I remember queuing all night outside a record shop in Cardiff for tickets for Dylan at Earls' Court. It was in an Arcade, quite pleasant and social. Some friends brought me some soup either very late or early. I wasn't first in the queue - but I was first out of the shop with the tickets in my hand at 9:00 in the morning. Happy days indeed.

Initially the internet was the new improved way to buy a ticket. You clicked on a website paid your ticket price plus postage, job done.
Not now, as you said websites crash at the mere mention of Bruce Springsteen, the refresh button gets pushed till you end up with whitefinger and when you get there you have, ticket price, booking fee, administration fee and postage!! (£5 last time for an A4 envelope with a 1st class stamp)

You know if you look on Ebay the next day half the concert is up for sale and will be till the eve of the concert.

Now in some cases you don't even get a ticket, just a bar code. What a nice memento!!

I remember a time when I sent a cheque off to a PO Box, having seen a gig I wanted to go to advertised in a Sunday newspaper. Some weeks later, a ticket would arrive, and that would be that. Gigs didn't sell out in 30 seconds, touts in Scotland didn't sell tickets for gigs in London, and there was no such things as a 'golden circle'.

The ticket buying process seems to be changing for the worse month by month. At one point, internet ticket buying went a bit like this - at 9am on Friday morning, you choose your ticket reseller, and you go and buy tickets, then bitch to your friends about the booking fees.

Now, it looks more like this:

Find out on the grapevine that an artist may be touring

Sign up to their mailing list, forum, facebook group, knitting circle and book group

Join the fan club

At some point, you will (if you are lucky) get wind that there will be a pre-sale

Or two pre-sales

Or three

So then you have to decide whether you'd like to take part in the mailing list pre-sale, the fan club pre-sale, the venue pre-sale, or the pre-pre-sale for the people who will give ticketmaster the most money

At the alotted time, you arrive to find that either a) they have no good tickets b) the site has crashed or c) you actually get some tickets

Of course, the ticket buying process is worsened by the tiers of tickets. Hello, golden circle, I'm looking at you. Just last week, I was offered tickets in Row T for a gig, that were claimed to be 'golden circle'.

I put it to you that the twentieth row is not a privileged view.

Can someone identify to me when it became acceptable to gouge people going to shows in enormous venues for extra money to guarantee being in the front third of a football pitch? It's not like Bon Jovi aren't making enough money.

And and of course, the different ticket merchants get different allocations depending on how chummy they are with the venue / promoter / artist - so should you go to Ticketmaster? Seetickets? Ticketline? Stargreen? Ticketweb? Or just give up and go read a book.

Anyone who knows why it costs Ticketmaster more money to put a £50 ticket in an envelope than a £10 one, do feel free to get in touch.

And who hit on the idea of giving Seetickets (who seem to run their ticket server on a pocket calculator in someone's potting shed) the Glastonbury tickets every year? Are they just the lowest bidder?

I bought four tickets to a boxing match recently, from a well-known promoter's website. 75 quid a head, but then each ticket had a £6 fee added for 'postage'. In effect, I paid £24 for an envelope adorned with a 34p stamp.

...but it strikes me all these additional charges indicate that something fundamental has changed and I wouldn't be surprised if it could be laid at the door of the act, who generally shrug and say it's nothing to do with us.
If they're having to add increasing "handling charges" and the like it suggests to me that the attraction wants such a huge share of the take that it's the only way they can make any money.
You want to know the reason why your local multiplex is so keen to sell you a bucket of popcorn? It's because all the ticket revenue goes to the studio.

they simply get away with it because they can - unlike football fans who seem to at last be waking up to the fact they are paying ridiculous amounts, concert goers just keep coming back for more no matter what the price. I recently had a spring clean during which I found loads of files from my time working in a venue and the difference in ticket costs from say 1997 to now is staggering. Bands like Oasis, Primal Scream, Charlatans etc were playing our venues for tickets which rarely cost more than a tenner.

