Ticket Tunes

I love to hate on Apple. They just make it so easy, especially now a days. They seem to be eating up a lot of the good will they accumulated during the 90s from being the !(Microsoft) (not Microsoft, sorry to geek out there for a second), I am sure I will be posting some hate for them soon, but in this post I would like to rally my support of the rumor that Apple is going to incorporate ticket sales into iTunes.
I love this idea, mainly because I think that Ticketbastard needs all the competition it can get, the merger with Live Nation had stipulation for creating competition, but come on, there is really only 1 place to buy tickets and that place is Ticketmaster.
I hate TM and here are a 2 reasons why, not in any real order:
They cant handle the demand – they may have made some improvements to this recently, but on several occasions they were not able to keep up with the demand on the consumers and their web page kept crashing. I know some people that got all the way to the end of the ticket purchasing process only to have the page crash and the tickets be released because TM can’t deal with the demand. I find this to be unacceptable, either they needed to stagger the ticket releases so that the demand was spread out over a couple day or they need to make sure their damn infrastructure can handle all the people trying to give them money
The fees! – this might be my biggest problem. TM charges a ticket fee that in most cases is like 20% of the ticket price. You know I understand originally it was a convenience to be able to buy something on the internet, it was fast, and you didn’t have to get off your ass and go anywhere, but we live in a world now where buying things on the internet is not a convenience it’s the way it’s done. Now, I am not saying that TM can’t charge a fee, I mean they need to make money somehow (though I would bet if they really cared they could figure out a way to make money without the fees, but that is not the point). What I take issue with is the fact that it’s a per ticket fee! So if you buy several tickets they whack you for each one. Personally I think a better method would be to charge a fee for the whole transaction or use a micropayment scheme. I am not opposed to paying the fees, but I can’t stomach the idea that TM, which really doesn’t do anything but be a middle man, can charge so much when the service they are providing is well pretty limited. The real issue here is the price point of the fees, of course TM is going to charge as much as possible because well, what are you going to do, and there really isn’t any other competitor, especially not one that is branded so well. If you want tickets you are going to first check TM. The solution to this issue is a major competitor with branding and the infrastructure to take TM on, and I think Apple fits that bill perfectly.

Everyone know who Apple is, I would hazard to guess that most people between the ages of 15 and 30 have iTunes on their computer right now. Apple as least for me single handedly stopped me from really using pirating web pages like ISO Hunt and Pirate Bay because iTunes makes the music buying experience easy and painless. Apple already has a relationship with the music industry, and while its not perfect it’s a start. If Apple started to sell concert or sports tickets via iTunes they would instantly become a major competitors to TM and they could change the price point of the fees on tickets. This would hopefully exert pressure on TM to change their fee structure as well. If so everyone wins!
Now I don’t know if Apple would actually change the way fees work, they might just end up charging the same as TM but if they want to take business away from TM and to make themselves a player in the ticketing market they will have to do something to differentiate themselves and I think the fees are the place to do it. As I understand it TM get to sell 80% of the tickets at a particular venue, leaving 20% for the Artist or Record Label to sell. Based on that it should not really matter to the Artist or the Record Label who is selling the tickets as the seller is making their money on the fees per transactions. This means that unlike the sale of the actual music where the Artist and Label (more the Label) are affected by the price point in ticket sales it should not matter, and therefore Apple could really set whatever price point they want. Additionally just about every person that has iTunes already has a credit card stored with Apple, Apple has your address, and all the other information needed to transaction with you, granted TM has most of this info too, if you have bought tickets from them, but I find the ease of use of iTunes to trump the ease of use of TM.
I believe that part of the rumor is that Apple would then have the Ticket sent to your phone and you would show the phone at the turn stile to get into the show. This would cut down on the overhead of having to mail out the tickets, and it would make the tickets cheaper for the consumer who will no longer has to pay for the shipping of a piece of paper. I am sure if this is true then you would also be able to print the ticket in the event your phone can’t handle the transmission method.
I personally think that this is a great idea; however there are a couple draw backs. One is that it would bloat iTunes even further, currently according to my Add or Remove Programs iTunes is 160mb, which is pretty big . It would also give Apple more power than the currently do, and they have a tendency to do some “interesting” things within their eco-system. Just look at the changes to the developer agreement of App developers.
Over all I am in favor of this rumor becoming the truth, if only to create an actual competitor to TM, one with the capability and the branding to give them a run for their money, or in this case fees.