Are 'In Demand' tickets kosher or cursed?

Do you buy them? Would you? Or should the whole situation get straight in the bin?

It’s a carnival.

It’s a minefield.

Sorry to get all Dr Seuss on you, but it’s an icky, sticky, tricky, shifty, slippery, sneaky, confusing, confounding, confuddling situation.

When you decide to buy a concert ticket these days, there are so many decisions to make.

The whole process goes something like this.

First, you need to decide which ticket-selling window you want to join.

• Do you join the fan club, sign up to the promoter’s website, apply for a Mastercard, or purchase Spotify Premium to access any of the pre-sales?

• Or, do you risk waiting for tickets to go on general release a few days later?

Once you’ve made that choice, you need to decide what kind of ticket you want to buy for your chosen show.

• Do you want to be in the moshpit, front and centre, on the floor?

• Or do you want to be in the seats? But which seats? On the side? Near the front? Or, like me, for June’s Seinfeld show, as far from the stage as possible?

Finally, you need to decide which ticketing tier is for you.

This is where things can get murky.

• Often, there are general release tickets at semi-normal prices;

• Then there are ‘In Demand’ tickets at much higher prices.

What are In Demand tickets?

Great question.

Ticketmaster describes them like this:

“In Demand Tickets are tickets to concerts and other events made available by artists and event organisers through Ticketmaster. They give fans fair and safe access to sought after seats at market driven prices.”

Robert Smith, front man for The Cure, describes them like this:

“IT IS A GREEDY SCAM.”

In Demand tickets are another example of “dynamic pricing” or “surge pricing”, a cursed sales technique becoming more and more common across many industries.

Uber does it. So too does Air New Zealand. Some London pubs do it, and there was an outcry when Wendy’s suggested it might start doing it as well.

Basically, it’s yet another way of charging you more money.

It seems to work like this: When demand is high, prices go up. When demand is low, well, those prices still seem to stay pretty high.

Let’s take SZA tickets as an example.

I had an absolute shocker trying to get two floor tickets in the pre-sales as Ticketmaster cancelled my order but still charged me anyway.

Those tickets were priced at the normal everyday price of $249.90.

But I also had the option of choosing ‘In Demand’ tickets – the exact same tickets – for the much higher price of $449.90.

Some seated In Demand tickets for SZA were even more, costing $549.90.

That is a lot of money.

But these aren’t VIP tickets, or resale tickets, or scalped tickets, or, heaven forbid, Viagogo tickets. They’re prices charged by Ticketmaster, the official seller for many major events held in New Zealand, and the biggest ticketing agency we have.

SZA isn’t the only show this happens for.

Right now, you can get In Demand tickets costing $274.90 to see Ali Wong in July, In Demand tickets costing $274.80 for a Twenty One Pilots’ show in November, and “PJ Premium” tickets costing $449.90 for Pearl Jam’s show that same week.

Those tickets have been priced that way for weeks and no one’s taken them. There are also much cheaper tickets available for all those shows. So they’re hardly “in demand”.

Yet the same thing happened for Chris Stapleton last week too, with huge uptake for the country star’s two Spark Arena shows in March that sold out in minutes.

Floor tickets were available for $299.90.

In Demand tickets – again, the same tickets – were available for $499.90.

When you log into Ticketmaster, In Demand tickets are the first ones chosen. If you’re in a rush and panicking after sitting in a digital queue for several minutes, I can imagine some grabbing the first ticket they can find.

I cannot see a situation where I was desperate enough to pay double the normal price of a concert ticket to see an artist I really loved.

I can’t afford to, and I don’t want to.

So, please, help me out and chime in here.

Do you think In Demand ticket prices are fair and reasonable and honest and OK?

Could you ever foresee a situation where you were desperate enough to pay those whopping prices?

Or is it a sketchy situation that you’re angry about?

If you want to swear and shout and yell and complain about the whole situation, go all in.

You won’t offend me.

• Meanwhile, this just happened…

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Everything you need to know…

• The Serato sale decision has been delayed again. We now need to wait until May 8 to find out if AlphaTheta, the owner of Pioneer, is allowed to purchase the New Zealand DJ software company in a controversial sale. This is the fourth time the Commerce Commission has delayed its decision. For more, I’ve taken a behind-the-scenes look at Serato for Metro. There’s a lot of great music journalism in the new issue, including a visit to the St James, and an excellent chat with Lontalius.

• The finalists for the Aotearoa Music Awards have been confirmed, with Tom Scott looking like a likely contender in several categories thanks to Avantdale Bowling Club’s Trees, and Home Brew’s Run it Back. The full list is here.

• John Minty, Splore’s founder who’s taking next year off, has confirmed what I suggested: there are too many events and not enough tickets being sold. “People are being very careful with where they spend their money,” he tells RNZ.

• Thieves keep stealing CD covers from Wellington’s Slow Boat Records. “We would very much like for it to stop,” owner Jeremy Taylor tells Stuff.

• Stereogum’s excellent ongoing Number Ones series has finally reached Lorde’s ‘Royals’ and it’s a great read. “Time stopped. The radio seemed to shimmer and throb. The music was barely there, just snaps and bloops and empty space. The voice sounded distant and mysterious, and it also sounded like someone whispering in your ear,” writes Tom Breihan.

• The big concert announcements just keep landing: Greta Van Fleet will play Spark Arena on August 30, tickets are on sale now; Ne-Yo and Lloyd will play Spark Arena on October 5, pre-sales begin tomorrow; and Che Fu and the Kratez will play Auckland’s Town Hall with Auckland’s Philharmonia for a Matariki show on June 27. That sounds awesome. Tickets are here.

• Finally, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Coachella livestream and while many moments have bounced around my brain (Grimes’ meltdown! Doja Cat’s yeti costumes! Clown Core!) it’s the Sunday set from Jockstrap I’ve been thinking about the most. It hasn’t been loaded online so you’ll have to make do with their song ‘Good Girl’. You can catch them when weekend two kicks off on Saturday…