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  1. #1
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    Concerts for Spice Girls and Hanna Montana sell out in record time

    Two news sets here:

    From Yahoo!

    Tickets for the Spice Girls' comeback concert in London sold out in just 38 seconds, the show's organisers announced on Monday.

    Demand was so overwhelming -- more than one million people in Britain registered for the sole London show -- that organisers added three more London dates to the tour.

    The five original Spice Girls -- Scary, Sporty, Ginger, Posh and Baby -- will kick off their worldwide reunion tour on December 2 in Vancouver, their first since Geri Halliwell quit in May 1998, with a December 15 concert scheduled at London's O2 arena.

    Organisers added London concerts on December 16 and 18 and January 2 to the tour.

    The group, made up of Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm, will also perform in San Jose, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Cologne, Madrid, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney and Cape Town before ending at Buenos Aires on January 24, 2008
    Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us. - Matthew Mcconaughey - Interstellar

  2. #2
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    From Yahoo! music

    Forget The Police, Justin Timberlake or Bruce Springsteen. The undisputed hottest concert ticket of the year is for 14-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana" TV show.

    Fans are so desperate for seats to her 54-date tour, kicking off later this month, that venues have sold out in as little as four minutes and scalpers are getting four to five times the face value — creating a torrent of complaints from frustrated parents.

    "We knew it was hot, but we had no idea it was this crazy," said Debra Rathwell, senior vice president of AEG Live, which is handling her tour. "It's like the Beatles."

    About 12,000 seats for the Memphis show were gone in 8 minutes. It took 15 minutes in Columbus, Ohio, and swift sellouts have been reported across the country — Nashville, Miami, Lexington, Ky. The Kansas City Council is investigating the matter.

    One ticket for the show in Charlotte, N.C., sold for $2,565.

    Miley, daughter of country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, plays high school student Miley Stewart, who lives a secret double life as a famous pop star, Hannah Montana. Her show reaches 5 million viewers a week.

    The sold-out "Best of Both Worlds Tour," which begins Oct. 18, follows the release of her double album, "Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus," which has already sold more than 1 million copies since its release in June. The first album, released late last year, sold more than 2 million copies.

    Paige Nace, 35, hoped to take her daughter to see Miley at the Arena at Gwinnett Center outside of Atlanta. Nine-year-old Arianna had been begging to see her live ever since she started watching the show, Nace said.

    "I think that's it's pretty cool she is coming here," Arianna said. "I want to get up on stage and sing with her. Most likely every girl I know likes Hannah."

    But in 4 minutes, tickets to the November show were gone. Nace said tickets were being resold for inflated prices on Internet sites like Craigslist and eBay Inc.'s ticket-reselling subsidiary StubHub.

    "All the ticket brokers and scalpers are trying to sell them for $100-200 a piece," Nace said. "If they would have been face value, I would have gladly gotten them."

    The tour promoter capped prices at $65 and put a four-ticket maximum on each transaction. However, the average ticket for the Hannah Montana tour was being resold for $214. That beats the average resale price for Timberlake ($182), Beyonce ($193), or The Police ($209).

    The Police tour has been StubHub's best-selling tour in the company's history, but Hannah Montana has sold 35 percent more tickets in the same amount of time, and is outselling The Police by 25 percent based on dollar volume.

    Understandably that's riling a lot of fans.

    "It's always been a problem and it getting worse and worse," said Rathwell, who says her company is doing all it can to reduce scalping. But with every show selling out immediately, there are few options for parents.

    "Hannah Montana has essentially exposed a lot of frustration the average, uninformed ticket buyer has," said Sean Pate, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based StubHub. "There is so much demand that ticket sellers are pricing on the high side. It's almost unreasonable."

    As technology changes and more venues start selling tickets online, scalpers are no longer those shady looking guys holding up tickets outside the arena. Most states have no restrictions on reselling tickets, even for a big profit.

    Ray Waddell, Billboard's touring writer, says scalpers use automated computer programs that buy tickets quickly or tie up ticket phone lines with repeated calls. "It's really getting out of control," Waddell said. "The industry is kind of fed up."

    Pate encourages Hannah Montana fans to sit tight and wait for prices to go down as the tour dates approach.

    "The prices that you see now are not the prices that are going to hold," Pate said. "Parents need to set a price that they are comfortable with and watch the market on a daily basis."

    Nace is refusing to deal with scalpers at all, but the situation has left both her and her daughter disappointed. "My mom is trying to do everything she can to take me," Arianna said. "I'm still going to listen to the CDs."

    "I feel like they are ripping off children," Nace said. "I'm sure there are parents out there would pay that much. But the rest of us shouldn't be penalized for that."

