As someone who has been saving my ticket stubs for 20+ years I was very frustrated by the disappearance of physical tickets. I paid the extra fee to have them mailed to me, but eventually that went away. Printed emails are not the same.
I eventually figured out how to make the most realistic replica ticket stubs possible to add to my ticket stub album. I spent several thousands dollars on professional printers and real stock as well as months building my own software to customize and print tickets, all to scratch my own itch. Now my collection continues to grow with the 20 or so shows I go to every year and I've helped over 16,000+ people do the same with my website https://stubforge.com, which I'm now lucky enough to run full time.
A lot of people don't get it, and that's ok, but for those that do, they really get it.
People buy our tickets to give as gifts (because it's not easy to do anymore in a non-awkward or non-art project fashion), to add to their collections, to frame with posters, to use as surprise proposals, to invite people to their weddings, to announce their pregnancies and more things I never would have imagined when I started.
There are people that do miss ephemera. Even if you don't look at it that often, it's something precious to you. It doesn't matter if your kids will get it or just chuck it, it's there for you to enjoy and remember in the fashion that you want to.
I definitely do get it, as someone with a (loose and not organized) physical ticket collection. That said, I think it's partly the authentic object I'm attached to. While I'm absolutely amazed at the length you went to create facsimiles, I'm not sure a recreation does it for me.
That said, I think it's a nifty gift idea to create e.g. fake tickets to your birthday party or something.
I've got a stub binder that started having print outs of tickets in it or post-it notes. When I would go back to see what I've been to and get a burst of nostalgia, I'd just get mad at the lack of ticket instead of the good memory. Having one that looks and feels like the real thing let me move on from that.
There are a lot of folks who feel like the object obtains some "magical aura" by physically being at a concert with you, and that's ok, but for me, it's just a way to remember the show and keep track of everything I've been to. I go to enough shows that a single ticket isn't like a massive special memento, which may be the case for the person who goes to like one show a year.
Gifting is huge for us as well as parties, retirements, anniversaries, you name it!
Wow, I must say, what a great business idea (even though the business aspect may have been accidental And I’m not in the target audience personally) and how well-deserved the success is, given such an authentic origin. Best of luck to you!
Thanks, I appreciate it!
After many startups and business ventures to not get anywhere, it was nice to have one finally hit, and one that I actually care about too!
Not to be able to have evidence that you were there? Even if you weren’t?
I feel like the whole thing is like some kind of cognitive hangover - “this ticket is important and I must not lose it before the show” turns into “I can never, ever dispose of this piece of paper”.
I understand. I struggle to get rid of things, not because I like the stuff, but because I don't have a great memory, and things are what trigger memories for me.
The point of an experience is totally about the experience, it's why I don't even take my phone out to take pictures or videos at a show. People get hung up thinking this is about "proving" you were at a show, they even get surprisingly angry in comments about this on my ads, but it's totally not the point.
This has nothing to do with the actual concert experience or proof, it has to do with your tradition of collecting ticket stubs that you can go back to for that nostalgia bump and/or to keep track of every event you went to. It's about having a jar/box/album of memories.
If you've been collecting for 20 years and suddenly someone takes away your ability to add to your collection, you are going to get pissed off, and trust me, people definitely do.
Sure you can do anything else to collect, but the power of a streak/tradition/collection is real. It drove me to create this entire business because looking at a printed email or post-it note just made me mad instead of nostalgic.
Going through my binder and remembering that I saw Nine Inch Nails at a 1000 person venue is awesome, or when we saw Sabaton with 40 people and the singer just came into the audience to put his arm around me while singing, and it's not like I'm going to stop going to 10-30 concerts a year for the rest of my life, so more cool things will happen, memories will need to be preserved and it's nice to have them all fit into one album instead of anything else. I've got tickets for shows I've forgotten I've even seen, but it's in there with the mix which is handy. Forgotten venues, crazy low prices, "holy shit this massive band opened for these guys back then???".
Some people see tickets as trash and clutter, that's fine, for others it's a precious memento, despite how useless, wasteful, or unnecessary it is. I've got room for junk in my house that's meaningful for me, so it doesn't bother me to have, quite the opposite.