Halley's Comet is a more frequent visitor to the UK than Tom Waits. I'm a long-time devoted fan, so when tickets were released for his Hammersmith Apollo gig in 2004 I went what I thought was the extra mile to book a place there. I'm a teacher, and I spent the whole first hour of the school day in the classroom cupboard pressing redial, occasionally opening the door to shush the kids. Clearly I'm a ticket buying amateur - all 3400 tickets had gone in half an hour, and none of them to me.
Sitting at home on the evening of the gig itself, my stomach felt the tight pain of rejection and resentment, and the next morning I read roughly 3400 ecstatic reviews.
I still love him though.

My favourite aunty used to get her scrapbook from upstairs and often show me the picture from 1964 when she queued up for tickets to see The Beatles at the Brighton Hippodrome.

She wasn't actually in the photo of the long queue printed in the Brighton Evening Argus but would have been if it had been 2 people to the left. Only 14, her mum kept turning up with tea and sandwiches but she *got* her ticket in the end because all she had to do was turn up early and be uncomfortable for a few hours and have a worried mum.

quite a few years later i got up at 6am in the morning. (quite hard when you're 20) to queue up for Kids From Fame tickets for my then 9 year old sister. By 1pm i had my ticket.

sorry these aren't nightmare stories are they just gentle memories...

Funny you should post this today as I've been going through all of the hassle above trying to book tickets for REM at the Albert Hall in March. And tickets don't even officially go on sale until Friday!

The fan club pre-sale was yesterday. Missed out on that. The Live Nation pre-sale was today, which sold out in about 10 minutes, I reckon. For that one, you had to register with Live Nation, click on the REM pre-sale, which took you to the Ticketmaster site!! Ridiculous!

Amusingly, Johan, my original rant was posted on my blog on Sunday night as a precursor to the REM pre-sale - all three of them. In the end I decided I just couldn't be bothered with the fuss and will go and see them elsewhere.

Anyway, I went to the best part of 100 shows last year so I have plenty of venting to do...

Worst experiences:
Springsteen at the MEN Arena is my worst in recent memory. I work close to the venue so thought I'd pop in on my way to work. When I arrived at the box office I couldn't quite believe what I saw - The Boss's demographic had radically changed. Clearly he'd had a massive Radio 1 smash that I'd been unaware of and here was a queue of pre-teens. But no, they were being herded by a latter-day Fagin in order to get round the 4 ticket limit. The security guards were ignoring this despite the bile rising in the queue's post pubescent members.

So on to work and the internet. I eventually got some decent tickets via Ticketline. Good for me. Except, a couple of weeks later, they moved the stage back to allow more people in - moving my tickets back and meaning I didn't see the man himself all evening. Oh, and then the promoter released the whole of the front stalls on the afternoon of the show - not a couple of unneeded guest list tickets, or returns, but whole blocks. Thanks, Harvey.

I also think it's slightly naive to picture the touts outside the venue as not being that bad. I hope each and every one of them gets audited inside and out by the tax man. Just try selling a ticket to a fellow queue member without allowing them a cut of the deal and you'll soon see their ugly side. A pox on them all.

Hospitality packages. Jesus wept. These drive me nuts. They essentially mean that people with more money than sense pay £150 for some wine and sandwiches pre-gig, and if you're particular unlucky, an open bar. My experience of Genesis was not ruined by simply being at a Genesis gig, but by being sat behind a group of these hospitality abusing monkeys who got utterly pissed and spent the entire time going back and forth to the bar. Enough.

And why can't I buy tickets direct from a venue any more? Booking fees are usually less, for starters, and sometimes they even have an understanding of the building. Last week, Seetickets managed to sell me tickets for Goldfrapp which physically didn't exist in the venue and swore up and down that they did when I called them. A few days later, I got an email admitting their mistake.

I assume this is just a continuation of the Carlingisation of music where every venue is reduced to Beername YourTown Venuename format. No, I don't want a White Room card. Sod off.

Remind me again, why do I keep doing this to myself?

