REZNOR GIVES UP ON THE RADIOHEAD RELEASE MODEL?

[ghettojournalist]

I've got 600 comics (lots of X-Men & Spider-Man) from the '90s that I've been looking to unload to help pay some of the expenses from a movie I made last year. Might you be interested, or have connects with a comic book retailer that could be?

i could ask around. there are plenty of shops over here that might look to get some back catalogue. pm me with an inventory of what you have plus their condition and i can start shopping it around. also, are you open to smaller bundles of comics or is this an all or nothing deal?

lastly, what's stopped you from shopping around your collection before?

[thelastgreatman]

thats an interesting study. so i didnt read the whole thing, just your summary, and bits n pieces of it that i skimmed through. so here is my initial thoughts:

first of all, just to put things in perspective, as you mention, they have a limited sample number. this includes ONLY ebay and stubhub. not only that, but its only from sellers they classify as ticket brokers, which they define as anybody who has 10 or more ticket auctions. so, not only did they leave out all other online outlets all together, but they also left out sales from the broker's actual stores, AND from all the small time douches who bought up some extra tickets to the show with the intent of selling them to make cash. so...its hard to say how much of actual scalping is represented in this sample. according to you (or maybe you are just referring to them), its about half. id guess its less than half, but thats just speculation.

most importantly, you keep mentioning the amount of profit they make, but thats not really what concerns me. what i care about is the percentage of total tickets that are resold. so here is one section i read that relates to that:

"We observe about 69,000 of the tickets purchased in the primary market being resold at eBay or StubHub (i.e. 3.9% of the number of tickets). As shown in Table 1, the maximum number of tickets resold for a given event is 3,130, or 17% of the tickets sold in the primary market. For most events the fraction of tickets resold is between 2% and 5%."

so assuming its just half of the actual scalped tickets, that means that for most events, the precentage of tickets resold is between 4% and 10%. dont you think 10% is a huge percentage?? I fucking do! and thats just "most shows". the max was 34%!!! (assuming we double their number of 17%). Thats a fucking 1/3 of the tickets!! and yes, im sure some shows they included in the study had like 0% - 1%. but who gives a fuck about those shows anyway. obviously those shows arent very high demand, so this argument doesnt apply to them. im talking about the shows that sell out right away, the shows that I would guess make up the high end of the spectrum of shows they sampled.

so in conclusion, we see that scalpers actually do take a good chunk of the tickets from the fans, just to resell them. this is pretty much what i said in the first place, and you have just helped show that you and your scalper buddies have been officially proven to be pieces of shit by stanford. its official! i win. thanks for playing.

They observed 3.9 percent of all the tickets available sold through Ebay and Stubhub, and although it is impossible to say how what percentage of total resold tickets those two outlets account for the general consensus is somewhere between one third and one half. So the high end of the true reasonable average is about 11.7 percent. Is that exorbitantly high? Actually, I don't think so at all.

For one, you failed to read exactly what shows they were taking their data from--they intentionally only used large concerts by major acts so that they would be guaranteed to see the highest levels of scalper activity in their data.

The artists are Aerosmith, Dave Matthews Band, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffet, John Mayer, Josh Groban, Kenny Chesney, Kid Rock, Madonna, Phish, Prince, Rush, Sarah McLachlan, Shania Twain, Sting, Tim McGraw, Usher, and Van Halen.

The data still stands, but let's at least acknowledge that their figures are culled from the absolute most scalped shows of the year they studied.

And yes, I think that the revenue figures are very important, because unless these tickets are being resold at a profit I do not see how it truly qualifies as this great evil that is scalping you're railing against. 28 percent of all resold tickets are sold below face value, which has to be acknowledged as a mitigating factor--scalpers are providing a savings to almost a third of their customers. They estimate the secondary revenue of these shows as 6 percent of the primary revenue, so even buying into the most extreme estimation of their sample data as one third of the total that makes for 18 percent. At an average of 40 percent over face value, this gives us another verifier of how many tickets are probably truly resold--10 percent.

10 percent shocks and horrifies you? Really? The absolute most scalped shows of the year had an average of 10 percent scalp rate and you're offended? Considering that that more or less guarantees any show less popular than these is seeing below 1/10th scalped tickets, I'm quite fine with it actually. You do realize that those dirty evil scalpers don't get most of their tickets during the onsale, right? We get them from fans who realize that by luck of the draw they happened across something worth more money than they paid for it, or who can't use the tickets anymore and don't want to be bothered trying to sell it to someone themselves. No lie--I worked for one of these bastards, it's the truth. My office pulled maybe a handful of tickets from onsales for any given show because only the really desirable seats are worth speculating. The rest come from other fans who just can't use them and don't see why their good fortune shouldn't net them a little profit to offset not getting to see the show.

