I still disagree that being able to purchase online has made gig tickets more accessible overall, though. As I mentioned, I could get decent tickets for most things by calling even if that was days or weeks after they went on sale. Painless. Now we have a crazy system where people are tethered to phones in interminable queues without any guarantee they'll get anything at the end.

Yes, I am talking about affordability. Which has been the focus of the thread. It was absolutely not the case that flights and train fares were more expensive in the 2000s when people were snapping up Oasis tickets for £40 and the like. And what improvement? The service on budget airlines has got WORSE in my experience. They’ve stripped everything back. A tiny backpack was all I could get onto a recent flight without paying extra for CARRY-ON luggage. That didn’t used to be the case when the fare was £6.99 a mere 15-20 years ago.
I used to catch Virgin trains as a student in the 2000s - again, a far FAR superior experience than Avanti in 2025. But guess what? I’m charged 4x more for the train ticket than back then, even accounting for young person railcard discount.
How anyone could argue that travel is better and cheaper than 20 years ago is beyond me. We must inhabit different universes.

I disagree regarding the accessibility issue . Yes most ppl have a mobile phone wherever they are. But if you're not able to log on at the exact time then you lose out. As a PP said lots of people don't have the flexibility to be on their phone for up to half an hour due to being at work/ other commitments whereas in the 90s you might not be at home. But you could phone the ticket line when you got home. Most people had a home phone. There wasn't the "urgency" about it.
I'd say now it's more "exclusive/elitist " due to a) the inflated prices b) the need to be tech savvy and c) have the flexibility to be able to be online at whenever the magic hour is.

The fact that you got a deal on flights to Barcelona and paid £29 proves the point. A deal on Barcelona flights back in the day would have been £5 or even less. So even “cheap” flights are now multiple times more expensive than cheap flights used to.

I have seen Coldplay a couple of times, probably 5-10 years ago and I can't recall it was as hard to get tickets, it's definitely got worse since Covid, I'm sure its because a lot of them only sell through Ticketmaster, whereas in the past there were a few different sellers, we often go to Birmingham Arena so have bought tickets through The Ticket Factory in the past which seems to be AXS now.

DS gets tickets to Glastonbury each year, I don't know how and doesn't go to individual gigs as they are too expensive.

As I mentioned, I could get decent tickets for most things by calling even if that was days or weeks after they went on sale. Painless. Now we have a crazy system where people are tethered to phones in interminable queues without any guarantee they'll get anything at the end.

And as I mentioned, that’s due to volume of people now trying because of greater accessibility. Better access means worse availability.

I also went for Radiohead tickets. Guess I'm on the waiting list...

One of my dds is a huge Taylor Swift fan and did manage to see her. As did a friend's dd. TS possibly did more dates in the UK??

Am going to a much smaller gig in a few weeks, much easier to get.

I disagree affordability has been the focus of the thread. The focus of the OP is clearly the process, which is what my posts have been about. If you want to discuss affordability, I have already said that price and resale is a huge issue, so there’s nothing to disagree on there.

I didn’t say travel was cheaper than it was 20 years ago (and I actually was referring to 30 years ago in my post), I said it was more accessible – again, which cannot only be determined in terms of price.

There are more services (as in trains and flights running), there is better disability access, ticket buying and travel planning are more convenient and infrastructure and technology has improved – but then I’ve already said all that.

It’s more ‘exclusive’ now due to price – which again, I haven’t argued with.

Nowhere did I say that better accessibility has made it easier. I said better accessibility has made availability worse.

Raffling and balloting are probably a much fairer system. Similar to Wimbledon ticketing.

We were lucky and got tickets for Oasis but failed for Coldplay and Radiohead and Florence. So frustrating. I search Twickets semi-regularly but no joy there other than for selling. Plus AXS thinks my laptop is a bot so I have to use my phone with WiFi turned off, which is a pain… first world problems

I've been saying for years everyone should just refuse to buy at marked-up prices; but no-one's prepared to do that.

And I agree - they need to do balloting like the Wimbledon or the Proms. Choose your date, seat or standing and highest price you’ll pay and have a low maximum number of tickets - like 2 or 4, and just do a ballot. Wimbledon check id too, but that’s probably too much faff at the arenas.

It’s an easy law to bring in… I assume Viagogo and their ilk must spend a lot on lobbying against it