The artist management community yesterday seized the initiative on all things secondary ticketing by proposing the launch of a Resale Rights Society to regulate the whole damn thing.
As much previously reported, 'secondary ticketing' is essentially ticket touting, where people buy up tickets to events and then resell them for profit. The whole thing has become a bigger issue in recent years, of course, because where as touting used to involve standing outside venues on cold windy nights buying and selling tickets, people can now resell tickets easily online weeks ahead of an event, using their own websites, or auction sites like eBay.
The live music industry ain't a big fan of secondary ticketing. Partly because with in-demand sell-out events it means that music fans who didn't get through to the legit booking sales line on the morning tickets went on sale are forced to buy them at hiked up prices off online touts who bought up tickets with the sole plan of reselling them. And partly because they see large mark ups going to touts rather than themselves, and arguably that mark-up cash is money the fan may have otherwise spent on merchandise or refreshments.
Of course the whole issue gets talked about most either when promoters like Glastonbury's Michael Eavis introduce extensive measures to stop the resale of tickets, or when people start reselling tickets to high profile charity events like the Concert For Diana, because in those cases the touts are arguably profiting at the charities' expense. In a handful of cases auction sites like eBay have stopped the resale of tickets to such events on their site, though generally such sites aren't keen to prevent ticket reselling, partly because such reselling isn't illegal, so why should they, and partly because ticket reselling is good business for the online auction services. And especially those that have been specifically built for ticket reselling like Viagogo, Seat Exchange, Seatwave and GetMeIn.
The government too has shown an interest in and expressed concerns about secondary ticket sales and has put pressure on the live industry to do something about it. Though the industry has generally said in the past that it is pretty powerless to do anything, and that the government should look to regulate ticket touting in music and entertainment in a similar way to the regulations that exist in the football industry. Four 'government summits' have addressed the issue so far, and a select committee of the Department Of Culture, Media And Sport is currently investigating it further.
Meanwhile the Music Managers' Forum has decided to make its own proposals. They yesterday announced that a coalition of artist managers, who manage over 400 artists between them, including The Verve, Robbie Williams, Arctic Monkeys, KT Tunstall and Radiohead, are launching a new body called the Resale Rights Society which will aim to [a] provide music fans with some protection if and when they buy tickets from resellers and [b] ensure some of the profits of the secondary ticket market go back to the artists and live sector.
The Society aims to do this by persuading the likes of eBay and the aforementioned ticket reselling sites to sign up to a 'kite-mark' scheme which would force them to make certain commitments to consumers (eg to have a refund policy if a gig is cancelled) and to commit to pass on a portion of their own profits to the Society, which would distribute the monies to artists, songwriters and promoters. In return the ticketing sites would be legitimatised by the industry (or those parts of the industry signed up to the Society).
The new Society, which will be a not-for-profit membership organisation run by and for artists, managers and promoters, will be chaired by Marc Marot, a former Island Records chief and now manager of Yusuf Islam and Paul Oakenfold, who said yesterday: "The secondary ticketing market offers benefits to music fans and the live music industry alike. It does not make sense to try and criminalise it. On the other hand there are not only real issues of consumer protection here, it is unacceptable that not a penny of the estimated £200m in transactions generated by the resale of concert tickets in the UK is returned to the investors in the live music industry. This is a problem that should be resolved through self-regulation. The online ticketing exchanges have consistently claimed that they wish to work with artists and the live music industry. This Society presents them with that opportunity. Where this trade is fair to consumers, we propose to authorise it by agreeing a levy on all transactions".
MMF chair Jazz Summers, manager of The Verve, who Viagogo recently announced were the band whose tickets increased the most in value when resold on their site, added: "The industry needs to stand together and ensure that our artists and the fans are not exploited by operators of online ticket exchanges".
The scheme also has the support of songwriter/publisher collecting society MCPS/PRS, whose top guy, Steve Porter, added this: "Live performance is a significant source of income for PRS's 50,000 songwriter and publisher members, yet they - and many other industry stakeholders - currently receive nothing from secondary sales of concert tickets. PRS welcomes the RRS as an exciting and innovative industry solution to this problem and looks forward to working together with them on the issue".
The obvious absences from the RRS coalition are the major players of the live sector itself, the primary ticket sellers like Ticketmaster, and promoters who have been vocal critics of secondary ticket sales like Harvey Goldsmith. However, Marot said that informal discussions with promoters and ticket agencies had been positive.
He also said that similar informal discussions with some of the secondary ticketing firms themselves had been positive, though the boss of one of them, Seatwave, didn't seem too positive. Responding to the RRS proposal he tried to spin the new body as advocating a tax on music fans saying in a statement: "This is a direct attempt by a few music managers and promoters to line their pockets at the expense of consumers. Everyone in this value chain has already been fully paid for their work - this proposed tax is like BMW asking car owners for a cut every time someone resells a car. It's laughable that rock managers and promoters are holding themselves out as consumer champions".
Marot et al, of course, would dispute that allegation, presumably arguing the levy for the industry should come from Seatwave's profits, and not by increasing commissions paid by consumers. It remains to be seen if Seatwave's rivals are more positive about the proposals. We should find out soon, because Marot hopes to properly launch RSS next month, and have deals in place with the auction sites by the end of March.