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Music Subscription Service Aims To Get Fans Back Into Venues

Resurrecting the live music scene, one gig at a time
Music membership service GiggedIn aims to get more people to live music venues.
GiggedIn
Music membership service GiggedIn aims to get more people to live music venues.

Back in the olden days (circa 1990s), getting a ticket to a big-name gig was not for the faint hearted.

It usually meant either a) sleeping on the cold, hard footpath outside the ticketing office or venue until sale day (which could be in three days' time); or b) phoning a ticketing agency, being put on hold for 30 minutes, getting cut off, phoning the ticketing agency again, being put on hold for another 30 minutes, finally nabbing a ticket in Row ZZ and having to be OK with that.

Thanks to new tech platforms such as GiggedIn, music fans may longer have to sleep out overnight to get tickets to see their favourite bands.
Getty Images
Thanks to new tech platforms such as GiggedIn, music fans may longer have to sleep out overnight to get tickets to see their favourite bands.

Nowadays, for the most part, you can buy a ticket to anyone, anywhere, anytime on your smartphone in around 90 seconds.

To be fair, there are still some modern-day sleep-out horror stories -- just ask Foo Fighters fans who are still thawing out from a few nights sleeping rough after a disastrous ticketing experiment designed to Beat the Bots and stop them from nabbing huge quantities of tickets for resale at inflated prices.

But Aussie music startup GiggedIn has made it even easier, and cheaper, for live music fans to get their fix -- and then some.

GiggedIn founder and CEO Edwin Onggo told The Huffington Post Australia said members pay a $35 monthly fee ($65 if they want to bring a mate), select shows from up to 20 events each week in Sydney and Melbourne, RSVP to the ones they like and show up at the venue with ID on the night. And there is no contract.

"You can go to an unlimited amount of gigs -- you could do seven gigs in seven nights if you wanted to," Onggo said.

GiggedIn CEO and founder Edwin Onggo wants to get people off the couch and into live music venues.
GiggedIn
GiggedIn CEO and founder Edwin Onggo wants to get people off the couch and into live music venues.

"The core issue we're solving in the industry is that nine out of 10 gigs on average don't sell out -- so we fill up those rooms. We bring those bands more fans and, as our membership base grows, we're running GiggedIn exclusive shows where we act as the promoters and pay an artist to play a show just for our members.

"It's a great way to give back to our members and give artists opportunities to play more shows."

Some of the bands GiggedIn fans have been able to see include Peking Duk, Illy, The Rubens, Ngaiire, Art Vs Science as well as entry to music festivals and events.

Getting people to live music venues is also good for the economy, with a report by the Live Music Office showing that the live music sector contributed $15.7 billion of value to the Australian community in 2014.

GiggedIn members also get access to exclusive gigs by artists such as rapper Tkay Maidza.
GiggedIn
GiggedIn members also get access to exclusive gigs by artists such as rapper Tkay Maidza.

In the report, Lecturer in Music Tech at the University of Tasmania Dr Dave Carter said that for every dollar spent on live music, three dollars of benefit was returned to the wider community.

Onggo said platforms such as GiggedIn had the power to resurrect the Aussie live music scene, even in the wake of Sydney's new lockout laws.

"The recent Keep Sydney Open events show that people value those live experiences, that taking them away is devastating on a cultural level, but it also has so much of an effect on venues, cabs, Ubers, restaurants, hospitality," he said.

"We're really getting people out of the house and back into the live music hubs to see shows.

"Our mission is to make live music a part of every person's weekly routine in Australia."

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