Should You Use Ticketmaster's New Product to Buy Concert Tickets?

Scoring tickets to concerts these days is such a headache that I don't bother most of the time. Would it be awesome to see The Weeknd? Sure, but it's not worth my frustration trying to get tickets before the scalpers and bots do. Ticketmaster is trying to combat this issue by introducing Verified Fan, a new registration process that aims to help real human fans get tickets and not the bots.

Verified Fan is simple to use. After an artist announces a tour, fans can register for it and include "real person" details like their email address, phone number, or Ticketmaster account. Ticketmaster then uses "data science technology" to make sure you're a real person. A few hours before the presale starts, you'll receive a special code (if you're selected) and a link to buy tickets. The product started to roll out with smaller shows and officially launched on a massive scale with Ed Sheeran's tour. You can see what it looks like below.

For many fans, the Verified Fan tool helped them get tickets to a Sheeran show while remaining calm. One fan, 18-year-old Shannon del Castillo, bought tickets within two to three minutes for a show in Charlotte, NC. She likes the service and has no suggestions on changing it. "[It's] awesome because I've struggled getting tickets before and this worked very well," del Castillo said to POPSUGAR.

Fan Melissa Bates also had success in buying tickets for a show in Pittsburgh. She received the code via text at 6 a.m. and used it for the presale that started at 10 a.m. She was also pretty happy with her seat selection and experience with Verified Fan. "I buy a lot of tickets and I like that I was able to get a great seat at face value instead of buying an overpriced VIP package that most artists offer these days," Bates said to POPSUGAR. She also plans on using the code to buy more tickets.

However, some fans were not so lucky, like Taylor Repp, who was trying to buy tickets for a show in Philadelphia. Even with the Verified Fan code, Repp didn't get a chance to buy tickets when her screen loaded to the sale page. She would prefer if Ticketmaster did a "lottery pool for times to purchase tickets," she told POPSUGAR. Or she suggested for Sheeran to cancel tickets that were bought by scalpers and resell them to fans, something that country singer Eric Church did last month.

Other fans also took to Twitter to complain about the same happening to them — and seeing tickets show up on scalping websites.

Though not every fan is happy, Verified Fan appears to be working. David Marcus, Ticketmaster's head of music in North America, told Recode that "less than 1 percent of tickets sold through the Verified Fan program so far have ended up in secondary ticket markets. Normally that number is a double-digit percentage."

It's definitely worth trying Verified Fan the next time you're trying to buy tickets. Just keep in mind, even registering for Verified Fan won't guarantee you get a code or a ticket in the presale.