NEWS: The Stupidest Ticketmaster Stunt Ever

GEEK: The Stupidest Ticketmaster Stunt Ever

Today LA radio-station KROQ announced on their morning-show that tickets for their upcoming Almost Acoustic Christmas concert will go on sale to the general public online or via phone when the radio-station plays a specific song ("Everlong" by the Foo Fighters). This means anyone who wants to go to the concert has to listen to the radio all day, and possibly tomorrow until they play this song in its entirety, then call in or go online to purchase tickets. It sounds like a semi-reasonable idea until you consider the fact that it is a Thursday and people have to attend things like work, school, and appointments. Few people have the capability to listen to the radio all day (nor the will), and in the off chance someone can listen to the radio at work, they still need the ability to use a phone or a computer immediately following the song (a good way to get reprimanded or fired at most retail or service jobs).



Supposedly, the motivation behind this is to prevent scalpers from grabbing up all of the tickets, however it is essentially backward logic. People who scalp tickets for a living most likely aren't working 9-5, or going to college, making them pretty much the select few capable of listening to the radio all day waiting for the tickets to go on sale. Meanwhile, the sale is limited to the internet and phone only, so people cannot purchase tickets from music stores or ticket-brokers. This means per-person limits can easily be worked around by simply providing different credit card numbers when purchasing online or via phone. In fact, one could even go online and call at the same time and get tickets both ways. Not to say one couldn't stand in line at a music store and call at the same time, but still it certainly cuts out the middle-men furthering Tickermaster's monopoly.



Next time just pick a time, and tell us when tickets go on sale or Harrison Ford will kick your masterticket nazi ass off the blimp. Kthnx.



If you're wondering how this relates to Geek: Commentary, this post does involve the internet (kinda) and makes references to Indiana Jones. Oh, and I wrote it with my wireless laptop on my couch. So geeky...

I am sitting in an internet cafe in my own living room. There are 4 people with laptops all connected to the internet and I am playing on-line pool with my brother through MSN games. He just threw a tennis ball at me.

oh by the way.. Bad ticketbastard!!

Mortal!

I project my thoughts directly through the internet to produce my posts. No computer or keyboard necessary.

this trick is hardly new. radio stations do it to, surprise, make you listen to the radio all day. many people listen to radio at work too. i hate ticketmaster too, but pick a real story to bash them with.

But I bet you didn't know they have the internet on computers now.

We understand you're bummed you couldn't get tickets to a show, but this is hardly the stupidest Ticketmaster stunt ever. That whole Pearl Jam fiasco was a bit worse.

Probably best to leave the "Something-est Something Ever" headings for Digg.

I have a cool idea! Make enough to buy your own tickets without having to resort to on-air lotteries!

Wheeeeee!

I was thinking the same thing. This tactic was pretty much the only way radio stations gave anything away when I was a kid.

Ticketmaster combined with corporate radio is evil? GASP!

Dylan's gone electric? A man on the moon? Instant mashed potatoes? You MUST be high! That CAN'T be right!......Get a haircut and quit smoking those goofballs, hippie!

And the 8th caller wins tickets to see Supertramp and Kansas at the National Guard Armory! Right after this from the Factory Mattress Emporium and Red Wigglers, the Cadillac of Worms!

The thing is, if you actually understood what was written, the radio station was telling you when to call to BUY your tickets, NOT win them.

OMG me too! We should totally be friends.

Man, I'm still peeved about the time I waited in line for Acoustic Christmas tickets from 7 in the morning, and the night I wanted still sold out an hour before I made it to the ticket booth because they did some weird mix-up thing with picking wristband numbers at random.

KROQ has never been nice about selling their Acoustic X-mas tickets.

I scored killer Garth Brooks tickets this way when I was fifteen.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

What?

Radio stations always do contests like that for tickets. I don't see what the big deal is.

he gets that idea because that's what they said on the radio.
but i'm not a scalper, so i don't know if they carry around a million different credit cardsall with different addresses in order for them to get tons of tickets. KROQ seems to think it will work though.
it's not a ticket giveaway or contest, it's the only way they are going to sell tickets for it. -shrug- lame, i think, because no one is going to sit glued to a radio for the rest of the week just to hear the one time they play this song.



i just rambled a lot, but my cd player in my car doesn't work anymore so i end up listening to this while i sit in traffic. gogo radio!

(Doing my best to further tie into the geek column)

It seems like it would be easy enough for someone to write a quick script to grab the Ticketmaster page every X seconds and if the "currently not on sale" text changes then send an alert.

I don't know what sort of precautions Ticketmaster has in place for this, but I've reloaded a page dozens of times waiting for tickets to go on sale and didn't have any lockout problems. And if there are problems, change the X seconds to a random interval or use multiple IPs.

By 'someone' I mean the scalpers. Academically speaking. As proof why this won't work. Yeah. Don't do it.

no worries, you aren't missing out.
they'll probably sell out quick if on ticketmaster, but i'm not so sure about the phone...i mean, radio station's phones are always busy. forever.

but yeah, checking on TM periodically seems like it'd be the best way to go about it. it was sad that they suggested getting a group of friends together and listening in "shifts" for 24 hours however the hell long this thing goes on. tsk.

i mean if someone needs evanescence tickets that bad...wow.

It just gets worse and worse every year, doesn't it.

KROQ stopped being a decent radio station in like 1990..back when the Poorman used to snort coke off groupies tits backstage at Guns'n'Roses and Iron Maiden...

KROQ sounds like a "Krock" of shit to me...HAHAHAHA.

but yeah...radio stations have been doing this for YEARS..nuthing new...get over it and play your iPod like the rest of us cause radio is dead.

everyone. Radio stations have been giving away free tickets like this for years as a promotional competition to increase listenership, and that is fair enough. In this instance, the competition is for the chance to BUY the tickets from ticketmaster.

Basically it's taking their monopoly power and cranking it up to crazy levels in pursuit of even more profits (as if they didn't already do little enough work per hard earned dollar they take off us as it is)

No kidding. I'm less than thrilled by the concept of this idea.

And what do you want to bet that this show's tickets, purchased at considerable inconvenience, will still be subject to Ticketmaster's convenience fee?