.. forking out for gig tickets before the new album is released. I'm not referring specifically to REM here but when an artist releases pricey tickets for their tour before the new album hits the shops, I usually smell a rat. To me, it's a fair indication that the album may well be a stinker.

On a slightly different tack, I forked out almost a hundred quid for two tickets for Radiohead this summer. Usually, they sell out before I've even switched my computer on, but this time, it wasn't a problem, though I suspect that may have something to do with the fact that, at £42 each plus handling, it's almost double the ticket price of their last major tour, only four years ago.

Still waiting for my Richard Hawley tickets. My mate ordered them well over a month ago and they have taken payment but still not sent them and the gig is in York on Monday. Well cheesed off and no reply to voice mails left at the box office.

In '79 I sent a tenner to the Rainbow box office for 4 £2.50 tickets for Buzzcocks/Joy Division and they sent me 4 tickets and I didn't even enclose an SAE! Now even the venues expect to charge a "booking fee" (how else is one supposed to get a ticket?).

Still, if people are willing to pay over the odds to see an artist then the rip offs will continue. Ebay is the ultimate tool of Thatcherism - now everyone can be a tout (sorry, entreprenaur) and get their snouts into this particular trough.

What a lot of the Ebay touts don't seem to understand (thank god) is that where the money is isn't Kylie in an Enormodome, it's a mid-sized band playing a small venue, because of supply, demand and other economic things what come into play.

Which means that you can pick up tickets for a pittance for virtually every single arena gig off of Ebay. We've had a few tickets in the last year for less than half of face value.

getting involved is possibly a large chunk of the issue. If a performer is just worried about putting on a show, getting back to the hotel and discussing taxation strategy, they're not really going to give a flying fuck about long term fans, ebay mark-ups (except to moan that they're not getting their cut of someone else's profit) and hospitality packages for morons who spend half the show going "what's this song?" and looking at their watches or the bar. I seen enough of this, and heard enough from reliable sources to believe that most of the worst stories are true.

Recent good experience: Pearl Jam have a ticket allocation for their fan club members; you can book in advance for any show, but local fans who have been on the list longest get priority. So if you're flying over from New York for a London show, you'll get good seats, but not as good as those for a fan from Chelsea who's been on the list since the early 90s. And the seats are allocated from the front. Perhaps it's a bit too much to hope that variants exist or develop with other acts, but if revenue from recording is taking a beating wouldn't the core fan-base be a reasonable resource of good will and word of mouth?
Oh look, the pigs are well fed and ready for take-off...

I couldn't get a ticket for Springsteen's first UK show since 1975 -- the first night of a week-long stint at the Wembley Arena -- so I paid a tout a then-outrageous mark-up: ooh, at least 15% on top of the face value. The show was, as you can imagine, a rather decent evening out. So decent, in fact, that I went back the following night, ticketless and penniless, just to sit against the fence and listen to the sound leaking out of the open doors at the backstage gate. There were 30 or so of us there.

After a while, as the strains of "Badlands" wafted on the muggy North London air, a hulking roadie shuffled up to us at the fence and said, "What are you lot doing here?" "Just listening," we muttered, expecting to be hosed down or at least sent firmly on our bikes. "Not got one of these, then?" the Hulk said, tugging a big wad of white bits of paper out of the arse pocket of his jeans and waving it in our faces like Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney. They were tickets. Bruce Springsteen tickets. Real ones. Front stalls ones. First 12 rows of the front stalls ones.

We slavered. We slobbered. We drooled. He gave us one each.

"Enjoy the show," he said. And, by golly, we did.

I went back the next night, just in case, and the same thing happened. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. It was apparently the Bawce's policy for his crew to hand out any unclaimed guest tickets to any kids (as one then was) outside who couldn't get in. "Badlands", about 20 minutes into the set, was their cue.

So I saw Bruce Springsteen six times -- five of them just a few feet from the stage -- for a total of about 7 quid. And to this day, every time I hear that "da, dada-da, dada-daaah" of the "Badlands" riff, I can't help but smile.

And that's been the benchmark for all my ticketing experiences since. For some reason, without exception, they've turned out to be negative.

