If you’ve been to a music event in the past 10 years, you likely purchased your ticket online. The event ticketing industry is worth billions of dollars and is continuing to grow.
But with the advent of #Web3 technologies, there are players intent on disrupting the status quo and improving long-standing industry challenges by using the power of Web3 and NFTs to enable a better experience for creators and fans, and facilitate a more connected creator-to-fan ecosystem.
Who are some of the players, and what does this mean for the future of events in the music industry? Let’s explore the key challenges and possibilities.
Reduction in Fraud and Scams
Scams and fraud have been prevalent in the music event tickets industry, even in the digital ticketing era. The potential with Web3? Using the blockchain and digital wallets to validate ticket authenticity at venues and on secondary markets to reduce and eliminate scams.
Here are some Web3 platforms tackling this:
YellowHeart — Ticketing Reimagined
Yellowheart, a Web3 platform for musicians and fans, shared in a recent article how they use on-chain analytics to identify and disable the wallets of “bad actors” using their platform. According to founder Josh Katz:
“We wanted to disincentivize scalpers by having an open public ledger where we could see behavior. ‘Oh, that wallet bought 12 tickets and redeemed none of them?’ Red flag. ‘Oh, they did it again?’ We turn them off and don’t sell tickets to them again.”
Seatlab — Fairer Ticketing
Seatlab, a NFT ticketing platform planning to leverage the NEAR protocol, will combine NFTs and Near-Field Communication (NFC) to verify ticket ownership and prevent unauthorized re-use.
“Every day, fans are turned away from venues because they bought their tickets on the secondary market, where they ultimately ended up the victims of fraud. Again, we believe that it falls on the ticketing provider to ensure that fraud and counterfeiting are impossible in order to provide a safe event for both performers and fans.”
II. Fairer Creator (and Fan) Compensation
Active users of NFTs are accustomed to the concept of sharing portions of secondary sales (royalties) with creators. But in the current event ticketing industry, creators have minimal control over secondary sales channels, where platforms and players can significantly mark-up the initial value of a ticket, a lost opportunity for creators to earn recurring income. In addition, fans lose out without a clear and fair way to acquire sold out tickets or easily resell tickets they no longer can use.
Web3 event ticketing is creating the possibility of greater creator controls and a more equitable ecosystem, with innovations like:
1. Secondary Sales Royalties
As a creator, definining up-front conditions for a ticket’s secondary sale, including any royalty splits between the creator and other team members.
2. Secondary Price Ceilings
Creators can set a maximum secondary sale price to help reduce ticket price “gouging” and create more opportunity for actual fans to acquire tickets, rather than scalpers and ticket “bots”
III. Web3 Ticketing as a “Bridge”
What’s the key takeaway?
Web3 event ticketing platforms are much more than a transaction.
Web3 music platforms can enable creators to more easily build community and engage with fans in a continuous way, such as:
- Special IRL privileges to NFT ticket holders
- Airdrops to ticket holders before, during and after an event
- Distribute special collectible versions of music NFTs
- Create “gated” access to private Discord communities
“Tickets are a familiar access point for fans to engage with music, and Web3 tickets can offer persistent bridges to help artists surprise and delight fans directly.”
It’s exciting to see how Web3 will transform the music event ticketing industry, and we look forward to even more innovation!