I decided to write a
follow on from the No More Touts post I wrote a few days ago. Thanks
to everyone who's read and shared it! I never realised it would ever
go that far!
I rounded up a few of the passing musicians for beer and
a chat about the secondary ticket market.
Ticket touts are
pushing out the fans that have less money, turning concerts into
exclusive events that only those with a higher percentage of
disposable income can afford. Besides, why should fans pay over the
odds for tickets that were cheap enough in the first place? Cheaper
tickets mean that there are more people at a show. This is good for
smaller and newer bands, especially if they’re the opener for a
larger band.
Bands are being locked
out of the industry because of the secondary market. Some of us also
believe that touts are killing the music industry in some areas. The
touts tend to target popular bands (supply and demand). Some bands
may only visit a few cities and part of their reasoning for that may
be because of the secondary market. They know that the more shows
they play equals more tickets going to the secondary market. And
bands have costs too. We have travel, food, accommodation, crew that
we have to pay. Our costs aren’t anywhere near that of some of the
larger bands but, as you know, the bigger the band the more overheads
they’ve got to cover. Yes, if a show sells out, the band will get
paid. But what happens if a venue is only filled to a fraction of its
capacity? A lot of a band’s wages comes from merchandise. And even
if the venue is full what happens if the majority of those people
have bought their tickets through secondary sellers at an inflated
cost? They now have less money to spend on the artist they’ve come
to support.
This may sound greedy
on the part of musicians, but we think that many people would prefer
to be supporting the artists rather than the ticket touts making
hundreds of pounds more for a ticket that may have originally only
cost £40. We also want to see as many of you as possible at the
shows, something that won’t happen if you’re being held to ransom
by ticket touts. As musicians and concert goers ourselves, we're just
as angry as you are. At the end of the day, we’re here for you. Our
job is to make you happy and give you a good night out. And if you’re
happy, then we’re happy!
Secondary ticketing
regulations by country can be found on Wikipedia (not the best
source, I know!):
It seems quite fitting
to be talking about the government the day after Bonfire Night.
Why won’t the
government legislate the secondary ticket market? There could be a
number of reasons why the government won’t bring in regulations.
The ones I’ve come up with are pure speculation and based on my
own observations.
It could be that
the government doesn’t believe regulation of the secondary ticket
market is important enough. The idea has been debated several times
in parliament and, in 2006, legislation surrounding the reselling of
football and Olympic tickets was put into place. However, the
government didn’t see other ticketed events in the same light.
They also may
believe that it’s not that serious a crime to warrant legislation.
Government may
believe that the secondary market already regulates itself enough.
STAR (Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers) is a body formed
within the UK to provide self-regulation within the theatre and
event ticketing sales industry. Their aim to ensure fairness and
openness in the sale of event tickets. Members are required to
comply with a code of practice. Along with the guarantees that
websites provide, as well as making it illegal for street touts to
operate without a license, government may believe that they’ve
already done enough and that little more can be done.
However, these
ideas don’t target the illegal sellers, many of whom operate
through legal channels (ebay, Stubhub etc) or who set up ticketing
websites for single events (as was seen with recent
Take That
and
One Direction concerts.
Love Money offers advice on spotting fake ticket websites.). The technology is in place to be able to
find and track these people.
The legal
secondary ticket market is worth an estimated £2,000,000,000 a year
and growing, which means the government will see some of that in
taxes.
The government
could also see it as not their responsibility to regulate the
secondary market. It could be that the government want the market themselves
to bring in the control measures that are needed (i.e. photo ID to be shown at entry to an event).
However, unscrupulous sellers can easily bypass some of these
control measures (There’s already been reports of people
reselling multiple copies of a pair of PDF tickets to an ALT-J concert, meaning that once one pair had been scanned everyone else
was left outside and out of pocket). There is a call for photos to
be printed on tickets, something that has worked well for
Glastonbury. Measures would have to be put in place for people who
found themselves unable to attend. Again, the technology is in place
to do this.
BBC News on how ticket scams are costing fans millions every
year.
