Earlier this week, LCD Soundsystem announced a round of shows at Brooklyn venue Brooklyn Steel. Two months ago, they opened the new space with a five-night residency, which was overshadowed by a ticket fiasco where the tickets sold out immediately, leading to intensely overinflated prices on scalping websites. There were rumors of bots and professional scalpers overloading the Brooklyn Steel system, but it turned out the demand was just very high. (“the fact was that there were many more people who wanted to see us than we had tickets for, which is awesome and a bummer at the same time,” James Murphy said.)
This morning, the tickets for the new residency once again sold out immediately. Now, James Murphy has posted a note to the band’s Facebook urging fans not to overpay for tickets to the shows. According to Murphy, bots weren’t a factor in the quick sellout—it’s just that people really, really want to see them, and the demand combined with relatively low supply means that even an amateur scalper can have a field day with the market. Ergo, his post took on a very insistent tone: Please, please do not get suckered. As he writes:
on another, more important note: JUST DON’T BUY ANY TICKETS ONLINE!!! many people on stubhub, once again, listed tickets for sale BEFORE ANY TICKETS WERE AVAILABLE, which means that they’re fake. last show, a bunch of people bought fake tickets, for a LOT of money. we can’t let you in with fake tickets. not because they’re “fake and we’re mean”, but because the venue has a legal capacity, and we fill it, which means we LEGALLY can’t let more people in! if you have a friend, who you, like, KNOW, who has a ticket for sale (and if they’re a friend, they’ll sell it to you for face value) i’d feel comfortable with buying that, but don’t buy tickets from strangers on craigslist, eBay, online, ANYWHERE. remove the food supply, starve the parasite.
He added: “PS. seriously. DON’T BUY EXPENSIVE TICKETS! so incredibly not our last show. we’ll be right back.”
The note also mentions that the band is experimenting with a “safe and controlled face-value exchange” to sidestep the online market entirely. “shit, it might just be me buying them from you after verifying that they’re valid, then selling them myself at face value,” Murphy wrote.
If so, this would be an incredibly unique—though not at all unkind—gesture: a widely popular band buying back its own tickets just to make sure they get sold to real people, and not scalpers trying to make a buck. This sounds wildly stressful for the band, no? It also reflects very poorly on the concert industry—that even a band as successful as LCD Soundsystem has to resort to such slapdash measures just to make sure its fans can see them without paying an arm and a leg.
Also, come on Brooklyn, don’t act like a brat if your fake tickets don’t get you into a show. That’s not James Murphy’s fault.
The new shows take place June 16-17, 19-21, and 23-24.
