The great Michael Jackson ticket scam

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

After the hoopla over Michael Jackson's demise last week, a thought was cast for the people actually putting on his audacious "get out of tax hell" series of concerts. The dancers, the set designers, the musicians, the bootleg t-shirt designers, the venue itself.

In order to claw some money back, the promoter is doing something really wrong. They're giving fans who bought tickets a choice - either a refund or a ticket. That's right - you can either get your £80ish plus all the service charges back, or get a souvenir ticket for the concert date and seat you would have had. The tickets will be a Michael Jackson design exclusive lenticular design, but it's a TICKET.

Of course, if tickets were bought from a third party, like ebay, etc. good luck seeing ANYTHING from that transaction.

The question then becomes how much is a useless concert ticket really worth? Many promoters and ticket issuers will say it's worth the £4-£10 service charge they add on to the price of the ticket and the promoters in this case would have been justified to offer the souvenir ticket for this fee giving the rest of the ticket price back as a refund.

However, I guess AEG and Ticketmaster believe that fans are paying £80ish for ticket and the concert just happens to be a free bonus. In that case, I'm glad to have seen all those free gigs and just wish I'd kept all the expensive bits of paper I'd bought.

This just has to be one of the worst cases of cashing in on celebrity death I've heard about in a long time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• AEG Live to Refund Michael Jackson Concert Tickets (shoppingblog.com)
• Michael Jackson tour: AEG ticket offer angers fans (telegraph.co.uk)
• Michael Jackson: O2 ticket holders' options (telegraph.co.uk)
• 'This is it': Jackson fans get refund or souvenir (cnn.com)
• MJ Ticket Refund Details (perezhilton.com)
• Jackson fans offered refund or souvenir ticket (idiomag.com)

New Year. New Things. Etc.

So it's a new year and what better way to welcome it than by attending a live and exclusive gig in Londontown?

Last night I attended a BBC Radio 2-taped free concert by Duran Duran at Hammersmith Palais, a small little nightclub that the band played back in 1982, really before the cusp of worldwide fame grabbed them by the danglies. That show as well was taped for radio broadcast.

Apart from the obvious highlight of seeing the band in a 3,000-odd capacity venue (and how many fans can say that - unless they attended the Big Thing Tour in 1989?), it was awesome to see the band continue to trot out the older tracks. Too many bands with a history similar to Duran's continue to tour a greatest hits package year after year.

Credit due to Duran, though. They've been listening to the fans who continually ask for older b-sides and obscure album tracks to be added to the set lists. Last night was the first time in many, many years that the band played "Hold Back The Rain", a standout track from the Rio album, which I have personally never heard live.

This can be added to other non-greatest hits tracks from the last couple of tours; stuff like "(Waiting For The) Nightboat" and "Friends Of Mine", and for the lucky few who got to see it's live debut "Tiger Tiger".

Great gig, welcome introduction to 2005 for those of us there, and I can't wait to see us singing along to "Notorious", "Ordinary World" and "Rio" when the concert is played on the radio later this month.

Set List
1. FINEST HOUR
2. HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF
3. HOLD BACK THE RAIN
4. WANT YOU MORE
5. UNION OF THE SNAKE
6. WHAT HAPPENS TOMORROW
7. CHAINS
8. ASTRONAUT
9. ORDINARY WORLD
10. SAVE A PRAYER
11. BEDROOM TOYS
12. NOTORIOUS
13. REFLEX
14. NICE
15. (REACH UP FOR THE) SUNRISE
16. WILD BOYS

Encore
17. GIRLS ON FILM
18. RIO