
How New Scalping Technology Is Keeping You Out of Concerts - 6stringmerc
http://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/ticket-scalping-new-technology
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6stringmerc
> _This fixed supply makes pricing tickets a delicate process: charge too
> much, and you won 't sell out; charge too little, and demand goes off the
> charts. Scalpers are good at spotting when the balance isn't right, which is
> often; when popular artists sell tickets for accessible prices, demand will
> almost always outstrip supply._

Some of this logic doesn't pan out at a certain level though - I read an
interview with Q-Prime, big-time managers in the music business - who had a
different take:

> _It’s been said that the only artist who has really been able to beat this
> is the Rolling Stones, and that 's because they charge so much for tickets
> that the market won't really bear higher prices.

CB: The other thing you can do -- and Peter and I talk about this a lot -- is,
in general, successful artists, and this has been true for many years, don't
want to see any empty seats. So if you want to price your tickets high enough,
like the Stones, you're gonna end up with empty seats or the possibility of
empty seats. If you price your tickets lower than the market will bear, you
won't have any empty seats. So it really comes from the artist deciding, “I
don't mind if I don't sell the last thousand or 2,000 tickets, it's still a
great day. Everybody who wants a ticket will get a ticket.”

PM: Some of our artists go for big indoor productions, right? And they sit
there with their business manager and they go, “We're spending this many
millions on a stage show but we're not even getting half out of that.” And you
have to tell them, fine, let's go to $125 a ticket instead of $75 -- and guess
what? You'll make more money but you won't, as Cliff says, fill all the seats.
So make a decision: Either go out with just a stage and we'll make plenty of
money at $60-75, or go out with all this staging and you're gonna have to
charge more money._

[http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7290324/q-prime-
cliff...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7290324/q-prime-cliff-
burnstein-peter-mensch-managing-metallica-33-years)

