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!

Rail travel is terrible. All the different ticket prices for th\e same journey. Prices fluctuating. Just set the ticket prices for the year and leave it at that till next year when you could put them up a bit to factor in inflation etc. That's how it used to be....

I've seen that loads of times. It will only get worse.

I disagree. People knew about upcoming gigs by looking in music magazines, or perhaps they were in the fan club. often tours were advertised in newspapers. It was very easy to find out when a band was touring. Then you simply phoned the box office to get your tickets, or got them in person.

I also think demand is higher. In my day, my parents never went to gigs but now a lot of bands have multi-generational appeal. I wanted to get tickets for Radiohead (didn’t get a code) and my DD wanted to come with me. With all the music used on social media platforms, the kids have access to a lot more than we did.

But it’s crazy and seems to be getting worse.

Yes, I always got tickets to whoever I wanted that way.

One thing, I do think is a major factor, though, is the much lower number of quality acts. And THAT is what is creating the competition and demand for tickets. It's not easier accessibilty, it's simply because there aren't the same number of artists around these days. Where are all the massive young rock or indie bands, or even big pop acts? Can count them on one hand.

And what else is the result, apart from increasing competition for tickets? Venues slowly becoming a place for "tribute acts" to become the main shows. I mean, god, when I was young, tribute acts were only for evening entertainment in Tenerife, or for free at a local community festival. How on EARTH have we got to the stage where venues in big cities are filling their listings full of mostly tribute acts of bands and singers I used to watch for real years ago?

I absolutely refuse to pay the amounts of money they're charging to go and see people pretending to be someone else, singing and playing someone else's music. Sad times.

Same. It’s infuriating!

Not Radiohead but another act. Had an artist presale code but it was impossible to select seats as they kept becoming unavailable and new dates were being released while sale live. Had to exit and keep re entering the queue for each new date. Finally got some tickets - not on the day I wanted but it literally took me 7 hours of trying.

Haven’t rtft so sorry if already mentioned by AXS have been emailing people to say their Radiohead tickets are cancelled!

Lots of posts on reddit about it

https://www.reddit.com/r/radiohead/comments/1nfuxbq/if_your_tickets_were_canceled_its_not_possible_to/

Imagine going through all that effort, thinking you’d got tickets and then having them snatch it back.

In some ways it really puts me off going (not that the acts give a shit, given the massive demands). They’re my favourite band but I really cannot be bothered with all the faff.

I absolutely hate the ticket buying process now. It's bloody stressful. Whenever I try and get tickets for me or my daughter, my app decides I am a bot straight away and kicks me out!!

I miss the old days phoning up the box office on a Saturday morning and speaking to a real person who helped me get the best tickets. Or even better, queuing up at rhe box office at 5am....fun times!!

Yeah I’ve not bothered since oasis last year but even before that it was a stressful process. Shame as I really enjoy gigs.

I've never missed out on a gig I've wanted to go to, including Ozzy Osbourne back to the beginning, Linkin Park last year at the O2, Green Day twice, MCR twice, Blink-182 twice.
Radiohead - codes were only needed for the presale not the actual sale.

It’s bad even amongst artists who aren’t especially popular. Trying to get tickets for anyone mainstream is like trying to get tickets for Glastonbury now.

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.

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.

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

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

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’!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.