I just want Spotify for music (playlist, recommendation, lossless audio). I don't need their podcast, audiobook, ChatGPT, concert tickets etc. This just makes their app bloated for features I will never use.
I have avoided building my own stack by uploading everything into Youtube Music (which used to be Google Music, which ... whatever.)
It gets a little worse every day, and one day it'll get bad enough where the pain of sysadmining something new will be preferable to them.
No you do not. Just use an external drive and an MP3 player like some kind of caveman. There are plenty of high quality models out there. Additionally smart phones will let you store music on them to listen to using the player app of your choice (VLC or something).
But concert tickets, notifications, etc., seems like a no-brainer. That is firmly within the category of music.
Mind you, I definitely have complaints about the app (like notifications interrupting music, their abysmal lock screen widget, and their "randomization" that always ends up playing the same few songs from a list of thousands); but I also understand why they want to expand.
> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
Sorry, I only thought about this for 5 seconds, but there are markets where scalping doesn't cause issues. We could look at those.
I suppose if we're requiring showing ID to attend anyway, it's not a lot worse to add an online ID verification step in order to be allowed to be a "sender" in the transfer system, and an identity is only allowed to have like 5 distinct "friends" in a rolling 12-month window.
Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.
My dad used to joke about how many signs he'd say at baseball games saying scalping is against the rules but somehow hearing loads of StubHub ads whenever he would listen to a game on the radio.
Taylor Swift can’t realistically play more shows than she did during the Eras Tour, and it’s unlikely that she’d have sold a million seats in London if she were charging much more than she did.
Maybe there’s still another way for scalpels to game this system, I don’t know, but I’ve been to a few concerts in Paris and I’ve never seen scalpels hanging outside the venue selling tickets, which would be the norm in Germany, so maybe the system does work.
Harry Styles is playing in my city, he's apparently very popular, but there's still plenty of tickets available for as low as 47€ for tomorrow.
I think some artists want to appeal to the poorer people so pricing their tickets higher or letting the free market work out the price would damage their reputation. So it doesn't seem to be a real problem we need to solve. It's a problem some artists feel they have. Let them figure it out.
If I was an artist and I expected a full venue with tickets that cost 10, I'd start selling them at 1000, then at 500, 200, 100, 50, 20 and finally 10. If someone buys all of them at 1000 and only that person shows up - awesome! Maybe there will be less drug sales because 1 person bought all tickets but that 100x per ticket could be used to pay the vendors.
For example - allow ticket resale only through the official platform and cap it at the original sale price.
Another approach - check IDs at the door and only let the original ticket purchaser through.
The real problem is that scalping is insanely profitable for Ticketmaster & co. They take a cut of the original sale and every subsequent transfer, most of them at highly inflated prices, from both buyer and seller. Why would they give that up?
Defeating bot buyers, scalpers and resellers would actually be a noble goal but its' really the tip of the iceberg. If anyone was actually interested in tackling this (hint: they aren't) then you need to tackle a much bigger problem: the venue monopoly with Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
Many venus, particularly larger venues, have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster also has an official platform for reselling tickets, of which they get a cut. In a more equitable world, you would only be able to resell tickets for their face value. It's alleged (and I believe this) that Ticketmaster only releases a tiny portion of tickets to the general public. The rest they have arrangements to sell through scalpers and resellers and their own platform because, hey, they make more profit that way.
There was a time when businesses were a tool to generate income. Small businesses still work this way. But any sufficiently sized company now is just a tool to speculate on and make a capital gain on. Ticketmaster doesn't need to grow into a trillion dollar company but they want to and, at a cewrtain point, the only way companies can continue to grow is by cutting costs and raising prices.
Back in the nascent days of Internet music piracy it was pointed out that almost no bands make enough money from selling music to live on. It's why the biggest anti-piracy advocates were huge bands like Metallica. Most bands make their living for performance fees ie playing concerts. And even then they might make barely enough to cover gas. What really gets them over the line is selling merch at the venues.
I'd say that music would be in a better state if bands could see more of the value of their labor from playing concerts. But even concerts aren't about bands or their fans anymore. They're about upselling premium services to high-net-worth clients. You ever notice that at sports venue, for example, general seating always gets mysteriously ripped out and replaced by suites? Same principle: venues make more per square foot from a corporate suite than they do from sports fans. There was a time when ordinary people would be fans of their home teams and just go to every home game. That's increasingly out of reach.
In short, the entire system is broken. Spotify participating in it won't change anything.
Non-transferable I think? But you could resell them via ticketmaster maybe for facevalue?
It was amazing, we sat on the ticketmaster page, refreshed over the course of a day and we got 8th row for I believe $75 - it was an amazing concert, and being able to pay a reasonable price for tickets like that was amazing.
Artists lose, even if they get paid and all the tickets technically are sold out. Fans lose. The only people who win are scalpers who just abuse the system.
Scalpers don't buy tickets and not sell them. The most scalped concerts are obviously the most attended
> fans can’t afford the tickets
See above. I assume what you are upset about is that rich fans are the ones going.
> less connection with the artists, less interest in music overall
I think you need to explain your logic here.
I don't have the data to say whether this happens or not (edited to add: and the numbers are obviously made up), but the logic is perfectly sound; nothing would stop it from happening today.
Arguably if rich people are just buying the $1000 concert tickets just to flex and take pictures for IG, that's a seat that could be going to a 17-year-old who loves the band's music but can't afford more than $100. The 17-year-old meanwhile may never get to go to a show of any of their favorite bands due to this situation, meaning they miss out on this meaningful chance to connect with the music in a personal, in-person way.
Basically the case hinges on the assertion that the richest fans are not the same as the most serious fans.
1. I like live concerts but I don’t spend my days listening to a lot of music. I would be considered “not a fan” by these metrics.
2 The monopolistic aspect. I subscribe to a much smaller Spotify competitor, now I’m at a disadvantage.
3. I don’t consider scalping a problem. The market price is determined by demand. It’s also been a problem that has been solved by artist presales and fan club gates.
I also think that as a recognized monopoly Ticketmaster should have more limitations on its business model. For example, their compassion on resale tickets should be limited. At present, they are encouraged to double dip on fees by finding ways to send more tickets to the secondary market.
It's the same logic for de-googlers. You can't De-Google yourself and then bitch about some Google products work better on Google products.
If you are a proud edge-lord/hipster with your obscure choices, you should also learn to deal with consequences.
Scale brings advantages. You can't have it both ways
I use a competitor to Spotify because I like the other product better overall. It’s a better value and better suited to my needs. I never said I’m using something else just to stick it to Spotify or become an edgelord.
I’m perfectly happy to be “punished” by missing some concerts. I think you misunderstand my comment as complaining about the situation. I really don’t care that much, I just am giving my opinion that this is a system that doesn’t seem ideal to me.
Many artists are struggling to fill seats right now. The industry can have fun trying silly schemes like this while they cancel tours in oversized venues.
look at the monthly active users chart after this deal! promoted.
When artists become popular, they often complain that the people they are making their music for, their biggest fans, tend to be the people least able to afford the concert tickets.
The artists are often totally willing to set aside a chunk of tickets at a much cheaper price, but they need to be able to guarantee that these tickets aren't just purchased by scalpers and resold at the market price.
So if you can actually tie ticket availability to genuine listening patterns of this artist over time, in a way that is very difficult to game, then this could be huge.
Obviously you can worry about scalpers that will now try to open 1000 different Spotify accounts so that they can buy up 1000 tickets. But it should be pretty easy for Spotify to look for signals that indicate real human listeners, I would think.