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Archive for the tag “hey violet”

04 Feb 2016

Ticket Re-selling. Agencies like Stubhub. What do we think? Please vote

There is little doubt that these agencies are wanted by people and are used. They more or less guarantee that one can buy a ticket, albeit at a price over the face value. Many concerts these days do sell out and if fans are prepared to sacrifice their tickets for money that seems reasonable enough. Or does it?

Two things concern me that mitigate some of the above

Some people buy tickets through setting up numerous email addresses and credit cards with the sole purpose of re-selling the tickets. To be fair sellers do try and limit this by imposing various maximum number of tickets limits on what they can do.
That some of these agencies are in fact run by the primary ticket sellers themselves. Is this a problem? Maybe. Lets give an example where it is a problem. I was buying tickets, or attempting to, for a concert where ” presale” tickets went on sale 9 am wednesday morning. Resale codes and knowledge of such sales tend to go the fan clubs and those that follow the mailings or accounts of the various bands. No issue with that. Real fans deserve a chance to buy first, if they have been buying the records, merchandise etc. However by 10 am tickets were already on sale on the re-selling market websites confirming that in fact some buyers had zero intention of doing anything other than selling their tickets on at a large profit. That same company owned both the selling of the tickets and the re-selling , so they were clearly complicit in this. The remainder of the tickets then went on sale friday 9 am. I will not cite the actual company nor event simply because this is common . However An example might be Seatwave.com who are a re-selling company and are part of Ticketmaster as are GetMeIn. For those not so familiar it is not uncommon for such tickets to be priced well over £100 and sometimes over £500. A random example right now on SeatWave.com. Tickets for Noel Gallagher in Liverpool 25th April 2016 are found ranging from £52-£150.

This morning I got an email from Stubhub.

Dear Chris,

Stand Up For Your Right To Buy And Sell Tickets

The Government have launched an independent review into the laws around event ticket resale, and event organisers are pushing hard for new laws which will restrict your right to buy and resell spare tickets at the last minute for sold out events.

We believe that fans should be free to resell tickets for events which they can no longer attend, especially when they are routinely denied refunds by event organisers.

We have therefore launched a petition calling for a clear legal right for fans to be able to resell spare tickets without restrictive terms and conditions being imposed by event organisers.

If you value the right to buy and sell tickets safely and securely on a website of your choice, please lend your voice to our campaign and sign our petition.

Thank you for your support.

The StubHub Team

Should I sign this petition? Part of me wants to as there needs to be a market to indeed sell on unwanted tickets. But a larger part of me says that by doing so I am propagating the exact issue that I have highlighted above.

What is really required is a middle ground where re-selling of tickets cannot take place until all the tickets have been sold, where different companies act as sellers and re-sellers, so there can be no actual nor perceived conflict of interest and whereby somehow those that buy to sell are somehow dissuaded from doing this.

This is becoming an increasingly important market, concert tickets and it is important that the real fans can always have a fair chance of getting tickets. Logging onto a website at 9 am and being told at 9.05 am that all the tickets have gone is curious as there are few events that truly this will happen for. So have a read, have a think, if you have teenagers who are concert goers as them their views and vote in my poll.

Please share this too, as it is important that this gets discussed openly and clearly, as there are far more issues than Stubhub might want us to consider before signing their petition.

Finally there is an additional issue which impinges on the above. That some tickets for concerts never actually go on sale. They are sold separately at higher price. This is not so relevant to the above issues but will of course inflate prices if fewer tickets are sold at anything like the face value of the ticket. Ticketmaster are an example here. and i quote from their website

“About Ticketmaster Platinum

What are Platinum Tickets?
Platinum Tickets are some of the best available tickets to concerts and other events made available by artists and event organisers though Ticketmaster. They give fans fair and safe access to some of the best seats in the house at market driven prices.

Are Platinum Tickets resale tickets?
No these are not resale tickets. Platinum Tickets are being sold for the very first time through Ticketmaster. The prices are adjusted according to supply and demand, similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold. The goal is to give the most passionate fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while allowing the artists and everyone involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true value.

Why can’t I buy Platinum Tickets for certain events?
Currently Platinum Tickets are not available for all events. Be sure to check Ticketmaster often as new events are continually being added.”

18 Jan 2016

This is a Birmingham Day

Just a selection of photographs from recent visits to educate ourselves that preconceptions are not always correct. We need to open our eyes and see maybe what else is around that we missed.

Birmingham Street Food

Pond at the NEC Birmingham

Birmingham Graffiti. The Best

Posted in architecture, graffiti, Uncategorized and tagged birmingham, birmingham graffiti, birmingham mosque, birmingham photos, birmingham street food, brentford, brentford fc, dog, foot long hot dogs, graffiti, graffiti in birmingham, hey violet, life birmingham, living in birmingham, lower dartmouth street, murder, near football ground, NEC, NEC Birmingham, NEC pond, NEC pond lillies, parking football ground birmingham, photo foot long hot dog, photos birmingham, photos mosque, photos of birmingham, small heath, street food, vacation | Leave a comment

12 Oct 2015

The Association between Pete Wentz and Teenage Madness. Fall Out Boy and Fall Out Girls.

