Pollstar That's The Ticket!

re: That's The Ticket!

btookit@yahoo.com — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:57:51 GMT

Nathan is guy who managed the roll-out of the Music Today ticket solution - which was anything but that at the University of Virginia, and the same person who used to ask anyone who would listen ... "CAN YOU THINK OF A WORSE BRAND IN AMERICA THAN TICKETMASTER"?

Well now...YES WE CAN!

re: That's The Ticket!

parkbench559@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:21:32 GMT

Let's see, Live Nation ticketing is one month into its existance and crashed on the onsale of one of the most anticipated reunion tours in some time. Heck of a learning curve.

But NYGTO, I'm not sure you know wtf you are talking about regarding hidden fees being "pee on my head and tell me its raining." That would be Ticketmaster, which has done the "all in" tickets and simply burying its add-ons in the face value of its tickets.

Live Nation is getting its facility, convenience, administrative and parking cuts of the ticket, no doubt. But the know it all posture is really unbecoming if you don't know how tickets prices are built.

Live Nation may be the evil empire, and their first big test was an epic fail, but no doubt they will find the glitches in the system to fix this and become serious competition for the real ticketing behemoth.

Not that there is any love lost for either company.

re: That's The Ticket!

toddlevy@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:29:17 GMT

In response to this interview and the abysmal performance of Live Nation's web and phone based ticketing systems this weekend, I invite you to visit Jamtopia.com to read an open letter to Mr. Hubbard.

jamtopia.com/.../an-open-letter-to-nathan-hubbard-live-nation-ticketing-ceo

Take care and thanks for posting this interview.

re: That's The Ticket!

funcpl2741054@yahoo.com — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:47:23 GMT

wow Nate....you've done the impossible!.....you actually have people saying your product is worse than Ticketmaster !.....now thats a truly amazing feet!

re: That's The Ticket!

oldsyd@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 06:52:11 GMT

I'll have to say that LiveNation is a total crock.

At least with Ticketmaster, if you got tickets in your cart, you could purchase them. At LiveNation's joke of a website, they kicked 5 pairs of Phish tickets out of my basket before the timer hit zero, the sixth pair expired because their wimpy overloaded server farm couldn't take my money fast enough, only to tell me it had been 15 minutes, when in fact it only gave me 10 minutes to complete the transaction. Then *poof* after the timer runs out (even though the delay was on THEIR end) your tickets disappear.

(Hope you like your seats, Mr. Section 203 Row S, I donated those for ya!)

All I wanted was 2 pairs of ANY tickets for the 6/20 and 6/21 Alpine show, I was only able to scrape up 2 lawns for 6/21 at 12:56PM, that's almost 3 hours of typing in captchas and reading useless error messages! With the amount of captchas I entered, I think I might have decoded War and Peace.

Then sometimes, I would get server errors that the server had just given up.

Or, maybe the main page would just give up serving the icons for the artist.

Or, sometimes it would go back to 1985 and just show text only on the main page.

And, the biggest joke of all, the "temporary" waiting room, which was in fact quite permanent.

Let's try and figure this out, OK?

Maybe Live nation can't afford to purchase the bandwidth or servers to handle the capacity?

Nope.

Let's do some math, hmmm, tickets were $42, that's pretty fair. Thanks Phish for not gouging like some artists do. But wait, what's this $3.00 parking fee? Does that cover me attempting to rip my muffler off in that pasture they call a parking lot? Why do they charge $3.00 for each ticket? Obviously not all of us are driving solo? More scams from LiveNation, that's all.

Oh, and thanks for the $4.50 facility fee per person, too. I realize it must be tight since you don't make any money from concessions and Phish probably doesn't pay to use the facility. :roll:

Hey, I have an idea, maybe you could update the website to stop dumping my cart out with that $12.85 you collect from each ticket as part of your TICKET FEE! Where does that 31% ticket fee go? Obviously not into the ticketing, right Nathan?

What a novel idea, 49% of the total ticket cost for a $42.00 ticket is for LiveNation to continue to bend us over again!

So, to summarize, in 4 hours, LiveNation could only do what it was supposed to to ONCE! This took me 4 hours of typing in captcha phrases, waiting, clearing errors and watching tickets in my cart disappear. I couldn't even purchase singles in the lawn!

Live Nation, you take the cake for the most criminal entertainment business of the year in my book!

And, what ticks me off even more is the fact that nothing will be done about it.

Why?