Seriously, what do you want to do about it? This is a capitalist society. People are willing to pay 500 dollars to be front row at some shows, the tickets cost somewhere around a hundred. Are you seriously going to rail against anyone who takes advantage of that considering that 90 percent of the tickets are still going to fans? 10 percent of the fans who wanted to pay 100 dollars don't get to go, another 10 percent who are willing to pay more do. Shouldn't you be able to throw enough money at something to get the best treatment in America of all places? And someone please explain to me why this is any different than selling collectibles?

[Sexecutioner]

while those are all big names, i dont think that guarantees that those shows are the most scalped. its not just how big a band is, its a combination things i think that creates a high demand show. size of the venue, how many shows that band is playing, when was the last time they toured, etc. some of those bands tour so much that i think they value of seeing them decreases a bit. whatever though, all that is beside the point.

so we can agree that 10% is a good estimate to the average percentage of tickets re-sold to any popular show? well i think this is the bottom line, and i think thats a lot. and you dont, so we agree to disagree.

and i dont really give a shit that lots of those tickets resold were sold under face value. the bottom line for me is that they are still grabbing tickets out of the general pool when they go onsale...tickets that might have been mine. id rather pay full price than have to deal with the extra effort of going through the process of finder a seller online for maybe 10 bucks less.

as for how many they acquire at the initial on sale time, even though you say they take way less than that 10%, you are admitting that they only take the best tickets, which is the ones im pissed about. those tickets should go to the people who work hardest to get them, fair and square, not the people with the most money.

yes, this is a capitalistic society, blah blah blah, but i just believe there are some things, such as music/art, that should not be ruled by money. yea, i know its idealistic, but just cuz its legal, or cuz everybody else does it, doesnt make it right dude. i know you have no morals, so im wasting my breath, but whatever.

you ask what i want to do about it? there are plenty of things that can be done, but not by me. first i think all states should make scalping illegal. but if thats not going to happen, then i think bands should make sure they take measures to prevent it as much as possible. some already do, like pearl jam reserving all the best seats in the house for their fan club, or like smashing pumpkins during their fillmore shows, when they made a 2 ticket limit, all will call, and made everybody show their ID to pick up their ticket, then walk in the door right then. i believe glastonbury makes every ticket sold correspond to a photo ID, or something similar. all this shit is a step in the right direction, but more bands need to get off their asses and do the same.

as for collectibles, who give a shit about collectibles? i dont. i give a shit about live music. and it pisses me off when greedy fucks like you screw me out of a good ticket to see a band i love just so you can make a buck.

[C DUB YA]

More about the RH cd release and the figures for the cd sales and such...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/ar...in&oref=slogin

[Sexecutioner]

More about the RH cd release and the figures for the cd sales and such...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/ar...in&oref=slogin

way to get the thread back on track cdub...sorry for the hijack.

this part is a little disturbing to me:

"But the band still came out ahead, he said, in part because it attracted so many fans to Radiohead’s Web site, where it collected e-mail addresses from fans looking to acquire the album."

[thelastgreatman]

Before I respond to the whole thing, what about this that I brought up in the other thread?

Here's one thing about the idea of making scalping completely illegal or whatever it is anti-scalping folks would like done: how would you feel if there was a show you absolutely HAD to go to, your dream concert--like all the members of Pink Floyd reuniting for one show at your favorite venue (if Floyd is your thing, if not insert whatever is). It sells out in a matter of seconds, you were not lucky and didn't get a ticket.

So now... what? You would prefer a system where if you don't get a ticket in the onsale and aren't lucky enough to find someone willing to give theirs up for face value... you're just shit out of luck? Should it be done like Glastonbury where no one can transfer tickets at all, each one is registered to your name and you have to show ID and so if you're unlucky you're just fucked?

If there's a show that's so important to you that you would scrimp and save and go into debt to put forth as much money as it took to get front row seats... doesn't scalping serve a purpose? You get what you're willing to pay for. Most people get theirs through the onsale, those that don't get to decide how much getting those tickets is truly worth to them. If I want to see that Floyd one-off so bad that I'm willing to pay 10,000 I don't understand why in the fuck I shouldn't be able to.

[Sexecutioner]

Before I respond to the whole thing, what about this that I brought up in the other thread?

we should just take this to the other thread anyway...ill respond over there.

[C DUB YA]

way to get the thread back on track cdub...sorry for the hijack.

this part is a little disturbing to me:

"But the band still came out ahead, he said, in part because it attracted so many fans to Radiohead’s Web site, where it collected e-mail addresses from fans looking to acquire the album."

no worries.

[microcuts]

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9847788-1.html

An interesting read. Crave interviewed Trent in detail about Saul's album. He did a good job elaborating on the results and why he's not entirely disappointed about the outcome. He does kind of semi blast Radiohead, however, for saying that because they haven't released official numbers for their sales, it lets them put whatever kind of spin on it they want as nobody else knows what the numbers are.