Ticketmaster

Today was a stressful day for many a Phish fan.  Why?  We are all at last able to pay good money (and an extra $10 dollars from now on) to see a favorite band.  Seeing the band isn't even the whole point.  We will be re-united with friends from far away, drink Newcastles (143245) in the lot, amazed at CK5's light show, shake our silly bones for a few good hours, all to some great music, some of which has never been heard before.  It's waiting out there in the ether, waiting for this gifted band to translate it into something we maybe can understand.  It's an amazing experience.

Unfortunately, besides spending several stressful hours worrying about tickets, many fans have already ponied-up triple face value on secondary ticket websites to make sure that they'll be able to experience the multi-sensory event that is a phish show.  After scouring PT for many hours, getting the latest info, many fans may still be left ticketless.  Some other have more than they need and are already making trades or ebaying them.  Interestingly, from all that time spent on the forums, the only sense I got about the fanbase's stance on scalping is that there is no consensus.  Every thread about it has seemingly equal backers of both the will of the free-market and the sense of community (or lack thereof).  Throw in arguments about reverse-scalping, getting tickets just to trade, the sharing of inside ticketmaster tips, and whether or not there are scalpers trolling the boards, there is no way to understand exactly how fans feel about the situation.  In the end, the one common thread in it all is that everyone wants to get tickets for their friends and themselves for their choice of shows of that tour, be it the local amphitheater or a special event/festival across the country.

After a day like today, you just need to remember that only a few percentage of Phish fans are on PT.  You can't take away anything about the fans as a whole.  Keep it simple.  If you enjoy the music, try to get a ticket, show up, and shake your bones a little bit.

PTBM

Phish tickets by mail.  A simple concept.  There are tickets to see Phish, and you can order them through the mail.  This sure beats standing in line at the outlets on the day of sale or at the venue the day of show.  Or at least it used to be, until Al Gore invented the internet.  Now, PTBM, which is pretty much just an online order that gets put into a hat and randomly* selected by MusicToday.  The laborious process of old meant that the only people putting in for PTBM tickets were fans and had intentions to go to those shows.  Of course people would put in for a few extra, hoping to trade them or possible extend their tour, but overall, I surmise that that lottery was mostly comprised of fans.

Enter today. where most fans entering the ticket lottery ask friends, family, and coworkers to enter the lottery along with them to increase their chances.  This is a ridiculous situation.  Imagine in the beginning, when the first few people enlisted help.  Of course they got more tickets because they had more entries.  But as this became the norm, we are back to the same situation in the beginning, where our chances are about the same, but instead we need to put in a half dozen orders to compete.  You're not actually increasing your chances by having your friends enter also, instead you're just fighting to keep up with all of the the other fans that are trying to screw you.

So in the end, our chances don't really change.  Instead, all we are doing is being more stressed out and spending more time on trying to get tickets to see these four guys play some instruments.  All that is accomplished by the internet ticket lottery is to turn the Phish community into a rat race like everything else in this world.  For those who come to the shows to get away from such everyday things, the new and improved PTBM is not apart of the plan.