The token, whatever it is, is a cue or an index card for those experiences and memories. I have a few stashes of old concert tickets and others in scattered drawers, pockets and containers. Stumbling on one is a great rush of memories, and I move it to the aggregated collection.
We really lost something with Print At Home tickets, it's just garbage afterwards, not a permanent thing tied to that event.
I love this idea and want to backfill some select tickets into my bucket of memory cues.
you could say the same about taking a picture of a special moment, it's a souvenir, people have been keeping things that remind them of past experiences since like forever
Well if you've got a pile of ticket stubs that you've been collecting for 20 years and suddenly you can't keep that tradition alive, it kind of ticks you off. Sure you can start adding printed photos or something else, but it ruins your consistent collection and/or your streak.
I specifically have a ticket stub binder and seeing blank spots, or print outs or post it notes just made me mad instead of nostalgic. I can't shove tour posters or tshirts in there, so this was the solution for me. I have over 200 band tshirts, but I don't buy one at every show.
Never discount the power of a streak or continuing a tradition or collection. I just talked to a guy the other day whose jar of ticket stubs is his prized collection, even if he never opens it to reflect. Some people go to one concert every few years, others go to shows and games every week.
Yes, the experience is the point. But the memory afterward can be just powerful. Visual and tactical stimuli can enhance the memory of the experience, long after it occurred.
Personal memories can be made in innumerable ways. The absence of tickets doesn't mean memories, or physical representations of memories, are going away.
As for academic interest, I have to imagine there's a digital repository of playbills or the information therein somewhere that's easily searchable. After all, these types of resources exist for other performances like pro wrestling and mixed martial arts in the form of cagematch & sherdog. I may not have my ticket stub from my first match, but I can still look it up by venue, year and the matches I remember. I can find contemporary news reports and reviews. This can be supplemented with web forum discussions and other social media, blogs, etc. people crave this type of discussion, documentation and artifacts that prove their fandom. I don't think they care about the medium.
When my grandmother died, she had a little box of programs, a couple letters, and a few little clippings of newspaper items. It was such a special thing to discover. I can’t rule out that digitizing everything makes such moments impossible, particularly with photo albums, but there is memory contained in physical objects that is not the same as just taking some time to remember.
Yes, when I wrote "personal memories can be made in innumerable ways" & "I don't think they care about the medium", this is what I meant. Tickets, specifically, aren't unique in this regard, and the absence of tickets doesn't imply the absence of physical objects to contain memories.
Something I've noticed is I just don't produce or collect "I was here" type memorabillia, compared to people from older generations like my parents.
Photos and videos? Nope, I don't even have a camera aside from the one in my phone, and the stuff in there are so forgettable I don't even know what's in there.
Postcards, hats, shirts, and other "I was here." tourists' goods? Nope. I stopped buying them when I noticed they all just end up stuffed under nine layers of my closet's hell never to see daylight again. Waste of my money.
Tickets and other "I paid money to be here." artifacts? Thrown out in the trash asap. See above; waste of space.
In stark contrast, I do buy and collect things that enrich my present day. Books pertaining to my interests to line my shelves, hardware and software to satisfy my computing itch, and so on.
Whoever has the unfortunate privilege of cleaning up my affairs (I have no children nor a spouse and don't plan on it) will unfortunately have no idea where the fuck I've been, but honestly I don't think I could care. I just don't see value in memorializing my past. I don't know if that's good or sad, but I certainly couldn't care less.
In my experience, it's not a generational thing, but a personal thing.
The best things to buy check both "memorabilia" and "enrich my present day" boxes. If I'm going to get an album, I might as well get it at the show. If there's a new book you want, check if there's a signing, etc. I usually give books to the thrift store after I've read them, but I'll hold on to the copy of John Hodgeman's More Information Than You Require because of the experience of getting it inscribed at a meet & greet.
Don't know if you read the article, but the point is that you used to get something collectible. I've saved every one of my concert ticket stubs since 1983.
