Archive for the ‘Ticketmaster’ tag
iTunes Ping Slams Door on Concert/Event Listings for Independent Musicans
[this is a follow-up to a previous post]
It is clear now that iTunes Ping could care less about supporting independent musicians with anything but iTunes sales of their products. Their reply to me about having a gig listed with tickets available At the Door is disheartening, but not surprising:
Thanks for sending. We’re collecting information about the shows that aren’t currently included in iTunes so we can better understand which ticketing companies we should pursue adding. We will only list shows that include online ticket sales. At this point we are only able to support shows ticketed by Ticketmaster.com, LiveNation.com and TicketWeb.com.
This adds fuel to my presumption that Apple is taking a cut of any ticket sales listed on Ping.
Since the beginning of the year, Jimmy Z and the ZTribe performed at over 50 shows, only one of which had tickets sold online.
Getting new fans to shows is one of the most important methods to promote independent music – not networking sales through iTunes.
Regardless, we will continue to post many items, including information about forthcoming shows on Ping, as we need to take advantage of every avenue for marketing we can.
In my mind, Ping is far less useful than MySpace is – even in the abysmal condition it is today. At least they let you list all events easily so that fans can view them.
Until Ping integrates with Facebook & Twitter, there is not much that is social about it. It’s just another way to add to Apple’s bottom line.
Update December 13, 2010 – I was asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.