‘High-stakes stress’: Insane pic proves Aussie industry is ‘broken’

This photo reveals the extreme lengths ordinary Aussies are forced to go to in order to buy tickets in 2024 – and it’s not good enough.

OPINION

Five laptops, several phones, three people, one cat, a giant whiteboard and hours of high-stakes stress.

No, we weren’t trying to hack into a website, broker a major business deal or complete our tax return just before the deadline.

This set up was all with the supposedly fun aim of scoring just two tickets to one of Taylor Swift’s shows.

Concert ticketing is currently in the news for all the wrong reasons, largely thanks to the ABC’s Four Corners program running an exposé of how deeply Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, is intertwined throughout the music industry.

This is no longer an industry insider issue only affecting bands and venues.

Vivienne’s daughter (right, plus cat) and her friend during Operation Taylor. Picture: Supplied

A law firm is considering class action over “dynamic pricing”. The negative impacts on the live music scene has reached the federal government level, with the Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, expressing concern, and the US government is also suing Live Nation for anti-competitive behaviour.

I’d like to add into any inquiry that the process of buying tickets is just as broken as the music industry.

I confess I had some fun during the Taylor ticket afternoon. We crossed our fingers to the tune of Taylor songs while my daughter and her friend filled me in on her different eras and how she’d rerecorded albums in order to reclaim copyright over her songs.

I felt like I was part of a major cultural event, with my friend chats and social media feeds full of people on a similar quest (including people skipping school, work and meetings – I reckon the loss of productivity that afternoon was calculable).

My daughter recalls the afternoon differently.

She had no fun until one of our laptops (ironically, the one that logged on last) hit the jackpot and two tickets were secured.

Success from the Taylor ticket lottery. Picture: Supplied

Then there was screaming, jumping, messaging and the music was turned up loud.

I had much less fun while we repeated it all, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, for tickets for Olivia Rodrigo, who played several high energy shows in Melbourne last weekend and will be in Sydney over the coming week.

We spent those hours hoping almost beyond hope that the never-ending status bar would click through to actually being able to choose tickets. Each device got kicked out of the Ticketek platform multiple times.

Again, we hit a stroke of luck, but only after facing the incredible stress of having just 10 minutes to choose tickets on an unwieldy platform, then having to make instant huge decisions when it became clear that only very expensive VIP options were available.

The ultimate irony?

Taylor Swift caused a frenzy in Australia. Picture: David Gray/AFP

People queued outside Ticketek’a office on Exhibition Street in Melbourne last year for Taylor Swift tickets. Picture NCA NewsWire/Aaron Francis

It took us longer to get tickets than it did to listen to every single song Olivia Rodrigo has ever recorded.

I get that buying tickets for mega events will never be a totally smooth process. I remember the days of queuing in person outside ticket offices (including the time friends persuaded me to queue for Bon Jovi, a band I didn’t even like, because the tickets went on sale on my rostered day off work — luckily, it ended up being one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to).

Thanks to having worked five laptops plus phones simultaneously, I’d already pretty much figured out what Ticketek later admitted – that there is no queue and instead, tickets are allocated on a random basis.

So, to Ticketmaster and Ticketek alike, how about putting some of our hard-earned money spent on tickets towards improving your online platforms? Or, embrace the lottery concept fully by allowing people to put in their preferences calmly ahead of time, then drawing out the winners?

We still might (or might not) get tickets, but at least we won’t have wasted several stressful hours in their pursuit.

Vivienne Pearson is a freelance writer

Originally published as ‘High-stakes stress’: Insane pic proves Aussie industry is ‘broken’