Two ticketing tales.

Back in the early 70's I was a massive Elton John fan. As a fan club member you got first dabs on tickets so I bought six for me and my mates for his Sheffield City Hall gig. They duly arrived.
A week before the gig, another six arrived. Cripes. What to do? If I sent them back, would they be able to re-sell them?
Should I try and sell them at the gig? Too scary.
Since I had mentioned that I was going to our trendy biology teacher and he'd mumbled something about us being jammy gets I offered them to him. Result. Not only did I get respect from the teaching staff of Brumby Comprehensive I had £36 in my pocket. But, as my dad pointed it it wasn't really my money, I got him to write me a cheque and sent the money back.
Three days later the biggest parcel I had ever seen was sitting in the hallway. It had my name on it. A note of thanks for the cheque from the fan club coupled with tons of Elton related ephemera, programmes, badges, T-Shirts and stickers.
As a giddy 14 year old I convinced myself that Elton would actually thank me for my honesty from the stage. He didn't, and I still can't quite believe I sent Elton John money. He wouldn't be where he is today without the likes of me.

How Easy Was It?
An older mate took a coach load of us to see Black Sabbath, my first gig, again, at Sheffield City Hall. On the way back I asked him how he did it, it all seemed so complicated. It was a piece of cake.
A travel agents in town (Martins) would block book 36 stalls tickets for you on a £10 deposit. They would book a coach for you on a £10 deposit. Twenty quid down on Thin Lizzy was my first punt. Tickets went like hot cakes. By adding a few bob to the price I could get myself and the lass I was trying to impress in for free.
Ted Nugent, Be Bop Deluxe (the loudest band I'd ever heard), Elvis Costello, Stiff Tours, Squeeze and Television/Blondie were all mine for free. There was only one rule - If you're not on the coach by 11.30 you're on your own. We never lost a soldier, though we did have one of The Radio Stars on the coach until he got thrown off at Doncaster after he puked. Happy days.

My pal Pete got us both tickets to see Nirvana at the tiny, sweaty Calton Studios in Edinburgh back in 1991 because he'd heard they were the next big thing. He bought them over the counter in, I believe, Virgin. Between buying the tickets and the night of the gig, Smells Like Teen Spirit became omnipresent so there was a definite sense of occasion.

Imagine my horror when the bloke on the door said that Pete's ticket was fine but mine was one of a bunch of forgeries that were doing the rounds. We explained as politely as we could that they'd both been bought at the same time from Virgin's ticket store but he was not having it. Despair gripped me, but somehow Pete managed to convince the guy to let me in. I was too depressed to pay attention.

I feel kind of nostalgic for the days when this sort of thing could happen.

(For the sake of history, I feel I should say that the support acts were Shonen Knife and Captain America. We found out later that the woman we bought our band t-shirts from was Krist Novoselic's wife. I would love to say that it was the greatest gig ever, amazing sense of occasion, honoured to have been among that crowd etc. But it all just sounded like noisy rubbish to me. And I was wearing a - deep breath - Ocean Colour Scene t-shirt.)

....to the Capital Radio Save a London Child show, with the Police and Squeeze in, o lord, years ago, when the cost of a ticket was a cuddly toy? I remember queuing for hours, with tactical changes of direction being plied by the staff at capital on the Euston Rd. Didn't get a ticket.
Was it any good?

.....and formed a band. Did you ever hear of them. Guess what they were called?

is one I endured too. Sat with phone stuck to my ear from 1 hour before they were on sale until about 30 minutes after the box office had opened by which time they had sold out. Someone explain how this happens?
The booking fee situation is something that clearly irritates all of us but something else that drives me mad is the length of time between booking and appearance that these robbing bastards keep hold of our money. I assume the interest goes straight into the coffers of the artist. I have seen a couple of examples of tickets being on sale for over a year before the performance -whoever is responsible for this needs a good kicking!!!