~~~
PART 5 - MY FINAL WORDS
Okay, one last post
before November 17th.* This is me talking. No more
statistics, no more news stories, no more analysing. This is just you
and me chatting over a beer.
A few days ago, I wrote
a post that I thought might interest some of the few people who pass
by this site. Never in a million years did I think that those words
would go as crazy as they did. For those not in the know, cycle back
to November 1
st and read a post titled
No More Touts.
You see, I wrote that original
post out of anger. I'd seen some of the negativity that surrounded
the whole No More Touts campaign. And it stung. Really, really stung.
Heck, on September 19th 2014, I was an outsider looking
in, a passing music lover who'd seen a good idea and decided to
support it. The fact that the idea spoke to me on so many levels
certainly helped. And here were people picking apart what was being
done. To see so much spite and negativity levelled towards people who
were doing something to change the industry really hurt me. Yet I
know from experience that you can't reason with haters. On top of that,
one of my pet hates is to see hatred thrown at people who are just
trying to do some good in a world that's already ravaged by darkness
(I'm also a firm believer in "If you can't say something nice, don't say
anything at all".).
In the original post, I
mentioned that I'd been a part of the “Rage for Christmas #1”
campaign. Like the No More Touts one, it was a grass roots effort
that took off. Even if the song hadn't reached number one and even if
the band hadn't played the show (again, they were under no obligation
to do so but did it out of the goodness of their hearts) the Rage
campaign did something amazing.
I noticed, while
reading up on the No More Touts campaign, that the people behind it also support a
charity (I've also noticed they've been writing about this too in the
past few days. Hi, guys!).
Given to Live makes it possible for people
who are vulnerable or feel excluded to go to live music events. So
far, they've had a lot of success, including the Invictus Games back
in September.
So, if you burrow a
little deeper and don't take everything at face value, you discover a
deeper, more beautiful meaning to this. Even if the band don't play,
this campaign has taken the issue of ticket touts to some of the
biggest powers in the music industry. People are sitting up and
listening. It's making headline news again and again. People know
that there's something going on and revolutions don't start
overnight.
Most of all it's doing
something good by giving others the chance to experience what many of
us take for granted.
The music connects us,
let's not forget that. We're all coming from nothing here and,
through this, the world can be changed for the better.
And I've met a bunch of
awesome and very cool people through it!
“The miracle isn’t
that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”
-John Bingham
*Maybe. There may be
more.
~~~
PART 6 - MUSIC AS MEDICINE
I promised I wouldn't
write any more on this. But I'm going to because this really is
something I'm passionate about because I'm a music lover first and a
writer second.
On November 18th,
the clock ran out on the Kickstarter No More Touts campaign. Many saw
it as a failure. But, to many more, myself included, it wasn't the
end but the beginning. Just moments after the campaign ended, the Foo
Fighters came out with the name of their American tour: Beat The
Bots. Going back to the old school, they had people queue at venues
across the States to buy concert tickets. And it worked. Thousands
upon thousands of tickets were snapped up by fans in an attempt to
beat the computer programs that hoover up tickets.
Some people see music
as a privilege and a luxury, something that should be restricted to
those with money. It's one of the perceptions that symphony
orchestras, ballets, and other musical events that are considered
“high class” have been battling against for years. It may not be
written into any constitution or human rights act, but music is a
human right.
Why do I say that? Put
your hand on your chest. Feel that? That's your heart
beating.
Music lives within all of us right from the moment we're conceived.
It's not a privilege, nor is it a luxury. It's something that you
live with right from the very first seconds of life. Music has the
ability to heal, something that the Chinese have understood for many
years. Their character for “Music” is incorporated into the one that means “Medicine”. The Chinese character for music also has a
second meaning: delight and happiness. Music is being used the world
over to help unlock the minds of dementia patients. Every human being
has a “balance note”, a harmonic that they respond to and that
helps to keep the body and mind healthy. When they feel happy, they
listen to a lot of music with this frequency (which may explain why
you listen to a song on repeat). When they feel sad, or ill, they'll
search through their music until they find that frequency to help
rebalance themselves. Many people, myself included, use music to help
us get through tough times. Again, many of us can trace passages in
our life through certain songs. Music is everywhere within ourselves
and nature. Even the universe sings to us.
