“A symbolic event”: Kraftwerk tickets sold on blockchain

Tickets for Kraftwerk’s upcoming show at the Kremlin will be sold on the blockchain, marking the first time the much-hyped distributed ledger technology has been utilised for a large headline show.

The German electronic music pioneers will play the concert hall (6,000-cap.) at the State Kremlin Palace (pictured) in Moscow on 13 February 2018. An agreement between promoter TCI and cloud-based ticketing platform Tickets Cloud will see fans given the option to buy a digital ticket, sold via the ethereum-based crypto.tickets blockchain platform, with admission to the show controlled by tearing a ‘stub’ stored on the user’s mobile device – eliminating the need to scan tickets.

“First, we had the paper ticket, then electronic, and now we are moving to crypto-tickets,” says Tickets Cloud/crypto.tickets founder Egor Egerev. “Kraftwerk became pioneers of an entire stratum of modern culture, and selling crypto-tickets to their concerts is a symbolic event.”

“First, we had the paper ticket, then electronic, and now we are moving to crypto-tickets”

Nikolay Sinitsin, TCI’s financial director, adds: “Technologies do not stand still, and the emergence of crypto-tickets solves the most pressing problems in the industry: counterfeits, fraud and scalping. TCI always tries to stay informed and is pleased to [embrace] new technologies that will help us and spectators feel safe and keep pace with the 21st century.”

Tickets start at ₽2,500 (US$42) and can be bought from kraftwerk2018.ru.

Following introductory features on blockchain by IQ and lawyer Joanna Morris, Tickets Cloud’s Katerina Kirillova recently explained how the technology is being used to combat some of the technical challenges associated with the modern live music business:

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