No Concert Left Behind: How to Get Tickets to Popular Events
I am a concert junkie. I freely admit it.
To me, live music is the ultimate sensory experience and what I most love to spend my free time on (outside of hanging with my wife of course). Whew, almost got myself in trouble there.
I cannot count how many concerts I’ve actually been to (rough estimate in the hundreds) but I’ve been fortunate to see live incredible acts such as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty just to name a few of my favorites.
By attending so many shows over the years, you could say I’ve developed a knack at landing tickets to those quick to sell out events.
As a result, I have unexpectedly become a popular go to person when a friend or family member is looking for tickets to a popular act. They want to know what my secrets are and how I can help them get tickets.
I’ve been asked this too many times to count now, so I thought I would put down my answers and “tricks” for you all here. Because lets face it, you could use a concert break from life right?
In all honesty, these “tricks” aren’t really that but simply knowing how to put yourself in the best situation to be able to get those hard to get tickets.
Junk Mail? Yes Please
One of the easiest first steps that many people don’t often think about, is to sign up for the email mailing lists of both your favorite artist(s) and the venues that are closest for you.
For me, I live in Indiana, so I am signed up for several venues in my geographical area such as Banker’s Life Fieldhouse, United Center, and Wrigley Field.
Of course there is a downside in that you will get a substantial amount of non-relevant emails from them. But in return, you will also receive some pretty awesome presale information from time to time for some of their most popular shows they might host.
Pretty regularly, these venues or bands/artists will send out presale codes for tickets to their subscribers in advance. All you have to do is check your email consistently and be available when the presale starts to purchase through LiveNation, Ticketmaster, or whatever ticket selling site they are using.
Miss out on the email or can’t find a presale code? I have had some regular success with sites such as www.ticketcrusader.com. Here, you can find popular touring artists and usually several different presale codes that give you access to buy tickets before the general public.
If you still can’t find a code that works, I’ve also found some before on community sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Usually these codes aren’t the best-kept secret, especially if the artist is extremely popular. It’s very common for people to get excited after they get their tickets and usually post codes for others so acting fast is critical.
Credit Cards, The Necessary Evil
With many concert presales, it’s sometimes possible to get earlier access to buy tickets if you have a specific type of credit card. Credit card providers like American Express, MasterCard, and Visa all have various promotions or presale opportunities for their card users.
These presale offerings will not let you purchase the tickets unless you use a card of that specific type. Trust me I have tried.
So if it’s an American Express presale, even if you have the access code, it will not let you actually complete the purchase of those tickets unless you use an American Express card to do so. A frustrating little quirk but understandable from a business perspective I guess.
To have the best chance of getting any tickets at any time, I make sure to have all three of these types of credit cards ready to deploy (American Express, VISA, and MasterCard). This allows me the flexibility to respond to any intriguing concert opportunity and secure tickets without much hassle.
You may be asking, hey what about Discover card, you left them out. You are absolutely right. I’m sorry Discover. No shade thrown their way but I haven’t really ran into the need for one in presales. I can usually get the purchase done with one of the three I already have. They were the odd man out.
Once caveat here. If you are a person who doesn’t handle credit cards very well and by very well I mean that you don’t pay them and let the balances run up then you may want to pass by this step and instead find a friend or family member who has these types of cards that you can reimburse for the tickets.
The downside of this is that you sometimes lose control of the situation. Maybe your credit card wielding buddy isn’t available to get the tickets at the specific time presale begins (many presales are during business hours throughout the week) or they change their mind at the last minute because they spent too much at Bed Bath and Beyond.
I personally have the three different cards but I do not carry a balance on any of them. None of them have annual fees associated with them and I use them only for concert tickets or purchases every six months or so to make sure to keep the accounts active.
Everybody Loves Free Concerts
My wife and I went to 20 concerts in 2018. That is a crazy and unrealistic number for a lot of people but I assure you that we enjoyed the hell out of it.
