Ryan's Gig Guide - September 2018

What’s the big deal?Well, I’m sure many of you have experienced the browser-refresh stress of attempting to buy tickets to your dream gig the instant they’re available on the internet… It’s Friday morning, the ticket sales start at the highly in- convenient time of 9am so you're in work early, logged into an official ticket website.You’re de- termined to do battle against the rest of the world, or at least the ones who have the same band tattoos as you. Keeping an eye out for the boss, you refresh the page every nanosecond, forgetting that the company internet speed is crap and that Darren in the warehouse is probably hogging the broadband to stream a hi-res TV show about cars hosted by middle-aged Brexiteers in rugby shirts from ‘Channel Bloke’. The ticket-release moment arrives and you're still refreshing the page, a virtual flash-mob de- scends on the website in pursuit of YOUR tickets and... "Sorry, the website is currently experiencing an in- crease in traffic, please try later" ARRRRGGHH. You keep refreshing... same message... FOR TEN MINUTES. You contemplate going for a wee, after all you've been in since half eight, drunk gallons of tea and now your eyes are watering trying to hold it in - don't hold it in, it's bad for you. Then with the next glorious refresh, the mes- sage on the screen changes! You've done it... you've survived the arduous quest and the treasure will be yours! Only, upon reading the message you discover that yes, all the tickets have gone.You shout, swear and finally, go to the toilet and have a little cry. Mid-morning that same day, rumours fly on social media that some tickets have appeared for sale, only not from the official source. It's a sec- ondary ticketing site where, real gig- goers who suddenly find they can no longer at- tend a gig are able to make someone else's dreams come true by re-selling their much sought after ticket for a fair price. Of course, these sec- ondary ticket sites are also open profiteers who, using computer trickery that can buy things online faster than a six year old, snap up all the tickets in minutes... they “eat it all” ( get it?). Despite ticket firms’ T&Cs likely having a clause telling you not to access their service with automated systems, it’s pretty difficult to prevent this happening. Of course, once unoffi- cial, secondary ticket sites popped up, official outlets had to get in on the game and ended up running their own secondary ticket sites al- lowing them to sell a ticket twice! Ticketmaster is replacing their secondary ticket sites with a system allowing the original ticket buyer to pop the ticket back on sale at the original price. If other official ticket outlets can offer a similar function, it may signal the end of the hugely inflated prices on secondary ticketing websites let’s “eat the touts” ...If you still don’t get it - I give up. Mange Tout ? By Fat Bloke With No Tattoos The war against ticket touts ripping off genuine music fans was given a boost recently, when online ticket behemoth Ticketmas- ter, decided to close their ‘secondary ticket’ web sites Seatwave and Get Me In. 26 rgg Sep 2018 www.ryansgigguide.com