Scalpers are reselling tickets for profit because the artists price them too low, hence allowing the scalper to make money. Artists price tickets too low for a variety of reasons (the ego boost of playing to sold out venues, a misguided sense of loyalty to their fans, etc).
All that is needed to stop scalping is to price the tickets appropriately when they are first issued.
I disagree with the choice of language you're using, but I agree with the sentiment.
Why the hell would a sense of loyalty to fans be called "misguided"? What does that even imply - that musicians should not be loyal to their fans? That seems like quite a businessman's perspective, looking at music as just show-business with the purpose of making money, instead of an art form.
Some things are more important than money. Money is just a middleman. A lot of people seem to forget that.
Whether you get rid of scalping or not, you are still going to have the "10:00 start, sold out at 10:00:01" problem. I haven't heard the solution to that yet. If a good is priced far, far below what the market will bear, you are always going to immediately sell out of it.
Think about more intermediate situations too. If scalpers are buying half the tickets for a concert, and doing so in a very effective way, they could be the difference between selling out in 2 minutes and selling out in 20 minutes.
I can’t reply to the other guy because the comment is now flagged, but my question is how do you measure who a ‘true’ fan is? You want to reward your fans, but how do you identify who are loyal fans and who aren’t?
Like with Loki's wager, it's hard to say exactly where to draw the line. But I think most would agree that a company buying massive amounts of ticket with the sole intent to resell them at a profit is most certainly not a true fan.
It's not "bad" in a cosmic sense, it's just a different set of tradeoffs. It leads to shortages and queueing and situations where people who really want to attend aren't able to even if they would have been happy to pay more.
the internet is full of folks lamenting how little musicians make for their music. somebody suggests that they ought to be paid more and you subject them to rudeness?
I quoted a single phrase to disagree with, not the entire post.
If musicians want more money, great, get that bread.
If a musician thinks they have plenty, and wants to let fans in for cheaper, it's horrible to call that objectively wrong and a misguided sense of loyalty.
And we're talking about sold out venues going for very high prices; if those particular musicians say a certain price is high enough I will believe them.
All that is needed to stop scalping is to price the tickets appropriately when they are first issued.