And for the good majority of those concerts, I actually went to them for free. Free? You bet and here is how I pulled off that majestic feat.
If you haven’t heard of the Ticketmaster lawsuit settlement from a few years ago, you can read up here: http://settlement.livenation.com
Basically a Cliffs Note version of that is that Ticketmaster overcharged people for tickets for many years by inflating a fee. A big corporate erroneously overcharging customers? I know, shocking right?
Well it turns out some guy named Schlesinger sued them for the overcharge and voila, as part of that settlement, everyone who purchased tickets through them during the years 1999-2013 has been compensated with vouchers; some with money off of future purchases and others for actually free tickets to upcoming concerts.
Like I said, I’ve been to a lot of shows over the years. I was unbelievably surprised to find that I had 34 free concert tickets when this thing came out in 2017! In case you are wondering, this is the max amount you can get. Lucky me!
My guess is that you have vouchers too. All you need to do is use your laptop, desktop, or phone web browser (It’s tough to find on the app probably because they don’t want you to use them) go to https://www.livenation.com, login, select “your account” and then click “active vouchers”.
If you don’t have a LiveNation account, use your Ticketmaster account. They are now the same company and that TicketMaster login will work for LiveNation. If you don’t remember the password just do a quick reset and see if you hit the ticket lottery jackpot.
If you do end up with discounts they will look like this picture:
If you’ve got some of those in your account congratulations! Now for the tricky part of how to use them.
LiveNation, for the past couple of years, has posted concerts in July that are eligible for these vouchers. You’ll want to bookmark the link we gave you earlier. This is where all of the eligible events in your area will be posted.
When concerts are posted to that site, they do go quickly. Simply use your concert ticket voucher code in the “code” part of payment and the tickets are 100% free, no fees, nada. If you have the $2.25 off vouchers, you can follow the same process. These vouchers do expire in June of 2020 so you do still have time to use them.
The only other downside outside of the short time frame is that these shows do not include your heavy hitter artists or those who are likely to sell out. You aren’t going to get Justin Timberlake, Post Malone, or Ariana Grande tickets with these unfortunately. But I’ve gone to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Counting Crows, Kansas, Buddy Guy, REO Speedwagon, and others for absolutely zero dollars. You can’t beat free people.
Stubhub it Up for Last Minute Deals
My final “trick” is Stubhub. If I’ve got concerts in my area that I’m not interested in paying full price for but that pique my curiosity, I will check Stubhub for the two weeks leading up to the show.
Most people who have to cancel their plans or decide not to go to concerts will do so in those two weeks leading up to the show. I find out what face value is for a specific show by just checking Ticketmaster/LiveNation and then I look for a ridiculously good deal on Stubhub.
I’ve purchased Luke Bryan concert tickets for $20 on the day of the show and I went to a Jeff Beck show for $6, which I bought just two days before the show. If you are patient and monitor the prices, you can get great deals. You’ve also got to be ok not going to a show as well. If you put yourself in that mindset, you will find some great deals over the course of the year.
The flip side of that coin is never go to Stubhub first when you are looking for tickets. Always check to see if tickets are still available and if so what the face value is. You could easily end up overpaying on Stubhub.
As you can see none of what I’ve laid out for you is actually a secret. All is public knowledge. It is the art form of knowing how to align the pieces together to give yourself the best chance at getting tickets.
If the thrill of live music is not enough to motivate you to attend more concerts, perhaps the recent study linking attending live music to leading to a longer life might interest you. Go to concerts, live longer!
As with all Master Millennial articles, we hope to provide you helpful information and also save you some hard earned dollars and heartache. We’ve all been ripped off on overpriced concerts before or missed out on awesome opportunities. We don’t want this to ever happen to you.
If you are a concert junkie like we are, I hope you are able to make 2019 a concert filled year.In the immortal words of Nigel from the classic movie This is Spinal Tap talking about cranking up amplifier volume, ”Eleven. Exactly. One Louder.” May your concert season go from ten to eleven.