How to Concert: Getting Tickets

I like music. I like going to concerts. This is part one of, I don’t know, a lot of parts. It is about getting tickets. This is how I do it. In bulleted lists. Mostly.

Deciding to go

For one reason or another you have a dilemma: should I see this band/artist live? These things might help you make the decision:

• You should find some live footage on YouTube, but keep in mind that most recordings on YouTube are shot by semi-inhebriated youngins who are very excited about either the band or sharing their own fabulousness or both
• Check out setlist.fm to see how much this band has been touring and what songs have they been performing
• Create a spotify playlist from their current touring setlist and put it into your earholes
• Don’t do anything and just go cold. I saw Punch Brothers this way for the first time. It was awesome. Pieces of my feeble mind are still somewhere inside The Fillmore.

Keep in mind that some performances you may want to consider for reasons other than (or in addiotion to) music: unique audience comradery (like Phish), great multi-media (like Nine Inch Nails, muse), stage antics (like Flaming Lips), or even major tensions among those on-stage (like the Black Crowes / Oasis Brotherly Love tour).

Getting tickets

If all you have to do is pay cover at the door and there are no advance tickets:

• Bring cash. Pay with cash. Don’t bring credit cards or checkbooks or Venmo or PayPal. Bring cold hard cash.
• Some jazz clubs, like Blue Note in NYC, may require a minimum drink purchase. Bring cash for that too because you will pay for your ticket and the drinks at the door. You’ll get drink tickets that you will later redeem at the bar.
• If you show up early, you are more likely to get in and will get a better place viewpoint, but will have to hang around for a bit. Maybe suffer through an opening band.

If tickets for your event go on sale in advance:

• See if the band has an advance sale. Many jambands such as Gov’t Mule, Phish, Umphrey’s McGee will either sell you tickets via their website or enter you into a lottery before the general onsale. You will save on Ticketma$ter/LiveNation fees, and the band will see more of your money
• Some bands have fan clubs you can join (for free or for fee). Sometimes you can get better seats that way. Tom Petty does that, for example. I’ve never joined any fan club for this purpose. You’re on your own here
• Check out the promoter for the show: they might have a presale through Ticketma$ter/LiveNation the day before general on-sale. Another Planet Entertainment, for example does this all the time.
• Take a look at the reddit forums for the band; presales get publicized there too.
• Frequently there is a mobile-only presale via Ticketma$ter or LiveNation. Those aren’t advertized much anymore. This means you should download and install Ticketma$ter and LiveNation apps on your mobile phone. Log into your account a couple of days before general on-sale date. Check it out
• You should hit on Ticketma$ter / LiveNation website/mobile app the moment tickets go on sale. There are slew of things you can do to maximize your chances. I haven’t called their phone numbers in a decade+ so I can’t help you with that, but you can always try

Maximizing your chances with Ticketma$ter / LiveNation

• Use your mobile device; I don’t know why but I almost always get better seats using mobile instead of a web browser.
• Ticketma$ter/LiveNation will trickle tickets out throughout the first 15min — 45min of the on-sale window. Better tickets don’t get released first. What gets pushed out first are lawn tickets for amphitheaters and back of the room for indoor venues.
• You can also ask your friends and/or family to get tickets along with you. I’ve only done this for shows that are absolutely undeniably guaranteed to be the hottest ticket ever like the 2017 Radiohead tour.

The show is sold out, but I still want to go

There are plenty of ways to get tickets to a sold-out show without going to StubHub or other online scaplers. You can always do it and pony up a bunch of dough, but try to embrace the face first.

Getting into the sold-out weekday shows tends to be easier than the weekend shows. I think that’s because when people get excited they overcommit, and then they have to get rid of the extra tickets. This happens more often on weekdays and for shows at wealthy suburb venues like the Saratoga Winery.

This is how I go about getting tickets to sold-out shows. I am not always successful, but each of these have worked for me more than once:

• Check Ticketma$ter/LiveNation at 10am, noon, and 2pm every day during the week prior to the show. Promoters often hold on to some tickets for various promotional reasons. They dump the left-overs on Ticketma$ter. Some of the best seats I’ve bought have been through getting lucky during these last minute releases.
• Check for ads on craigslist, nextdoor, and other places.
• Join cashortrade.org a non-profit community of concert-goers who buy and sell tickets only for face value. They have a mobile app and a website.

Getting tickets on the sidewalk

If you are unlucky with the above bullet points, and it is the day of the show, then…

1. Go to the venue the day of the show and see if you can score a ticket on the sidewalk. Yup, this violates the social norms of don’t have ticket; don’t come to the show.
2. Bring cash; not a checkbook or Venmo or PayPal; bring some cash. Am I repeating myself?
3. Mill around as people arrive at the venue (not where they walk into the concert hall, but where they arrive!), and you might get lucky especially if you are an attractive young person (hint: if you are a couple, the cute one will have more luck). You might find another fellow concert-goer who has an extra.

If you can’t find another concert-goer, you can still get a ticket for a reasonable price, but it might require a bit of social skills. If the fans have no tickets to sell, the scalpers almost certainly do. This works even better in bad weather:

1. Identify two or more scalpers. It is easy to identify them. They don’t quite fit in with the crowd milling outside. They don’t look like they are heading into the show. They are always dudes. They frequently have well-worn hand-made signs that say tickets wanted (that is because in order to scalp tickets, they need to buy them first)
2. Wait until the show starts
3. Watch a scalper start walking away from the venue
4. Catchup with the scalper; ask him what’s his best ticket
5. Haggle for a good price. Keep in mind that he’s already put the fork into his night, and this ticket he is selling is padding up his profits or minimizing the losses.
6. If you’re not having luck with this scalper, catch up with another.

However, ultimately, you should be preapared to head home empty-handed.

A word of caution

You might get sold fake tickets. There are two kinds of fake tickets, forged and already used:

• A forged physical ticket. I haven’t seen one since the 90s, and I’ve only seen them in New York City. These can be hard to identify, and they aren’t as common as they used to be before the days of electronic tickets.
• A forged electronic ticket. I have never seen one, but have heard of one person getting a bogus PDF.
• A legitimate, but an already scanned physical or electronic ticket. These are the most frequent. I’ve never been a vicitim of those, but a couple of my friends have been. And in both cases, they bought their ticket near the entrace into the venue. So you might get one of these if you are trying to score on the sidewalk. It helps to buy your ticket in such a way that you walk into the venue with the person who is selling it to you. If that person starts acting shady and not wanting to go in with you, ask them if they are willing to stop by the box office to verify the ticket. If not, perhaps you are looking a fake one.