Pete Wentz is the 36 year old bassist and backing vocalist for the American band Fall Out Boy , currently in the middle of a UK tour. By all media accounts a decent guy with two children with interesting names.Bronx Mowgli Wentz, Saint Lazslo Wentz. On sunday Oct 1th Fall Out boy play SSE Wembley venue in the evening and last week on some twitter account it was advertised, though quietly that Pete Went would be holding a “meet and greet” with a limited number of fans sunday lunchtime. There was little said on Twitter about this probably because on each of friday, saturday and sunday, the wristbands for the “meet and greet” were only available each day to the first 40 people who each bough at least £25 of “merch” from a pop up shop in Camden town called ” Rock and Roll Rescue”. Hence on each of the last three days there have been queues with some people queueing all night for the prize of being in the first 40 people in the queue. The shop is an unassuming shop not far from Camden Underground station that is run as a charity shop however for the 3 days they have packed their merchandise away to turn it essentially into a shrine to Fall Out Boy filled with various T-shirts, hoodies and other “merch”.

Driving up sunday morning and arriving at 7 am on a cold and slightly foggy morning the sight of precisely 33 people in the queue was a welcome sight to the two 15 year olds hoping to get their wristbands. The girls at the front of the queue had been there since 2 am and most likely were students from near by University College. Others too had camped out on cold UK nights previously . A few funny stories emerge of guys finding that the shops facility to take credit cards had broken and dashing off like Usain bolt to the nearest cashpoint in order to get the needed 25£ minimum for the wristband. At 7.30 am on friday there were maybe only 10 souls in the queue, on saturday by 7 am there were 27 and by 7 am sunday there were 33. It is also worth observing that the first underground train into Camden on a sunday does not arrive until 7.30 am and one imagines a fair few disappointed fans on that train well outside of the magic number of 40 . An excellent idea that was attributed to the girls at the front of the queue was to mark hands with the number one was in the queue. This prevented queue jumping, and indeed two people thought this was an acceptable thing to attempt. They failed. It also meant that those outside the top 40 were not waiting uncessarily for 3 hours or more.

Why do rational and intelligent teenagers do this? Clearly a focus on the band and the music, but there is an ever increasing market for the merchandise (“merch”) that all bands purvey. Is this a pure commercial thing to meet the fans only if they bought merchandise or is it an attempt to give something back to those genuine fans who follow the band ( as maybe proven by their purchases)? I favour the later. That Pete Wentz will take the time to meet individually 120 predominantly female teenagers and sign an item for them, and no doubt pose for a photograph, cannot be cost-effective if that is the pure motivation. Again if only 40 lucky souls get their wristbands each day it cannot be an attempt to drive custom to this temporary pop up shop.

This “meet and greet” here is for me mainly altruistic and other bands like All Time Low have done a similar thing at a small record shop in Kingston , surrey recently. There is also another kind of more commercial activity where for a far higher price one gets ” temporary exclusive access” to a band or their members, before a concert. These are often labelled VIP tickets or similar, or sometimes access to soundchecks. For example 5SOS did this recently.

However the best “meet and greet ” I am aware of is by the band Hey Violet. Where the day after their concerts they do free acoustic sets, and OK, they play a single song, but they then allow everyone to meet them and have their photograph taken all free. I got the opportunity to take some photographs a while ago of their London acoustic set at SSE Wemble

Queue Fall Out Boy Pop Up Shop London October 2015 to meet Pete Wentz

Signed Pete Wentz Drawing. Copyright Chris Bushe 2015

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged 5 SOS, acoustic set, acoustic set hey violet, Bronx Mowgli Wentz, camden, camden music, camden town, fall out boy, fall out girls, FOB, FOB drawings, FOB merch, hey violet, hey violet acoustic set, hey violet you tube, hi or hey records, https://arcticterntalk.org/2015/06/22/hey-violet-usa-band/, merch, nia, nia lovelis, pete wentz, photo rena, photos hey violet, pop-up shop, rena lovelis, rock and roll rescue, rock and roll rescue camden, Saint Lazslo Wentz, SSE, SSE Wembley | Leave a comment

22 Jun 2015

1 Comment

Hey Violet – USA Band

Hey Violet are the first band that 5SOS have signed to their own record label. They originate from LA and have been described as punk rockers. Until December 2014 they were known as Cherri Bomb. The group was formed in 2008 as Cherri Bomb while its members were still in middle school and originally consisted of Julia Pierce (lead vocals, guitar), Miranda Miller (guitar, vocals) Rena Lovelis (bass guitar, vocals) and Nia Lovelis (drums, vocals). Pierce departed the band in 2013, and was replaced by Casey Moreta (guitar, vocals), before changing their name to Hey Violet in 2015, and signed to Hi Or Hey Records. As Cherri Bomb, they were signed to Hollywood Records, and released their first and so far, only, studio album This Is the End of Control in 2012.

The cute thing is that they did a short acoustic sets outside Wembley SSE arena and other European venues and USA/Canada venues as part of their tour with 5SOS during June/July 2015 where these photographs were taken allowing fans to be photographed with them. Nice people and nice band, and the music, surprisingly good. still however waiting for them to appear on spotify. On the March 19, they released their new single “This Is Why”. Although an undoubtedly pretty band, they can play good music and clearly thats the view too of other bands and promoters. The band were opening acts for rock bands, including Bush, Camp Freddy, Filter, Foo Fighters, The Smashing Pumpkins, Staind and Steel Panther.