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Meanwhile, secondary market resellers are making a mint. Using bots to scoop up hundreds or even thousands of face-value tickets the second they go on sale, scalpers can post them on resale sites at marked-up prices faster than fans can refresh their browsers to get tickets from the source.

As musician Kid Rock told NPR in April, there’s more at stake than money when only the wealthy can afford to attend rock concerts: “I’m tired of seeing the old rich guy in the front row with the hot girlfriend … standing there like he could care less.”

Here are some of the tactics today’s musicians and performers are using to ensure diehard fans can afford tickets to their shows, while limiting the profits that scalpers take in.

Charge less

Some artists such as Bruce Springsteen have made a point of refusing to raise ticket prices to what the market will bear. But without measures to keep those tickets off the secondary market, the main beneficiaries of low prices are scalpers. However, wristbands, paperless tickets and requiring concertgoers to show identification at the door are among the methods artists can use to keep low-priced tickets in the hands of those who bought them. Adele saved fans an estimated $7.8 million by requiring them to register through her website before purchasing pre-sale tickets for her recent “25” tour in an attempt to thwart scalpers.

Charge more

Musicians could drop the face-value charade and simply charge what tickets would earn on the secondary market, thereby keeping profits in their pockets. But they need to be prepared for the resulting backlash from fans. In 2007, Barbara Streisand cancelled a planned concert in Rome in the wake of outrage over tickets ranging in price from US$200 to US$1,200. Some artists, such as Third Eye Blind, have experimented with dynamic, auction-style pricing, but the practice has not caught on so far. It’s more common for musicians to offer a few VIP seats at premium prices. Some artists have even admitted to effectively acting as scalpers themselves by selling tickets to their own concerts on resale websites. In 2009, Neil Diamond’s manager told the Wall Street Journal that Diamond had listed more than 100 tickets to an upcoming Madison Square Garden concert on Ticketmaster-owned resale site TicketExchange at a hefty markup.