  3. #3
    j7wild Guest
    I hardly go to concerts anymore because you cannot get tickets at regular NON-RESALE prices.

    Madonna was the last concert I went to last July in Miami and those pair of tickets cost me over 1,500 each, way above their face value!!

    Regardless whether it's a big sport event or a big concert; most of the good tickets are already sold to special promoters, radio stations, media people, the very wealthy, etc etc

    Don't tell me that every single ticket for every single seat is available to buy online or by phone at the start of the ticket sale;

    when they advertise so and so concert, tickets go on sale Saturday Morning at 10 am for example;

    when that clock strikes 10 am, the good tickets have already been sold to the group of people or organizations I mentioned above - the tickets remaining for the public are the not very good tickets.

    Of course, everyone denies this happens but it's common practice (I have a friend who is a Manager for ticket masters and he confirms it).

    It's an unfair practice and it should be illegal; everyone should have to wait until 10 am to get those tickets regardless whether you are John Q Public or whether you are a Celebrity or a member of some Radio Station system like Clear Channel.

    How do you think the Radio Stations get the FRONT ROW tickets they constantly give away on the air days or week(s) before the tickets officially go on sale?

  4. #4
    j7wild Guest
    see what I mean?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/bu...in&oref=slogin


    In the Race to Buy Concert Tickets, Fans Keep Losing

    LISA SENAUKE, a Bruce Springsteen fan since 1973, tried to get tickets to his Oct. 26 concert in Oakland, Calif. The tickets were to go on sale at 10 a.m. on Sept. 17, and starting at 9:58 a.m., she logged into her Ticketmaster.com account, credit card in hand. But though she tried again and again for the next hour to buy tickets, she was always told the same thing: nothing available.

    Tickets to hot events like the “Hannah Montana” concert sell out quickly online, and then show up on resale sites for much higher prices.

    “I never even had a chance,” she said the other day. “Who, then, got those tickets? How many people managed to log in, in between me, and sweep up the tickets?”

    Ms. Senauke’s frustration is not isolated. The coming concerts of 14-year-old Miley Cyrus, the daughter of the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus and the star of the Disney show “Hannah Montana,” sold out in minutes. And the same thing happened with tickets to recent reunion tours by the Police and Van Halen.

    While some fans just quietly give up, others have complained to government officials, particularly after they found tickets to the same concerts or sporting events available — sometimes at many times the face value — on secondary sellers like Stubhub.com and TicketsNow minutes after the public sale began.

    After hearing from some would-be ticket buyers, the Missouri attorney general announced Thursday that the state was suing three ticket resellers on charges they violated state consumer protection laws. That same day, the Arkansas attorney general said he was seeking documents from five resellers. And the attorney general’s office in Pennsylvania is also looking into the ticket sale business after receiving several hundred complaints over the recent sale of tickets for a Hannah Montana concert in Pittsburgh, said a spokesman, Nils Frederiksen.

    “All hell broke loose with Hannah Montana,” said Justin Allen, the chief deputy attorney general in Arkansas. “The tickets were gone in 12 minutes and when people turned around, they were selling at online sites for sometimes as much as 10 times the face value.”

    Ticketmaster, the subsidiary of the IAC/Interactive Corporation that bills itself as the biggest seller of concert and sports tickets in the world, is also facing questions from angry fans and has sent representatives to meet with state and local officials. They argue, in part, that the number of tickets available to the public at a concert is often far less than the total number of seats in the arena.

    Ticketmaster has also filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Los Angeles against a software company based in Pittsburgh, RMG Technologies, and several ticket brokers contending that they have discovered a way to get around Ticketmaster’s defenses.

    They “are bombarding Ticketmaster’s Web site with millions of automated ticket requests that can constitute up to 80 percent of all ticket requests made,” Ticketmaster states in its suit. These actions deny “the public access to tens of thousands of tickets so that RMG’s customers can purchase and resell those tickets to the same public at inflated prices,” it contends.

    A lawyer for RMG, Jay M. Coggan, denied the allegations. He said in an interview that RMG provides a specialized browser for ticket brokers but would not discuss the company’s services in detail, saying such information was proprietary. He added, “Ticketmaster isn’t losing any money — they’re getting paid full dollar for every ticket sold.”

    A hearing on Ticketmaster’s suit is scheduled for Oct. 15.

    The fact that tickets to popular events sell out so quickly — and that brokers and online resellers obtain them with such velocity — is clouding the business, many in the music industry say. It is enough, some longtime concertgoers say, to make them long for the days when all they had to do to obtain tickets was camp out overnight.

    Joseph Freeman, the assistant general counsel for Ticketmaster, said that in some cases, demand for tickets simply exceeded the supply. Even in large arenas, a certain number of tickets are reserved by the artist, the promoter and the concert site and some may also be set aside for fan clubs or presales, like ones frequently held by American Express or Visa. But thousands of tickets are still typically left to be sold to the general public.