Yet,
with all the evidence that's mounting, it's still believed that we
should pay vast amounts of money for what was originally a reasonably
priced concert ticket. Do I believe that music should be free? No, I
just believe that it should be accessible to as many people as
possible. The Foo Fighters have already done this with their latest
album by releasing it on to You Tube, Spotify, and other easily
accessible platforms. Even if someone couldn't afford the album
they'd still be able to listen and get involved.
And
bands are listening to fans voices and the No More Touts campaign. As
well as the Foo Fighters, Slipknot have also looked into their tickets being on secondary sites. This isn't the end of a hard fought
battle. It's just the beginning. And who knows what's going to be
around the corner? Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? Maybe,
one day, music will be available on prescription just like books are.
Do you have blind faith on something amazing still waiting to happen?
Because I do. This is a battle that the fans and bands will win.
You can follow the campaign using the hashtag #nomoretouts.
Want to get involved? You can by signing the petition to get the government look at the secondary ticket market:
Keep in touch at:
~~~
PART 7 - FANS PUT PRESSURE ON THE UK GOVERNMENT
*** FAN PRESSURE
CAMPAIGN ***
I received an email
from Mike Weatherley MP today. Mike is currently fighting for a
fairer and more transparent secondary ticket market in the house of
commons and he needs our help:
Over the last few
years, there have been many discussions in Parliament about
‘Secondary Tickets’
or ‘Ticket Touts’.
Efforts to curb the
market, and for ticket exchanges to work in favour of fans, have been
thwarted
for various reasons.
We now have a real
chance of making some changes and would ask for your help.
Using the template
below, or your own words, we would encourage you to email your MP
asking
them to support this
amendment when it comes back to the House of Commons.
If you’re not sure
who your MP is or how to contact them, you can find out by entering
your
TEMPLATE LETTER:
[Your name and full
address]
Dear [name of MP]
PLEASE PUT FANS FIRST
As your constituent, I
write to ask for you to support the proposals of the All Party
Parliamentary
Group on Ticket Abuse,
co-chaired by Mike Weatherly MP (Conservative) and Sharon Hodgson MP
(Labour), and the Lords
amendments, to inject necessary transparency to the secondary
ticketing
market.
As a fan of live events
I am regularly frustrated to see tickets for events I want to go to
apparently
sold out within minutes
of going on sale, only for thousands of them to instantly appear on
secondary sites –
such as Viagogo, Seatwave, GetMeIn! and Stubhub – often at
significant mark-ups.
These sites are
supposed to be about fans selling tickets they can no longer use to
other fans, and if
that’s all it was
there wouldn’t be a problem – but what sport or music fan buys
dozens of tickets for
a gig only to decide
within a few minutes that they can’t go?
The Government’s aim
should be to increase transparency in the secondary market. It would
mean
that touts selling
their tickets through major internet platforms will have to
prominently disclose key
facts to consumers,
assisting the fans, the event providers and the police to ensure a
fair ticketing
process.
If the secondary
ticketing platforms have nothing to fear from transparency, they
should have
nothing to fear from
this legislation. I would therefore be grateful if you would confirm
your
commitment to see fans
protected when it comes back to the House of Commons.
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]
***
You can continue to follow this campaign at:
www.foofightersuk.com
https://twitter.com/foofamilyuk
And with the hashtag #nomoretouts
You can also sign the petition calling for tighter regulations on the
secondary ticket market. It's quick and easy to do. You can find the
petition at:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/70470
You can read everything I've written so far on the campaign
here.
***
PART 8
No More Touts 8 - Interview with Kelly
Last year, a lot of amazing things happened. Among them were fans
starting to stand up to extortionate ticket prices. One campaign, which
I've closely followed on here, was started by a group of Foo Fighters
fans. Among them was Kelly. She was brave enough to come and take on the
questioning! Read on for her reasons as to why she launched the
campaign and to how it's continuing. Thank you, Kelly, for taking time
out to come and talk!
