I’ve liked Radiohead for a long time. I think “High and Dry” was the first song of theirs I heard (it was on heavy rotation on the much-missed GLR). That was released in 1995.
I’ve seen them live once before. It was the King of Limbs tour in October 2012. The show was at the O2 Arena and the ticket cost me £55. I had a terrible seat up in level 4 and, honestly, the setlist really wasn’t filled with the songs I wanted to hear.
I don’t like shows at the O2 Arena. It’s a giant, soulless hangar, and I’ve only ever seen a very small number of acts create any kind of atmosphere there. But there are some acts who will only play arena shows, so if you want to see them live in London, you have to go to the O2. I try to limit myself to one show a year. And I already have a ticket to see Lorde there in November.
But when Radiohead announced their dates at the O2 (just a week after the Lorde show), I decided I wanted to be there. So, like thousands of other people, I jumped through all the hoops that Radiohead wanted me to jump through.
Earlier in the week, I registered on their site so I would be in the draw to get a code that would allow me to join the queue to buy tickets. A couple of days later, unlike many other people, I received an email containing my code.
Over the next few days, I read the email carefully several times, so I knew all of the rules that I needed to follow. I wanted to do everything right on Friday – to give myself the best chance of getting a ticket.
At 9:30, I clicked on the link in the email, which took me to a waiting room area. I had to enter my email address (which had to match the email address I’d used earlier in the process). They sent me (another, different) code that I needed to enter in order to get access to the waiting room.
I waited in the waiting room.
At a few seconds past 10:00, I was prompted for my original code and when I entered that, I was moved from the waiting room to the queue. And I sat there for about twenty minutes. Occasionally, the on-screen queuing indicator inched forward to show me that I was getting closer to my goal.
(While this was going on, in another browser window, I successfully bought a couple of tickets to see The Last Dinner Party at the Brixton Academy.)
As I was getting closer to the front of the queue, I got a message saying that they had barred my IP address from accessing the ticket site. They listed a few potential things that could trigger that, but I didn’t see anything on the list that I was guilty of. Actually, I wondered for a while if logging on to the Ticketmaster site to buy the Last Dinner Party tickets caused the problem – but I’ve now seen that many people had the same issue, so it seems unlikely to have been that.
But somehow, I managed to convince the digital guardians that my IP address belonged to a genuine fan and at about 10:25, I was presented with a page to select and buy my tickets.
Then I saw the prices.
I have personal rules about tickets at the O2 Arena. Following bad experiences (including the previous Radiohead show I saw there), I have barred myself from buying Level 4 tickets. They are far too far from the stage and have a vertiginous rake that is best avoided. I also won’t buy standing tickets because… well, because I’m old and standing for three hours or so isn’t as much fun as it used to be. I always buy Level 1 seats (for those who don’t know the O2 Arena, Levels 2 and 3 are given over to corporate boxes, so they aren’t an option).
So I started looking for Level 1 tickets. To see that they varied between £200 and £300. That didn’t seem right. I’d heard that tickets would be about £80. In the end, I found £89 tickets right at the back of Level 4 (basically, in Kent) and £97 standing tickets (both of those prices would almost certainly have other fees added to them before I actually paid). I seriously considered breaking my rules and buying a ticket on Level 4, but I just couldn’t justify it.
I like Radiohead, but I can’t justify paying £200 or £300 for anyone. The most I have ever paid for a gig is just over £100 for Kate Bush ten years ago. It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s that I don’t think it’s worth that much money. I appreciate that other people (20,000 people times four nights – plus the rest of the tour!) will have reached a different conclusion. And I hope they enjoy the shows. But it’s really not for me.
I also realise the economics of the music industry have changed. It used to be that tours were loss-leaders that were used to encourage people to buy records (Ok, I’m showing my age – CDs). These days, it has switched. Almost no-one buys CDs, and releasing new music is basically a loss-leader to encourage people to go to gigs. And gig prices have increased in order to make tours profitable. I understand that completely, but I don’t have to like it. I used to go to about one gig a week. At current prices, it’s more like one a month.
I closed the site without buying a ticket, and I don’t regret that decision for a second.
What about you? Did you try to get tickets? At what point did you fall out of the process? Or did you get them? Are you happy you’ll get your money’s worth?