Is the one in Scunny yr alma mater, Mr Drayton? If so, I'm afraid I must unveil my Fred Gough comp colours and challenge you to a scrap somewhere in Ashby.....

Kudos over the bands you saw, however, but making a few bob over and above? Comrade, I arsk yer!

Back on topic, can anyone remember the halycon days paying for a festival ticket on the gate? I used to manage always to do this for the full three days of Reading Festival with nary a quibble. Now they vanish approximately 0.5 nano-seconds after being unleashed on a suspecting public - leaving those of us who work late or cannot access the ticket sites at the office screaming in fits of pique

if you just stay home and listen to the records.

I remember queuing all day to see Elton John at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane way back in God knows when. Tickets were sold from a record shop in Bond Street and I arrived at the desk approximately 8 hours from when I had first started queuing only to find that they only had a box left. . .so i had it.
Another time when I eagerly waited all through "Whistle Test" to find out the details of the Springsteen tour only to find Mr Hepworth telling me that I had to write for tickets to "that well known musician Bruce Newcastle or Bruce London". Amazingly enough I got tickets - but then again I always did in those days but now the world goes online at 9am on a Friday and all tickets are sold out in less than a second 6 months before they're even printed. What REALLY hacks me off is the pre sales when tickets go on sale at 9am to someone who's read in The Metro that Bruce is playing in London and are advertised on ebay at 9.10 am that morning at an extortionate rip off rate.

The only consolation (other than seeing the occasional good band) that modern ticket buying offers derives from having to sign up to all the ticket agencys. Virtually everyday ticketmaster send me notifictaion of some dreasdful act who I will never see. This spam usual reads " Don't miss Westlife, or Elton, or Katie Melua etc" I get a childish lift from adding "Don't miss Westlife with a sinper's rifle" as I delete the spam unreaden. The rest is nonsense.
Ps. Are you going to confront some stars about this in your piece not just promoters etc. what about your mates PSB or the next bunch you interview, it'll be a bit uneasy but we have to put up with Bobby Gillespies views on the West Bank situation how about his vague mutterings on the "kids get ripped off".

As a lad I used to regularly write a nice little letter, on blue paper, to the Hammersmith Odeon Box Office, enclosing a naively blank cheque, saying something like "If Rush / ACDC / Rainbow etc. (ok - this was 1980) ever play could you please send me 4 tickets?" Then many, many months later, my stamped SAE (cheaper than today's £6 per ticket etc) would come through my door with, normally, 3rd row centre stage tickets. My eternal thanks to the staff back in those days long before Ticketmaster reared its ugly head.

Today I find myself, like all those above, having missed out on REM these last few days having tried everything, and being generally prepared for RSI every Friday at 9 am.

That said, I loved Archie's Springsteen story at Wembley 1981 above. So here's my December 9th 2007 equivalent.

To all of you who missed out on Led Zep, let me tell you that my mate and I, having just picked up our wristbands and tickets on the Sunday afternoon, passports in our back pockets, walked round the back of the arena to soak up the atmosphere and to see the queue (of Canadians!) already formed for the next evening.

We heard the sound of "Good Times, Bad Times" coming from inside. Ah! We strolled past the security guard (that was easy) and joined a small queue of music biz people. By the time the band had finished "Ramble On" the queue was getting shorter and speedier and when "For Your Life" ("For", Mark) started everyone was having a laminate thrust at them and being pushed straight in, block 111. So for less than £83,000 we watched Led Zep rehearse and no-one even asked our name. Considering the hell that everyone went through trying to get to that show it even makes me angry. But hell, that's my story. What a night.

My own ticketing trauma consisted of queuing overnight for tickets for Genesis on the Duke tour outside Manchester Apollo on the coldest night of the year. At about 4 a.m. we fell asleep in our survival bags only to wake up 2 hours later to find the queue had surged forward and turned from a single file queue to a 10 abreast queue. Consequently we had gone from being 300th in line, to 3000th.....disgusted, fed up and very cold we trudged the long way home without any tickets...and I haven't seen Genesis since.