Hi Kelly! Please
tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m Kelly, 32 from
South Devon. I am a huge Foo Fighters fan but music in general of all
kinds.
You started the No
More Touts campaign. Can you tell us what sparked the idea and how it
all got started? What was the point that made you say “No more. We
need to do something about this.”?
This has been an
ongoing issue for so long, I was really surprised that nobody was
trying to do anything about it already. Evolution is a scientific
fact, there have been some historic changes throughout history and
they all have 1 thing in common – people. People can drive change,
people can do wonderful things…if they dare to. The Foo Fighters
world tour was on it’s way to being announced, fear had set in and
there were so many people worried about getting a ticket. Royal Blood
and Biffy Clyro fans were experiencing all sorts of hell trying to
get tickets. Cat Stevens had to cancel his own show in NYC to protect
his fans from touts. Kate Bush did everything she could to protect
her fans from touts at her recent London residency. This is great, is
it really down to the artists; no I don’t think it is. Something
had to be done, by somebody, somewhere. Even if we just make as much
noise as possible to highlight the situation and stand up and say
‘enough is enough’.
For the past several
years you’ve run the Foo Family. How did that come in to being?
What does it involve? And how was it linked it the campaign?
When the Foo Fighters
announced their long awaited Wasting Light tour and, more
importantly, the Milton Keynes Bowl gig, me and my friends were so
excited. We lived in different parts of the country so it was just
easier to make a Facebook group so we could all communicate together
about travel plans, accommodation etc. I started to receive random
requests from other Foo fans who wanted to share the excitement with
us, share their ideas and plans. The gig was set for the July, the
group was set up in November after tickets went on sale. We received
more and more requests for people to join. We had around 350 in the
group by the time the gig came around. Within that time, some great
friendships had been made, people met up at the gigs, people car
shared, a real fan network was being created under my very nose. We
all shared stories of our own fan journeys and what the band and
their music meant to us. There literally was nothing else available
on the internet for fans to communicate in this way. So we built it
up from there, to what it is today. Without the group, the campaign
would have never happened.
For the No More
Touts campaign you used the Foo Fighters as a kind of figurehead for
it. Why them specifically?
Well, we are all Foo
Fighters fans but mostly we are all music fans. We have all
experienced touting in one way or another not only with the Foo
Fighters but with other artists as well.
In late 2014, the
band also named their current North America tour “Beat The Bots”.
Do you think this has any direct connection to the No More Touts
campaign? Or was it just a reaction to the general feeling of the
fans?
I would like to think
that if it wasn’t a direct connection after all of the press No
More Touts received then it inspired a thought process, in the right
direction. This feeling within any fan community it will never go
away, until it’s resolved.
The No More Touts
Kickstarter was probably one of the most successful music related
crowd funders of 2014. For many of us, it was like watching the
countdown to New Year with the £150,000 total being exceeded in just
over a week. How much work had you put in to it prior to its launch
in September? And what do you think made it so successful?
A great team of
dedicated people who wanted to drive this forward and make it work.
We did lots of research into locations, historical relevance,
different cities. Birmingham is in the centre of the country, it has
great transport link and an international airport. It’s also the
home of Rock n Roll!! This project had been batted about for some
time in general conversation between a group of us and one day I just
thought ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it now’ and
I contacted Kickstarter. It did take a few rejections from
Kickstarter before the project eventually met their guidelines. We
had a press release ready to go and had a team of people allocated to
certain aspects of just getting it out there. We really wanted to put
pressure on the government and not only what we were doing but most
important why we were doing it.
There are many
people out there who are looking at getting into crowdfunding. What
advice would you give them creating a successful campaign?
Be absolutely sure of
your end goal and how you are going to get there, these things don’t
just happen themselves you really have to know what you’re doing
and when you’re doing it. We had a timeline that we followed, we
knew when the press release was going out and we knew we would hit
target quickly.
