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by ezl
1302 days ago
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Years ago I saw a post on HN (or maybe reddit) about using reverse dutch auctions for these sort of situations and how it provided the fairest outcomes for all parties. It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate. Edit: oops - I can't find the original article I referenced, but someone else posted this on the same concept which is now on the front page of HN:
https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/ |
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Fans don't want a market clearing price. Artists will also say they don't want a market clearing price, and some (most?) of them are being honest when saying that. They want a price that allows a large number of their long-term fans to be able to attend their concerts, and that price will be well below a market clearing price.
For a massive artist like Swift, with huge demand and limited supply for tour dates, a market clearing price would mean only people with high levels of disposable income would be able to go to the shows. Many of those people would only be casual Swift fans. So the die-hard fan who has listened to every album a hundred times but has a low paying job can't go, but people who have never listened to an album but earn a lot of money can.
In other industries, that kind of market dynamic isn't a problem. People will accept that only very rich people can afford supercars, even if they aren't necessarily car enthusiasts, whereas lots of die-hard car enthusiasts can't will never be able to afford a supercar.
But music is its own thing, for reasons I don't entirely understand. Perhaps it's because, more than other industries, successful artists owe so much of their success to a loyal following of fans, and they want to preserve that relationship over short-term profit maximization. Or perhaps it's because many people just feel that music is an inherent part of the human experience, and shouldn't be subject to the same raw market forces that prevail in other industries. I'm not someone who goes to see a lot of live music, this is just behavior I've observed in others.
Artists and fans want some kind of system that allows long-term fans to attend shows at "fair" prices. In this context, "fair" is not determined by the market, but by some kind of intuitive and emotional sense of how much a concert ticket "should" cost. I can't say what the price is, but I can say that if the market-clearing price for Swift's latest tour turned out to be $600, the fans wouldn't say "OK, fair enough, I can't afford it but I will accept the outcome as utility maximizing for the greatest number of market participants." They would say something closer to "this is total bullshit"