Courtesy of residentadvisor.com
Resident Advisor, a UK-based music events magazine, just announced a new service that allows fans to resell tickets to each other at face value. Resident Advisor operates as one of the more popular music news, ticketing, and event-listing websites entrenched in the dance and electronic music scene. On Tuesday the website announced that it would be launching its own fan-to-fan ticket exchange, allowing fans to buy unwanted tickets to sold-out events.
The service is meant to eliminate touting, otherwise known as scalping, and help combat resale of fraudulent tickets. A fan-to-fan exchange will supposedly help promoters and venue operators too. RA says that promoters can augment the number of tickets sold and prevent scalping. The site also points out that long lines at the door will shorten if less fake tickets are in circulation. If Resident Advisor is successful with this new service, it’ll help solidify the website as a leading presence in music event promotion and fan-based sharing. The co-founder of RA, Paul Clement cited The Great Ticket Scandal documentary explaining RA’s new service. “Having sold tickets for six years or so, we’ve seen firsthand the negative impact the secondary market can have on our industry with fans overpaying for tickets and often receiving fake tickets.”
The question is: what makes RA’s reselling service different from any other website like Ticketmaster of Stubhub? The main difference is that RA charges no transaction fees and operates on international sales. It will also help that RA is visited specifically music fans and enthusiasts. It’s easy to attract potential ticket sales and re-sales, because the people visiting the site will be the same type of people who frequently attend concerts.
What is perhaps most surprising about RA’s move, is that most other music websites and blogs seem to be ignoring it. So far there’s been shockingly little coverage of the new secondary ticketing service. It could be that Resident Advisor is perceived as a competitor to existing music news sites, but its unusual for music magazines, especially online ones, to shy away from covering a major launch in the music industry , even if it’s a potential competitor.