Even though the
Kickstarter didn’t come to its intended conclusion, it’s still
viewed by many as being a success. What kind of feedback did you get
from it all? Have discussions surrounding ticket touting (ticket
scalping to our friends in other countries) grown? Are you finding
other people are now taking an interest? What’s happening next with
the campaign?
There are 2 people who
if they can, will change this for all fans moving forward and that’s
Sharon Hodgson MP & Mike Weatherly MP who are both supportive of
this movement. They have both recently launched a ‘put fans first’
campaign over social media, driving people to write to their local
MP’s to support this during the debate in the house of commons
later this year (possibly March). I received an email from Mike prior
to the campaign launch asking for our support, which was great. The
UK Foo Fighters fan base is now known for standing up for something
we believe is not right and I am pleased with that achievement in
itself. We received some great feedback from other fan groups via
social media. One fan base that really got on board was the
Blackstone Cherry fan group. People really came together to help make
as much noise as possible, regardless of which band or group we
followed it was all for a common purpose.
One of the big
issues surrounding ticket touting is that the government have taken
very little interest. Other countries have laws in place to protect
fans while the UK only regulates the resale of football and Olympic
tickets. Have the UK government started to listen more in the wake of
the campaign? Have there been reactions from leaders in other
countries? What kind of regulations would you like to see put in
place?
I think it’s
important to remember, everybody should be able to sell on a ticket.
It’s just not feasible to ban the resale of tickets all together.
Things happen in life which means that peoples plans change and they
can’t always attend an event where a ticket was purchased sometimes
up to 6-8 months in advance. Companies like ‘Stubhub’ and ‘Get
Me In’ have created this platform for people to buy and sell
tickets. But when it gets down to the nitty gritty and people are
being sold fake tickets or being forced into buying tickets at 30
times their face value these companies respond with ‘we have
created a platform for others to use, we don’t control the prices
of tickets’ which I believe to be a complete cop out. If somebody
creates a service or a platform then they should be responsible for
the protection of the people that use it. The whole industry needs to
work together to resolve this. At the moment it’s the artists that
are trying to drive change but they can’t do this on their own. As
consumers we are entitled to a fair and transparent service, to feel
protected and know that we are being looked after – just like we
would with any other retailer. The secondary ticket market are
digging their heels into the ground, nothing has changed. Now it’s
up to the government – if they listen. Yes, fans could boycott the
secondary ticket market but when tickets are shown as ‘sold out’
and you’re automatically directed to a sister site or ‘fan site’
where there are tickets available then it’s a monopoly and people
have no choice.
Yet there are a few
people who are for ticket touting, citing the free market and that
people will pay whatever is required for a ticket. What would you say
to those people?
These people have more
money than sense. Anybody who thinks it’s ‘ok’ to spend 10x the
ticket price for a ticket 5 minutes after its been released on
general resale is crazy and doesn’t represent the general public at
all. Music means a lot to people, especially live music. I’m sorry,
I just don’t understand anybody that thinks the free market is the
place for event tickets, regardless of if its sport, music or
whatever….who wants to be ripped off, I know I don’t!
When it’s said and
done, you did an amazing job! You worked incredibly hard and you’re
keeping this going. How do you feel about the whole campaign? Do you
have any other plans in the pipeline?
I knew this was going
to be quite a big thing; it’s difficult to comprehend the success
of it. Sometimes I wish I was an outsider looking in to grasp the
hugeness of it all. It would have been amazing for the end result to
include a musical protest and everybody coming together at a truly
fan funded concert, showing that people can come together and drive
change and celebrate success. Who knows, maybe one day that will
happen. We have set up a ticket exchange through our own website
where people can buy sell tickets at face value. The one thing that
drove us to do this is that PayPal UK have recently updated their
terms of protection, protecting people who buy event tickets against
fake tickets and just not receiving them at all. When the Foo
Fighters released their UK dates, we bought as many tickets as
possible to sell on to fans at face value. You got to remember, we as
a fan base are just a drop in the ocean but we will do all we can to
help as many people as possible, regardless of if that’s 1 or 1000.
You can also use the hashtag #NoMoreTouts
You can read the rest of the No More Touts posts
here.