Now, for your $50 per ticket in junk fees, you don't even get a tiny piece of card stock. In fact, you've been charged a "convenience fee" for using YOUR OWN PRINTER. That is disgraceful. And now I don't think you can even use a physical printout anymore.
And that's not even getting into the resale/transfer-rights aspect.
If nothing else a physical ticket is a bearer instrument. You can sell it to someone else without having to give StubHub or another third party a cut of the deal.
I have a small tin box that something or other came in as a gift. It stored concert tickets and other small memorabilia (like the movie ticket from a great first date) for every event I'd gone to for well over a decade.
Gradually, as physical tickets got phased out, I had fewer and fewer items of memorabilia to add. At this point, I have no physical record of shows we see. I feel like something has been lost. But I suspect far fewer people kept these tickets for nostalgia than threw them away, so I guess I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed.
I definitely think it's a minority, but even so it's a very large group of people that liked to save tickets. It's why I made Stubforge, so I could keep adding tickets to my own collection. I've got a lot of repeat customers who have been able to keep their collections growing as well. Even if you don't look at them, it's a way to remember what you've been to in a consistent fashion.
I've been doing this for over 20 years, but I confess that I've never gone back to look at the tickets. Maybe one day, out of nostalgia, I'll look at the dusty box full of old tickets and have good memories of shows, movies, good and bad. For now, what matters is the feeling that part of my life's memory is being preserved for something that I don't even know what exactly it is...
Some tickets were awesome. I’m in France and I still remember getting JJ Goldman (an artist)’s physical red star ticket for his communist tour, or the photo negative film physical artifact, he always made sure the physical artifacts were never a simple printed piece of paper.
I think Derek Sivers [0] had something to say about this. He used to run CD-Baby, and IIRC was also a musician with some well known bands from back in the day. I've found his stuff about different ways of approaching live music very thoughtful
Why not offer posters at the merch booth (or something more ticket-sized, I guess)? I always look forward to show posters. It helps foster a sense of community too, when you work with printers and a cadre of artists.
I collected tickets without giving it much thought when I was in high school and college. Every few years, when cleaning, I’d come across them again. I realized that they belong in the garbage.
“They tell us what it was like to be there.”
I could just as easily write a few lines down in my journal, and the journal would at least record my thoughts. The ticket does nothing.
One of my biggest regrets in life was throwing away in a house move my tickets / flyers / poster collection from many years of gigs I attended. Probably a banker's box full of random things. I wish I hadn't done that. And then they stopped making them the same way.
I haven’t been to a broadway show in decades, but I have been to a few Westend and broadway on tour in the past 2-3 years and they’ve all featured those checkered backdrops with the shows name on that you can line up to take your picture in front of and they all have cardboard cut outs that you can stand next to for a “look where I’ve been” selfie.
Event tickets should be NFTs. They can retain the quality of bearer instruments and remain a keepsake after the event.
It would also unlock new ways to connect with audiences. For example, if your wallet holds 3 or more NFTs from this venue/director/band, you get early access to purchase tickets for future events.
Back home the local football club would sometimes give priority to e.g. people who could show at least 2 ticket stubs. Of course they could do that because they were the sole issuer of their tickets, it would be much harder for an entity that sells tickets through multiple channels.
I eventually figured out how to make the most realistic replica ticket stubs possible to add to my ticket stub album. I spent several thousands dollars on professional printers and real stock as well as months building my own software to customize and print tickets, all to scratch my own itch. Now my collection continues to grow with the 20 or so shows I go to every year and I've helped over 16,000+ people do the same with my website https://stubforge.com, which I'm now lucky enough to run full time.
A lot of people don't get it, and that's ok, but for those that do, they really get it.
People buy our tickets to give as gifts (because it's not easy to do anymore in a non-awkward or non-art project fashion), to add to their collections, to frame with posters, to use as surprise proposals, to invite people to their weddings, to announce their pregnancies and more things I never would have imagined when I started.
There are people that do miss ephemera. Even if you don't look at it that often, it's something precious to you. It doesn't matter if your kids will get it or just chuck it, it's there for you to enjoy and remember in the fashion that you want to.