Prince declares war on touts as his ticket sales are postponed

Prince appears to be taking a one-man stand against secondary ticketing. Tickets for his forthcoming Piano & a Microphone tour were due to go on sale Friday at 10am, but less than an hour beforehand, the ticket agency Ticketmaster announced a postponement.  Since then, Prince’s Twitter feed has been filled with references online ticket purchasing, and secondary ticketing, whereby tickets that have been bought can be officially resold.

It all began with a picture of a vulture, captioned: “A. Scavenger B. Vulture C. Tout D. All of the above.”

That was followed by a tweet linking to this week’s report from a Consumers’ magazine Association, in which the secondary ticketing market was investigated. The report found that tickets were appearing on resale sites before they were officially released, as well as simultaneously on primary and secondary sites. It also noted that resale restrictions were ignored by secondary sites.

Regarding the price tickets could rise to on resale sites, Prince or his representative tweeted its “Cheaper to fly to Minneapolis get accommodation & go to a Paisley Park show. Better overall experience, too.”