Because they sold out. Who gives a hoot how crappy the system is, as long as they don't lose any money and the tickets get sold, who gives a darn, right?

I might sound like an old fart, but at least I used to be able to camp out in line and get tickets without paying 49% in fees, and without the lady at the ticket window yanking the tickets out of my hand only to give them to the next person in line hours before it is sold out.

Of course you are "pleased", Nate, you'll still get your bonus and we will continue to get the shaft.

Thanks for listening.

re: That's The Ticket!

tbowa41@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:25:24 GMT

Even the people who work the phones at LN had their computers crashing this morning for Phish tickets. Great job Live Nation! Glad to see our service fees going to good use.

re: That's The Ticket!

scott_govoni@yahoo.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:19:52 GMT

Yes they were a complete joke crashing this morning while trying to get Phish tickets. Way to get off to a great start Live Nation!!! Hopefully Phish will add some second shows to their current Summer venues so fans actually have a shot at getting tickets! Thanks for ruining my Summer Live Nation!

re: That's The Ticket!

ttodd@kc.rr.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:45:09 GMT

What a joke! Phish completely brought down their servers- they were unprepared and couldn't handle it. Live Nation has made many, many people unhapppy at how poorly they performed with a real test.

re: That's The Ticket!

tbowa41@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:43:54 GMT

So we have incredibly high fees and a system that can't handle the ticket rush. Sounds like a great 1-2. I agree with Hooterville, someone here at Pollstar needs to do a follow up with this guy.

re: That's The Ticket!

jimed65@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:57:51 GMT

See? Exactly what I was talking about. This is obscene. Has no one learned what happens when greed is the driving force behind business decisions?

re: That's The Ticket!

funcpl2741054@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:34:19 GMT

is anyone at pollstar gonna follow up or just let this guy lie to them?

went on Live Nation.com today to buy four Nickleback lawn seats at a Live Nation venue .

Live Nation has a $8.50 per ticket 'convenience fee', plus a 3.40 order fee.....on $26.50 tickets! (that makes service fee of about 36%)

and how is this better than Ticketmaster? looks exactly the same to me . oh, in addition there was no option of choosing seats in the non lawn categories.

re: That's The Ticket!

mikebrez@aol.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:20:33 GMT

Awful and painful experience. The system crashed and had multiple errors. I had tickets selected multiple times only to get yet another error. $41 ticket with 52% service charges is AWFUL. $21 in fees is lame. Same mess as Ticketmaster. Annoying.

re: That's The Ticket!

petebanta@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:54:59 GMT

Live Nation's new ticketing system is a joke. I had tickets assigned to me several times today, gave them CC info and then... crash. Same for my wife, same for many friends.Over and over it offered my up to 4 tickets, and I would ask for only 1 only to then be told that there were no tickets. Huh? You offer 4, I ask for 1 (on the lawn, where there are plenty, obviously, or why did you offer me 4?) and then again... nothing. This went on for 3+ houtrs until choices dwindled and then the "No More Tix" page.

What the F?!?!? I mean, to ask for some and then have none is fine, but to get tix, get shown the seats, enter all the info and then have it crap out and send you back to try again, not once, but several times is total FAILURE. I have screen shots to prove it all. I expect that these tix will likely end up on brokerage sites. I smell something rotten here... :{

I noticed several places in the process of signing up (no email verification) that are not industry standard, and I wouldn't be surprised if organized hackers/scalpers were flooding the system and hogging the tix. The re-sale sites are already awash with tix costing 10x face value+. And the CAPTCHA... please, they can beat that now. Get a clue.

I think that Phish needs to go back to old-fashioned mail order for ALL tickets, to ensure that Phans are still getting them (and not just the well-to-do ones). They don't need Live Natrion to sell anything. Live Nation needs them to fill their venues. Why are you selling us out guys? Where is the love?

Peter Banta

Burlington, VT

Former Phish Employee

re: That's The Ticket!

tbowa41@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:32:51 GMT

Phish tickets for Alpine go on sale tomorrow. I doubt it that they learned their lessons today. I'd anticipate another rough go.

re: That's The Ticket!

bretrockstar@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:17:52 GMT

"Live Nation, which dropped Ticketmaster in favor of its own ticketing system earlier this month, is feeling the pinch today as a rush of fans seeking tickets for Phish’s summer tour slam the site. The system is rendering error messages and simply not loading for many customers as they attempt to checkout.

As usual, Twitter search tells the story best, as users voice their frustrations and vow to never use the service again"

mashable.com/.../live-nation-phish