So to me, things did initially get better with the Internet...though as others have said, the rise of ebay and pre-sales seems to be making it increasingly difficult to get tickets for concerts on the "day of sale"...case in point...did anyone actually manage to get REM tickets today?

Excuse this rant, but it is apposite....

On Friday at 9 am I was primed and ready by my PC to try for once to get lucky and secure REM tickets, as were two other friends, and we wanted 6 tickets between us.

Now we have all loves REM for decades, we go back to standing in the mud at U2's "Logest Day" when our ears were first opened to the music, and have been to numerous gigs over the intervening period. This was looking special, as for two of us our eldest kids have grown up to love them too, and wanted to come along and experience it for themselves, which as you can appreciate this would be a spoecial moment for us.

The night before an internet pre-sale had happened, I missed out, but checked e-bay to find over 100 pairs of tickets instantly available at £400. This happens with every sold out gig, and though frustrating, this is not my problem this time.

At 9 am I struck gold, my application went through, I was asked to select how many tickets I wanted, up to a maximum of 8. Being a fan and not greedy to xash in, I only took the 6 wanted, was allocated consecutive seats in the circle, and printed off my booking confiurmation. I phoned my two friends and told them not to worry, syand down on your PC's, we were all in. Happy days....

.... Until this morning, when out walking over the fields I get a call from Ticketmaster to tell me the web site was wrongly set up, and I have exceeded my allocation of 2 tickets. They had cancelled 4 on Friday and re-sold them without bothering to investigate until later why people were booking up to 8.

Well after a massive argument, they have surprisingly managed to find me 4 others in two pairs of two elsewhere in the auditorium, though quite why I can't just have the consecutive one's allocated is a point they cannot answer, it's not as if anything has been sent out yet. I imagine most people have not been so lucky in this respect. The person on the end of the phone was as helpful as she was allowed to be, but there was nobody in authority to speak to, as it was Sunday.

So now I can't sit with my friends, the kids can't experience the gig together, as they are too young to sit alone in the auditorium, and although we are delighted to be there, the night is slghtly tarnished.

Quite what can be done to reign these sellers in I don't know, but I do know the rip off booking fees should make them more accountable, and they should be made to uphold a deal that has been struck in good faith, and accepted by each party.

Rant over!

Many moons ago,i bought my first ever ticket of the net (or so i thought)for Natalie Merchant in Dublin.Most exciting adventure as we had to fly from the north of Scotland.When at the box office i was asked for my confirmation email i then realised i hadn't completed the transaction,the gig was sold out.We were approached by several ticket touts selling at 3 times face value.I refused to pay.I stood my ground and as the crowd cheered when Natalie came on stage i bought 2 tickets for 20 euro,less than face value.Nerve racking nail biting stuff not to be repeated.

Perhaps my most memorable ticketing tale was freezing ones proverbials off during an all night queuing to see Mr David Bowie at the Newport Centre when he was fronting a certain "rock" band called Tin Machine. OK, ok- I know what youre thinking- thats not bad going when the Newport centre only holds 2000 and this is Bowie. However, as a lank haired spotty youth, I was actually queuing because I liked Tin Machine. Yes, there, I have said it. And at the time I thought Bowie was a camp middle aged emperors new clothes wearing poseur whereas Tin Machine ROCKED. ah, the naivety of youth. anyway, me and my good friend Andrew (who may actually read this) spent 24 hours waiting stood next to two Bowie bores from Somerset who regaled us with tales of yore, whilst sharing their Jack Daniels and Coke with two hugely impressionable valley boys. I have no idea why we thought this was a good idea and dont truly remember if the gig was any good but I do remember the JOY of finally having the ticket in hand and being ever so smug about it with mates the next day

I'm just about to buy tickets for Elbow...lots of expensive ticketing options three quid for them to be posted to me. To save money I could always pick them up at the box office on the day. That costs £1.50. Why does it cost £1.50 to get a ticket? That's like getting on a bus, getting a £1 fare and giving the driver 10p for handing it over. Wankers.

