I Will Do My Worst #3
The first and only time I ever used the DICE app was to go to a show in New York City. It was the only way to get a ticket to a show I was traveling many hours and crossing an international border to attend. The only way to buy a ticket was by installing the app on a mobile phone – a deranged, dystopic idea. To purchase a ticket for this hardcore punk show, I needed not only a credit card, but a decently-new mobile phone running an OS made by Apple or Google. I needed my phone to be working at the venue so I could show a QR code of my ticket to get in. I would expect this for a mainstream Live Nation concert, but not for a punk show. At the time, I figured "only in New York" – a place where one is likely to encounter strange, novel experiments in capitalism. But since then I've started seeing DICE relied upon by promoters in Toronto, and I've heard it's used in London too. Not just regular promoters, like people booking hardcore punk gigs. What?? I suspect the only reason we haven't run into it much in Montreal is for Quebec cultural preservation reasons (here it would have to be a Quebec-owned startup called DÉS).
(For the sake of completeness: according to DICE you can buy tickets through their website without using their dedicated app, using your legal name and having ID with you, if the venue/promoter has a list of DICE ticket holders at the door. So basically good luck with that.)
DICE began as a London-based startup founded by an UMG industry label guy. Ostensibly the point was to make ticket sales easy, without dynamic pricing or resellers/scalping. Which is fine enough, but those aren't really problems I have ever encountered trying to buy tickets for actual underground hardcore punk shows.
Pretty quickly DICE got loaded up with hundreds of millions in venture capital investment. SoftBank, French billionaires, Google subsidiary co-founders. This is all just on Wikipedia. These people are not looking to "enhance the live music experience" or whatever, they are here to squeeze massive profits out of you. Last year, the whole thing was bought by Fever (another international/multinational ticket platform) after Fever itself raised hundreds of millions in venture capital from investors like Goldman Sachs.
This isn't some plucky independent startup run by a homie who's trying to make ticket sales easier. This is billion dollar business. When there is that much money invested, it's all about making more money.
That's why DICE is so app-centric. You must install the app to get into the show, allowing them to collect tons of your data, which is shared with 3rd parties. They know exactly when you arrive at the show! They track your interests and desires. You are encouraged to link your account to your Spotify or Apple Music so they can provide better algorithmic recommendations of shows you might want to go to. DICE will keep doing this, and it will get worse and worse as they need to squeeze as much data out of you as possible.
This is the kind of data that gets collected, correlated, and sold to ICE and Palantir, by the way! You can't pretend this isn't true anymore.
Here's a fun thing in their privacy policy:
Your image or recordings – we might get photographs, audio or video recordings of events listed on the DICE Platform. We may reproduce and/or publish your image (as part of a general photograph of an event) on the DICE Platform and in other promotional materials, social networking channels and other materials related to the DICE Platform;
That kind of shit is just par for the course for apps and platforms like this. Most similar online ticket platforms are similarly evil. I'm picking on DICE because they really push you to install an app, and their cool hipster branding seems to have appealed to punk promoters. NO!
If you must sell advance tickets, there are simple, time-tested, DIY ways to take a bite out of these predatory, ticket-seller megoliths:
- Sell some physical tickets at local venues/shows/record stores before the gig.
- If you must sell tickets online, use a relatively chill online purchasing option (like Big Cartel – I'm pretty sure they are still independent and have not taken VC investment).
- Always ensure dedicated people have a way to buy tickets in person, with cash, either by holding some at the door or providing physical pre-sales.
Yeah, it's a little more "work" for everyone – too bad! The tradeoff is worth it, especially in situations where something like DICE is essentially the only way to buy a ticket for a show.