Music Industry

An “ethical ticket reseller?” What’s that? It’s called Twickets.

No matter if you call them scalpers, brokers or resellers, the people and companies who sell concert tickets on the secondary market charge more than face value. That’s how all of them make money.

All of them except Twickets, that is.

Twickets, a three-year-old UK-based company, bills itself a moral reseller of tickets, the place for ethical music fans to go to buy and sell tickets to gigs.

According to founder Richard Davies, about 5% of the people who buy tickets to a show or event don’t end up going. Gigs go on sale months and months in advance. Plans change, circumstances intervene, life happens, and somehow, the original purchaser of the ticket finds that he or she is unavailable the night of the show.

The theory is that a person who can’t go hates to see the tickets go unused but also doesn’t want gouge anyone will use Twickets to make sure someone–a real music fan like them–gets to go without paying a penalty. The only extra charge is a 5% fee for Twickets’ trouble for advertising and distributing the tickets.

So far the company has big thumbs-up endorsements by the Arctic Monkeys, Ed Sheeran and a few others. They love the idea of real fans making sure that other real fans get to see their shows without having to resort to scalpers, so they recommend Twickets to their fanbase. So far, more than a million tickets have been transferred this way.

Twickets is only available in a limited number of territories so far, but they have firm plans to expand into Canada.

Read more about how the company operates here.

 

 

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39156 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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