It's not just the ticketing arrangements themselves that are at fault; it's what passes for a "tour" itinerary these days. Here's the whole sorry charade from Go to Whoa. Insert name of your favourite lazy band or artiste ...

i) New album shortly to be released. Band, in cahoots with media, plan "intimate" (ie in front of the meeja/music biz) gig in venue the size of an Oxo cube. Radio trumpets exciting news for fans of (insert here). The "exciting news" is a one-in-five-thousand chance to see your band up close and personal, or else watch it live on a tiny webcast screen. The media thinks that gigs like this are "really brilliant" because a) they're in London, and b) they always get tickets. Everybody else goes "yeah, whatever!" and waits for real gigs to be announced...

ii) A tiny handful of theatre shows announced (Roundhouse, maybe RAH at a pinch). Tickets sell out in three minutes, three quarters bought up by professional and armchair "scalpers".

iii) 100s of identikit "excitable" ads on ebay: "You are bidding on the unique chance to see possibly the finest exponents of the classic rock 'n' roll riff in a venue of this size. The seats afford you an excellent view of the band on their first tour since 1347. Tickets are in hand (as opposed to up backside??) and you may rest assured that I am a trusted ebay power seller (read: "professional tout"). Don't miss this unique once-in-lifetime opportunity to rock out in such intimate surroundings with the crowned kings of fretboard boogie!!!!!!!"

... look it's only a pair of bl***y Status Quo tickets!!

iv) The "masses" - and their willingness to pay £50 for a hooded sweat top - are at last recognised: Band play five nights at Milton Keynes bowl. Media invited but washing their hair that week.

v) Another chance to see the band in "intimate" surroundings at charity bash six months later. This time you get tickets. Band come on with acoustic guitars and play two songs, one of them by Carly Simon.

Moi? Cynical?

44 sets of tickets for Muse at the Albert Hall on Ebay already. Why let people buy 6 tickets for a show that's likely to be massively over-subscribed, FFS?

Anyway "good" news for the REM fans in the thread. You and 49,999 others will get to see them at Twickenham in August apparently. Yuck.

It's not just the big venues that treat their customers like cattle - take, for example, the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
A venue of around 1,500, they can sell virtually all the tickets for any given gig online if they so choose.
The result? Just take a look at eBay - it currently has tickets for the likes of Jack Penate and James on sale from such 'local' locations as Newcastle, Wigan and Ramsgate.
Venues like this couldn't care less about who buys the tickets, just so long as someone, anyone, does.
Last year you had the ludicrous situation when tickets for The Kings of Leon went on sale, instantly sold out, but yet by the end of the day more than 10 per cent of the venue's whole capacity was up for grabs on eBay.
Venue organisers later wring their hands in the local press complaining that there's nothing they can to beat touts.
Er, hello? Maybe, just maybe, realising that all these people from a long way away might not have any Norfolk connection and therefore resolving to put more tickets on physical, local sale would be a start. You'll never cut touts out of the food chain completely, but at least make them work a bit harder than just sitting at their PC hundreds of miles away waiting for a 9am sale start.
And when tickets don't sell out, as with, say, the upcoming Supergrass tour, why should I have to pay a booking fee of £1.50 per £17.50 ticket when I order four, at a time when banks take two and a half per cent of the sale for credit card fees, and the total cost of an envelope and stamp won't top 50p?

Look, the government could not give a toss about reigning in the touts, ticketmaster (touts with fancy website) or the ebay sellers. If we, the paying punter, went on stike and stopped going to concerts (and didn't buy the latest album being flogged either) the industry would be forced to clean up its act.

In a free market its a case of supply and demand. If demand exceeds supply prices rise. I'm all for the guy above that waited before handing his money over at the last minute to see Natalie Merchant but for those of us in remote locations e.g. most of Scotland north of Glasgow you would not travel without a ticket in your hand.

The other thing that pisses me off is the early sale of tickets for next years festival the day after this years festival is over. I haven't got a crystal ball - how do I know if the bill will be worth paying up a year in advance for?

Just say NO.