The ever-changing industry of music is something that most of us know and love. However, it does come with it’s fair share of headaches.
Where were you on March 6th 2009, when Phish played at the Hampton Coliseum after a five year hiatus. Brando and his brother Dusty were set on going, but never stood a chance. The tickets had all been bought up by online scalpers.
Brando Rich, web engineer from Vermont, decided that was enough. He had to find a way to get face value tickets back to the fans.
Not long ago there were ticketing companies that you could trust and weren’t killing your wallet with fees. However, it seems that now everyone is out there to make you pay.
Artists have even tried to take a stand by creating fan clubs with early ticket releases and other perks, but online scalping bots have still found a way to get the tickets. The government has also tried stopping scalpers online and on the street. Sadly scalpers have found a way to jump all of these hurdles.
After speaking with Brando, I realized the problem has been getting exponentially worse for a while now. Every genre is now facing this problem. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to buy tickets to Phish, Garth Brooks, or anything in between. Chances are that you’re going to have to pay far more than face value for tickets.
Embrace the face. Today hundreds of thousands of fans are able to have a sense of security with CashorTrade. What started as a fun little newsletter turned into CashorTrade.org, the first social network where fans actively come together to buy, sell or trade face value tickets and avoid scalping. Last year they processed over 9 million dollars between members. Since then memberships have more more than doubled, with members in every state and 20 different countries across the globe. This is similar to the growth of Airbnb and Uber, where people now have the option to pay for something they can trust with an affordable price.
Brando and the rest of the CashorTrade team have big plans to grow and make the community more social. I would highly recommend signing up and joining the movement.
In the next two weeks they will be having a ticket giveaway for Aiken Bluegrass Festival. Enter to win a chance to see Greensky Bluegrass, Lefotver Salmon and other great artists.