We here at Idolator get all of our legal knowledge from the creative products of Dick Wolf, so it’s probably best for us to call in for outside help on thornier issues regarding the law. Which is why we’re proud to welcome the new Idolawyer: Please say hello to John P. Strohm, who practices at Johnston, Barton, Proctor, and Rose in Birmingham, Ala. In addition to representing both bands and indie labels, Strohm played with Blake Babies, The Lemonheads, and Antenna; now, he plays music under his own name. Strohm’s musings shouldn’t be taken as straight-up legal advice, but he will offer insight into legal issues out there that are a bit complicated in the minds of non-lawyers (a.k.a. most of us). Yesterday, we talked about Phish’s claim that they would go after people who wanted to scalp tickets to their upcoming reunion shows by repossessing said ducats. Some in the comments section found this ludicrous–but as it turns out, according to Strohm, the band has every right to do that.
The parade of finger-pointing surrounding the scarcity of tickets to the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus “Best Of Both Worlds” tour–a situation that has resulted in crying 11-year-olds, fathers lining up to humiliate themselves, and possibly flawed lessons on economics from the Federal Reserve–marched on earlier this week, when the National Association Of Ticket Brokers (it’s like the Elks Club for scalpers the “secondary market”) issued their take on the situation. And in their mind, the root of the whole problem resides in MileyWorld, the official Hannah/Miley fan club!
Still waiting for that e-mail saying that you won a passcode to buy tickets for Led Zeppelin’s reunion show in London? More »
Tickets for the Spice Girls’ Dec. 15 show at London’s O2 Arena sold out in 38 seconds flat this morning, with more than one million people who’d pre-registered for tickets to the show “bombard[ing] the lines” for Ticketmaster, according to the ticketing behemoth’s UK boss. More »
Now that artists are going the “fan club” route–giving those people who pony up $30 or $40 a year access to presales for their upcoming concert tours–a new secondary market has emerged in the ticketing world: The reselling of presale codes, which allow members to get into show’s online presales before the non-paying riff-raff. The Wall Street Journal looked at the ways that artists and their managers are trying to head off the latest assault on their revenue at the pass:
To follow up on this morning’s item about soft ticket sales for Poison: Tickets to tonight’s show at the Jones Beach Theater–which I will be attending–range between $26 and $42.50, before the obligatory Ticketmaster service charges.
The Los Angeles Times’ Buzz Bands blog has details on Prince’s upcoming residency at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which we will not be attending, for reasons that are about to become obvious: As expected, Prince’s shows will not be a cheap ticket. More »
This year’s Glastonbury Festival, which takes place this weekend in the UK, has tickets that are stamped with the bearer’s photo in an effort to sidestep scalpers. What this has resulted in people who can’t attend the festival for reasons unrelated to price-gouging attempting to unload their tickets on eBay. The ads all have descriptions of the sellers–brunette with blue eyes, slightly receding hair–attached to them, making the whole enterprise part StubHub, part Nerve. One ad in particular caught our eye, if only because we’re thinking that replicating this ID photo will require a very adept glam squad:
For its weekend edition, USA Today examines the higgeldy-piggedly world of concert-ticket sales–a world that some of our more well-connected, guest-listed readers probably haven’t had to explore in some time. The good news is that good seats for in-demand shows are easier to snag nowadays; the bad news is that, in addition to premium prices, you have to navigate an increasingly confusing marketplace:
Take The Police, for instance. If you wanted to catch summer’s hottest tour, you could have tried a front-row auction; a premium-seat auction; gold, silver or VIP packages; the fan-club pre-sale; the Best Buy Reward Zone pre-sale; or TicketExchange, a service that allows ticket holders to sell to other fans. Or you could have taken your chances with the general public sale.
And those were just the options through Ticketmaster.
StubHub, the seven-year-old Web site that specializes in the “secondary ticketing” market (hey, it sounds nicer than “scalping”), has been snapped up by eBay for $310 million. The site hooks up buyers and sellers of sporting event and concert tickets, and it has some leanings toward legitimacy, having inked deals with a few sports leagues to sell unused season tickets. Red Herring values the classed-up scalping business at $10 billion, with four unfortunately named sites (StubHub, CoastToCoastTickets, RazorGator, and TicketLiquidator) leading the way in the business.
We decided to give those sites a whirl, so we shopped around for tickets to Justin Timberlake’s Jan. 27 concert at the XCel Center in St. Paul, Minn. The tickets–which are still available–are normally priced between $54 and $82.50, with a “VIP Lounge” package going for $151.
