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TM targets 500m tickets on the blockchain

Ticketmaster’s vice-president of blockchain products, Sandy Khaund, says the world’s biggest ticket seller aims to have up to 500 million tickets registered and sold using blockchain-based smart contracts, following its acquisition last year of Khaund’s company, Upgraded.

Speaking at Elev8 in Las Vegas on Monday (9 December), Upgraded founder Khaund discussed the value that Ethereum-style self-executing ‘smart’ contracts can bring to the ticketing sector, telling delegates: “Our goal is to support 400–500 million tickets using smart contracts and blockchain technology.”

According to Cointelegraph, Khaund said Ticketmaster is focusing on the value that blockchain technology (best known as the framework for cryptocurrency transactions) can bring to its business, as well as how best to communicate that to its customers.

“We want fans to get more value out of their tickets, while ensuring that tickets end up in the right hands. Blockchain is the only technology that can do this by using smart contracts to digitally define the ticketing industry,” he explained.

“Ticketmaster has technology that is almost 40 years old. Using smart contracts on a blockchain network creates a unique system for Ticketmaster by writing code for each ticket we sell. We run this over a private blockchain network to ensure privacy and optimisation around tickets.

“We want fans to get more value out of their tickets, while ensuring that tickets end up in the right hands”

To explain how this works in practice, Khaund used a case study focusing on Pearl Jam, reports Cointelegraph. When Pearl Jam performed its series of Home Shows to help raise money for the homeless, he explained, the band wanted to charge US$150 per ticket, which inevitably led to their being resold for profit.

“Some people wanted to pay more than $150 per ticket, even though they were purchased at this price,” he said. “We needed to make these tickets non-transferable, so we gave out two tickets. The first went to the issuer and couldn’t be transferred. The second ticket could only be transferred once. We were able to do this in 15 minutes once we wrote a smart contract for this use case, which contained an overriding function around transfers, along with a transfer counter.”

While the blockchain tech is useful for Ticketmaster, Khaund said it should be invisible to the customer. “We want people to like our products,” he said. “It’s not about the technology for the end users.”

“Our job is to make sure the integration process for tickets is seamless with other systems, like SafeTix,” he added. “We also plan to support millions of tickets that won’t cause lag time for customers. Finally, we plan to make tickets smarter. This technology is programmable by nature and we need to continue coming up with creative use cases.”

 


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Tickets Cloud launches new smart ticketing tech

Cloud-based ticketing platform Tickets Cloud trialled an updated version of its crypto.tickets distributed ledger technology at electronic music festival Signal.

Tickets Cloud launched ethereum-based crypto.tickets in 2017, using the blockchain platform to sell tickets for a 6,000-capacity Kraftwerk concert in February 2018. The newest version of the technology debuted at Signal festival, which took place from 15 to 18 August in Nikola-Lenivets, Russia.

More than 2,000 tickets were transferred using the technology, increasing the data available to organisers by 15%. Festivalgoers were also able sell unwanted tickets through the platform, with organisers receiving a cut for tickets sold on for higher than face value.

Each ticket was distributed with a unique, dynamic QR code to a Tickets Wallet, available on Android and Apple smartphones. All transactions were recorded in a distributed blockchain registry, providing access to the ticket’s “history” and owner information.

“We wanted to save our customers from issues like fake tickets and scams happening around the resale of tickets, and we also wanted to streamline ticket purchase and admission, making it safe and convenient,” says Sergeev Fadeev, CEO and founder of Signal Festival.

“We like to implement new exciting technologies so we decided to experiment with smart tickets, and we were not disappointed,” adds Fadeev.

“We like to implement new exciting technologies so we decided to experiment with smart tickets, and we were not disappointed”

Festival organisers were able to send messages to attendees, notifying them of any schedule changes or sending greeting from artists. Data from the app allowed organisers to identify the most engaged fans, offering promotional opportunities for future events.

Over 250 valid ticket holders communicated with each other via a chat room, arranging meet-ups, exchanging gig photos and swapping performance opinions.

“Every festival, every musical event unites like-minded people, and that’s why we’re focused on the social component of our app,” says Egor Egerev, founder of Tickets Cloud and сrypto.tickets.

Tickets Cloud currently sells tickets using crypto.tickets technology to more than 30 local events in Russia and is preparing to launch the technology at its first events in Europe and the USA.

Crypto.tickets can be integrated with any ticketing system, with Eventbrite already offering the necessary integration, in addition to Tickets Cloud.

Speaking to the International Ticketing Yearbook 2018, Tickets Cloud founder and managing director of the Moscow Ticketing Forum, Katerina Kirillova, told IQ that crypto-tickets were the “antidote to illicit resale”.

 


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Historic bar and music venue for sale in cryptocurrency

The owner of Stone Jug, a historic restaurant, bar and live music venue in Carbonear, Canada, is accepting buyers using the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, XRP and Ethereum.

Stone Jug owner, Bruce Branan, is accepting the three leading cryptocurrencies as well as 28 fiat currencies for the purchase of the historic bar and restaurant, priced at CA$6.8 million.

The venue has a capacity of 370 people across three floors, including a conference room and multi-purpose theatre, used for musical performances. Stone Jug hosts local entertainers for traditional Irish and Newfoundland music sessions each weekend.

The live music industry is no stranger to cryptocurrencies, or the blockchain technology behind them

The live music industry is no stranger to cryptocurrencies, or the blockchain technology behind them.

Blockchain technology is currently used by Ethereum-based platforms Aventus and Crypto.tickets to regulate and standardise live event ticketing. The same technology is also used by Ethereum platform, Viberate, a decentralised talent ecosystem for live music events.

The potential uses of blockchain technology in the live music sector extend to licensing, live streaming, marketing and fan-to-artist interaction, among others.

 


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