(Hypebot) — New York recently passed a law that requires ticket sellers to reveal the total price upfront instead of added on during checkout. Will other states do the same?
by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Everyone has experienced it. You think that you’re paying one (usually high) price for a ticket to see your favorite artist, but when the actual bill comes it’s way higher than the original price. As a result, probably one of the most universally hated add-ons is the “convenience charge.” The day of the hidden ticket charges may be coming to an end though, if a recently passed New York State law spreads.
More Than Just The Hidden Fees
Under the new legislation, both sellers and resellers are required to disclose the full price up front and can’t display any additional fees in a smaller type size.
The bill goes further than that, thankfully. It also increases fines for the use of scalper bots and ticket purchasing software, which scarfs up the best tickets before fans ever have a chance at them.
Wait – there’s more! The bill also outlaws the resale of free tickets, and best of all, forbids delivery fees on electronic tickets or ones that are printed at home.
And it requires ticket sellers to be clear about when a ticket is being resold and even disclose the original ticket price.
What Wasn’t Included
If you think that all of your ticketing woes have been addressed, there was actually more in the original bill that didn’t make it to the final version that passed. The full version also included new rules for refunds, a cap on tickets reserved by artists for insiders that are not made available to the general public, and a requirement for artists to disclose the size of an artist’s allotment of tickets.
OK, so the bill (New York S.9461/A.10500) isn’t perfect, but it goes a long way to finally getting the ticket surprises under control. No, it won’t bring ticket prices down, but at least we’ll be able to decide whether we want to spend the money or not without wondering what the final price will really be.
If you live in New York State, you’ll see the benefits right away as the new legislation goes into effect today. For the rest of us in the other 49 States, we can only hope that our State Legislatures take notice and pass something similar.
No one begrudges an artist or the food chain around him or her making money. It’s the hidden ticket charges that we all hate.
Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author and coach. He has authored 24 books on recording, music, the music business and social media.
