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We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in bot

We replaced Ticketmaster for fan club tix to Prince's Musicology tour. Ticketmaster wasn't set up to handle the unique setup Prince wanted, popular tour in both arena and intimate venues with scheduled sales. When all Prince's music club fans were trying to buy the tickets to a 300 seat venue at 12 noon on a Friday, Ticketmaster had trouble. Prince being Prince ditched the studio for his music, and bypassed Ticketmaster for his tickets, for what he wanted to do. Over the course of a few weeks, working for his incredibly talented and creative webmaster Sam Jennings, we built and hosted a system that could handle the flash traffic and sell the correct number of NPGMusicClub tickets for these small venues in the milliseconds the event started. Musicology Live 2004ever went on to do $87.4 million from 77 shows in 52 cities across the United States, selling more than 1.4 million tickets. It didn't occur to us we should make a business out of having been able to do that. But being 6 feet from his guitar playing in Webster Hall NYC is quite the memory, so no regrets.

roland35 3y ago
Nice story. Prince really did things his own way, sad we lost him
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
There ought to be (separately): - A talent-owned, co-op live music ticket and venue platform - A talent-owned, co-op music streaming service on all the devices (Spotify as the benchmark, Tidal is better quality but less convenient) - A talent-owned, co-op label Pick any or all 3. The only way to get money back to the creators is for them to own it because the megacorps never will give more than pennies without a fight. The major are only have the perception of a lock on distribution by the inertia of popularity that celebrity influencers can readily overcome.
leehuffman 3y ago
Erm except AEG promoted that whole tour (and the too few beyond it – RIP Prince) and is a replica of, and/or, the only direct competitor of Live Nation. That's a weird example to pick out, as if Prince was 'fighting the system', and yet I'm sure you know he exclusively signed & got paid up-front from the 2nd positioned monopoly in the game. Cool story that you got to sit side stage and wrote code behind his fan club ticketing (which I'm sure you and AMEX shared for <= 7% total tickets sold, and AEG _definitely_ didn't finance as part of the exclusivity deal on the whole run) but come on... I know you know all you've done is present an alternative story that's supposed to garner upvotes but anyone who knows, knows you were the next one in line to fuck this entire industry and rake it off top. Edit: Google says fans also know. https://prince.org/msg/7/247733 https://prince.org/msg/7/247733
- jbotdev 3y ago
  It’s weird to complain about supporting AEG claiming they’re somehow the 2nd “monopoly” after LiveNation. You can only have one “monopoly” in a given industry, otherwise they’re both just close competitors. Having a close second competitor is still a step in the right direction, even if you disagree with their business practices.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    That’s not true. You can have two or more companies share a market via market splitting and the result is still effectively a monopoly.
    - themaninthedark 3y ago
      That would be a duopoly not a monopoly.
      - CPLX 3y ago
        Perhaps. It still sucks for the same reasons.
  - leehuffman 3y ago
    Fine. I used the wrong term. You can't argue anything else I wrote outside of the word "monopoly" though, sooooo...
- rusk 3y ago
  > I know you know all you've done is present an alternative story that's supposed to garner upvotes Please don’t don’t do this. Ugly and Boring. See bottom https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - leehuffman 3y ago
    Fair enough. Message received.

roland35 3y ago

Nice story. Prince really did things his own way, sad we lost him

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

There ought to be (separately): - A talent-owned, co-op live music ticket and venue platform - A talent-owned, co-op music streaming service on all the devices (Spotify as the benchmark, Tidal is better quality but less convenient) - A talent-owned, co-op label Pick any or all 3. The only way to get money back to the creators is for them to own it because the megacorps never will give more than pennies without a fight. The major are only have the perception of a lock on distribution by the inertia of popularity that celebrity influencers can readily overcome.

leehuffman 3y ago

Erm except AEG promoted that whole tour (and the too few beyond it – RIP Prince) and is a replica of, and/or, the only direct competitor of Live Nation. That's a weird example to pick out, as if Prince was 'fighting the system', and yet I'm sure you know he exclusively signed & got paid up-front from the 2nd positioned monopoly in the game. Cool story that you got to sit side stage and wrote code behind his fan club ticketing (which I'm sure you and AMEX shared for <= 7% total tickets sold, and AEG _definitely_ didn't finance as part of the exclusivity deal on the whole run) but come on... I know you know all you've done is present an alternative story that's supposed to garner upvotes but anyone who knows, knows you were the next one in line to fuck this entire industry and rake it off top. Edit: Google says fans also know. https://prince.org/msg/7/247733 https://prince.org/msg/7/247733

jbotdev 3y ago
It’s weird to complain about supporting AEG claiming they’re somehow the 2nd “monopoly” after LiveNation. You can only have one “monopoly” in a given industry, otherwise they’re both just close competitors. Having a close second competitor is still a step in the right direction, even if you disagree with their business practices.
- CPLX 3y ago
  That’s not true. You can have two or more companies share a market via market splitting and the result is still effectively a monopoly.
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    That would be a duopoly not a monopoly.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      Perhaps. It still sucks for the same reasons.
- leehuffman 3y ago
  Fine. I used the wrong term. You can't argue anything else I wrote outside of the word "monopoly" though, sooooo...
rusk 3y ago
> I know you know all you've done is present an alternative story that's supposed to garner upvotes Please don’t don’t do this. Ugly and Boring. See bottom https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- leehuffman 3y ago
  Fair enough. Message received.