    In Kansas City, for example, there were “only 11,000 seats available for the Hannah Montana concert,” Mr. Freeman said. “We got about 8,400. Of those, half went to the fan club while the other half was sold to the general public.” Mr. Freeman added that more tickets are often released after the initial sale date once the stage configuration is known.

    While Ticketmaster refused to disclose how many hits it receives when tickets go on sale, Mr. Freeman said the company had the ability to sell several thousand seats a minute.

    But how do hundreds of tickets show up on online sites minutes after individuals have been shut out? Officials at resellers like Stubhub.com, now owned by eBay, guarantee the authenticity of the tickets. “What’s often mistaken about our marketplace,” Sean Pate, a spokesman for Stubhub, said in a statement, “is that we procure and price tickets when, to the contrary, we simply provide a secure and managed online marketplace for those who wish to sell tickets they possess.”

    The Ticketmaster suit includes a statement from a former ticket broker, Chris Kovach, who was originally named as defendant but later settled with Ticketmaster. He said that he used RMG’s “automated devices to enable me to access Ticketmaster’s Web site.” Mr. Kovach said in the statement that he paid a monthly fee for access to RMG’s site and that its software enabled him to simultaneously search and request tickets — sometimes more than 100 sets at a time.

    Mr. Kovach asserted in the statement that RMG’s system is “specifically designed to navigate or otherwise avoid various security measures on Ticketmaster’s Web site,” including what is known as the Captcha feature — those squiggly letters in a box that users must retype before they can proceed.

    In denying the allegations, Mr. Coggan, RMG’s lawyer, said, “Ticketmaster didn’t get it right.”

    So what’s a dedicated fan to do? If tickets sell out within minutes, keep checking the online ticketing company for tickets in case additional seats are released. Don’t rush to buy from brokers or online sites because prices sometimes come down if resellers find they have acquired too many seats, Mr. Pate of Stubhub said. And sometimes, the artist decides to add an extra show, which can provide extra tickets — at face value — to satisfy demand.

    In the meantime, potential ticket buyers continue to try various means to capture their prey. Lisa Nicholls of Houston, for example, had already been unsuccessful last winter in buying tickets to a Hannah Montana concert for her children, Alexandra, 10 and Robbie, 8. When the Toyota Center, the Houston arena, announced a new concert, her husband, Rob, sat at home with three computers logged on to the arena’s site at precisely 10 a.m., when tickets were to go on sale.

    Mrs. Nicholls, meanwhile, had left the house hours earlier to wait at a ticket outlet at a local supermarket. Despite arriving at 7:30 a.m., she was not the first on line. Still, within minutes, she and her husband were both out of luck.

    “I went there thinking we would hedge our bets and do it every which way,” Mrs. Nicholls said. “But only the first person on line got tickets — and I was 10th.”

    Jessica Fricke, a Minnesota mother who also failed to get Hannah Montana tickets, tried to put the best face on it. “We are trying to teach our children the law of supply and demand. It’s a lesson for our family. It’s a hard one for an 8- year-old, but a good one.”

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by j7wild View Post
    I hardly go to concerts anymore because you cannot get tickets at regular NON-RESALE prices.
    The last concert I went to I got free tickets for, although they tried to talk me into "upgrading" from free to one of the paid levels. It was an outdoor venue, with free tickets in the lawn behind the seats, which was good enough for me. But now I can honestly say I have seen B.B. King in concert. I'm not much of a Blues fan, but... it was B.B. King!

    The concert before that, I went to because my office was one of the sponsors of the event, so I got free tickets to that one as well. I don't remember who we saw, though. It was some up-and-coming Country singer that I have never heard of (I'm not a country fan, either). This would have been about 1999 or so. My wife, who worked at a country radio station at the time, doesn't remember for sure, either, but she thinks it might have been Ty Herndon. I don't think so, though. I think he had "Kenny" or "Kenney" in his name somewhere, but I don't remember if it was first or last name.

    The only concert I ever paid for came to my home town. I don't remember how much the tickets were, but they weren't terribly expensive. And I had never heard of the group before then (a Christian rock band called "Whitecross"), but how many concerts come to a town of 1,500 in the middle of nowhere? I still have the concert t-shirt with my home town listed on the back as one of the stops.

    I also attended a Beach Boys concert back in 1988 when they performed at the Ohio State Fair. We had to pay admission to the fair (which was $5-$10), but the concert was included.

    Those are the only concerts I have been to. I saw "Weird Al" Yankovic was in concert in Indy few years ago, but my wife and I couldn't afford the $80+ per ticket to attend.
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