Resident Advisor Launches Fan-To-Fan Ticket Exchange, EDM “Community” Sites Ignore News
Resident Advisor, a leading electronic music news, events listing and ticketing website, announced on Tuesday the launch of a fan-to-fan ticket exchange so that fans can resale tickets at face value. Such an exchange undercuts scalpers and allows those who have to miss an event a chance to recoup. It's part of a larger effort to develop such fan-to-fan services and is said to be the first such electronic music-related attempt at least at this scale.
As the last writer from a major music industry news sites to consider the news that Resident Advisor has added a ticket resale service, my disappointment at being last in line is mitigated by the fact that electronic music and EDM industry sites don't seem to be covering it at all.
I realize that all the EDM-related news sites would tend to see Resident Advisor as a competitor but I think this is pretty big news. And how can you call yourself a proper industry website if you don't discuss what's happening in industry media?
That said, Resident Advisor is adding a secondary ticketing service that's designed to allow fans to exchange tickets at face value. They've been beta testing and now they're opening it up:
"The service allows people to get their money back to a sold-out show if they can no longer attend—it also ensures their ticket is sold to another genuine fan. Providing the event is sold out, ticket holders who are unable to attend can put their ticket in a resale pot. The service aims to eradicate the circulation of fraudulent tickets and prevent touts profiting from in-demand shows, with tickets sold at cost price."
"Promoters, meanwhile, can prevent touts from profiting from their events and increase the number of ticket buyers that make it to their party. Queue times and issues on the door are also likely to decrease, with less fraudulent tickets in circulation."
Obviously this is a big deal for Resident Advisor because, if successful, it will make Resident Advisor an essential part of the lives of EDM and electronic music fans who regularly go to ticketed events. But it's also a great service for the community that a lot of these websites like to go on about so that's the other reason I'm pointing to the lack of coverage.
Resident Advisor has more details.
More:
- CrowdTorch Combines TicketMob and Seed Labs For Live Event, Fan Engagement Platform
- Great Ticket Scandal Documentary Exposes Practices Of Secondary Ticket Sellers
- EDM Ticket Sales Driven By Social Media + More Findings
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) also blogs at DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
THUMP covered it. & either Dummy or FACT, can’t remember which.
Thanks but I’m finding references to Resident Advisor on both sites but not to this news.
I did see something on Vice’s Thump from the day of and there’s something on LessThan3.com today but that’s it so far.
So there’s some but a lot of the big sites ignored it.
We hesitated covering it on DJing TV channel not because it’s a competitor, but because it’s already done by many promoters
Actually this is quite non-news (far from being “pretty big news”), every e-ticketing platform nowadays has such a feature. Some promoter I told about it answered “Ah.. finally”
Can you give some examples of eticketing platforms with this feature?
Should be easy based on what you’re saying.
We do something similar at Flavorus. You can transfer (not sell) any ticket (if the promoter allows it) to anyone else with a credit card. For example, people transferred ownership of thousands of EDC tickets this year. If there are sales, they take place privately, but the transfer is secure.
Ticketmaster does this too: too:http://www.ticketmaster.com/ticketexchange
Besides the 2 ones for US cited above, I can give some for Europe: Digitick/Zepass are the most famous (90% of places with tickets/festivals use it in France), Fidelite.mobi, Weezevent, … Many others in Europe. Really any e-ticketing platform. That’s prerequisite nowadays. I don’t know for Australia though. Fidelite.mobi is even doing something smarter (adjusting capacity in real time, also real-time payment to promoter rather than delayed, we will probably use it at some point on Djing). I don’t know any big festival this year that doesn’t use this mechanism over here
PS: Have some trouble posting here. Comments are blocked from China and website simply delivers Typepad 404 when using Canadian SSH tunnel 🙁 Ok thru France SSH tunnel
Sorry about the connection problems. That’s Typepad and I don’t have anything to do with this site’s tech.
Ticketing: Great to hear more people are doing related things.
I don’t know about the space to compare the size or importance. That’s going to be one issue.
The thing is this isn’t the first company to offer this service and I’m not claiming it is.
But it is a big deal in EDM. None of you have convinced me it’s not. And maybe some of these other companies should step up their PR game.