ThePumpkins.net

I think internet pre-sales/club only promotions are probably the best thing to do, but then again even causaul fans have the internet and have email and are on mailing lists. Loads of people will know about the shows even if they're not hard core fans. And the flipside is that many fans dont regularly use the net all the time for finding out about gigs or dont have time to spend hours on fansites. Just some thoughts...

PistolPete wrote:
I agree.
I thought it was really high maintenance the way they put out tickets and such.

Paying for a fan club has it's pros and cons. For example, when The Police were going on their tour fans paid the hundred dollars for the fan club to get pre-sale tickets. Their tickets ended up being the worst seats in the venue at expensive prices. But for true fans, it's worth it.

But then again, SP doesn't really do big venues like The Police. The Fillmore is a small venue, and I don't think Billy would charge us a hundred dollars to join the fan club.

PistolPete wrote:This really only eliminates scalpers (to some degree). Separating the casual fan from the hardcore fan is a difficult task and I'm not sure it's possible. As Billy's mentioned before, you can't please everyone at a show. Someone is always going to be disappointed that they didn't play "Today" or "1979" or on the other hand, someone is going to be pissed that there wasn't an encore, or the set wasn't as long as they thought it should be. It's a fine line...

Or "Rat in a Cage"

Damn, that sucks for the Police fans.

I was just thinking earlier this morning after a hard night's sleeping, just thinking about the things discussed in this thread, and it made me wonder if there were HEAPS more hardcore fans going to shows and whatnot back in the day, seeing as the internet was at the stage where it wasn't really used by the masses, which leaves the hardcore fans to find information from things like fan clubs, and constantly finding out (somehow) about what's up with SP at the time.

Harder methods of getting info = harder hardcore fans?

I have an interview disc were Billy used a quiz game to hand out free tickets at a KROC FM interview, so the quiz idea isn't unprecedented. Maybe there could be an exclusive fan club where you pay a small fee, but you also have to take some quiz to join. Only hardcore fans know a lot about the band and their music, so if the questions were somewhat obscure, that would weed out the people Billy doesn't want at concerts. Then he could just offer tickets to those people. To prevent those who fail from just looking up the answers to try again, you could have to fill out a form with your name, email adress, payment info, etc. When a person fails their email could be kicked off. People can get new emails, but only a hardcore fan would go through the trouble, so it would work either way.

blueczarina wrote:That was just for the radio interview and wasn't the main method of releasing tickets. I think only 5 or so sets of tickets were given away like that. People also shaved their heads for tickets during the Machina era to get into a small venue to see Billy acoustic on 99X in Atlanta. And during the FutureEmbrace Billy had fans pick a number 1-1000 and the fans that were closest got a special performance and got to spend the day with Billy.

I know it was for the radio interview, which is why I said it was for the interview. I was not saying that this was a generalized thing, just that he has done a quiz (at least once) before. It wasn't the main point anyway.

higher ticket prices is not the answer.
This will only make it even harder for the true fans to go.

I agree about the prices. He can't totally alienate everybody else either, as its good to draw in new fans. If he does make all of his concerts expensive exclusive events, than i'm afraid the general public will lose all receptiveness for the band and totally right him off as some pompous b@st@rd. To keep the band viable he still needs to bring in more people to the fan base. There are a number of us, but as he said his fan base is not that big. He can't afford to just shut everybody out completely.
He should do at least a mix of true fan shows and general ones.

what will happen, they raise the price of tix at a certain event, some dickheads buy and buy and buy until the tix are completely sold out like in 5 seconds, and then put them on ebay at ten times the original price. True fans will be completely shut out, because the majority of the true fans are not wealthy, and will not even be in the running to ever get a ticket at all. What kind of crowd will that be at a show?
you tell me.

a very small crowd.
most of the tickets probably would end up on ebay.

The best way they could handle this, as someone mentioned above, would be some sort of fan club. I also like the trivia idea. An intense trivia game that allows for pre-sale perks is a major weed out factor.....and SP trivia has the potential to get really, really tricky and picky. Do the fan club thing, the trivia game, and the will call policy and I think they'd be good to go without increasing the ticket prices so much.

while a trivia game would be fun, I dont think it would be good, for it would come down to it being a competition just to get a ticket. Someone who really deserved to go would lose, just because they didnt know like the first venue they ever played or whatever. That wouldnt be fair. Knowing stats, isnt the same as being a true fan. There are loads of people I know who know absolutely everything about the pumpkins, have tons of pumpkins stuff, but as far as being a true fan there is no way in hell they are!!! i.e. like the people who sell pumpkins tix, pumpkins bootlegs ect on ebay.

mm, yeah.
the whole trivia/quiz thing i mentioned wasn't meant to exclude true fans.
like, if i were to make that quiz it wouldn't be random facts that outrageous fanatics would know like "what are the names of billy's cats" or something. haha.
i would probably make it about album content. i mean, if billy were to do this trivia thing, it would probably be for the "rare/unique" shows. i figure you would have to know some pre-gish stuff as well as tracks that never made it to studio albums.
there are plenty of SP fans out there who own every single studio album, yet they have never heard of TAFH or mashed potatoes. i think those fans should stick with SP's regular concerts since they probably would not enjoy the more hardcore rare concerts are much as true SP fans.

i kind of think as thepumpkins.net as a sort of fan club. like, i see it as an underground fansite, mainly because it's out there but at the same time it's not, you know? it's very well maintained and by the looks of it, most users on here are very well informed about the Pumpkins and seem to be true, almost lifelong, fans. Murder does a great job at maintaining this site. And I think it's awesome. Same goes to all the other moderators.

oh I knew your trivia didnt meant to exclude true fans, I just got to thinking about how trivia games are done.

and you are so right, the true sp fans I think are more about the creativity and music, and the raw talent instead of the 'media' and 'hype'. They would love the hardcore rare/unique shows, and would know the songs when they played them.

very true cundiamarca89, pumpkins.net is sort of an underground fan base that actually have intellectual conversations, unlike netphoria.

Let's not point fingers. Most information starts at netphoria and trickles down...besides where do you think this video even came from?

hmmm... the trivia things anice idea, but anyone whos anyone can surely ust google the pumpkins and find out as much as anyone knows. I doubt it'll work

netphoria sux!