In an age where concert entry constitutes little more than a digital barcode, it feels like music fans have lost a once crucial part of their connection to a favourite artist. With e-tickets deleted the morning after and print-outs often primed for the trash, it’s a sad development – especially for those who, like this writer, have actively kept gig and festival tickets archived in a folder for the past decade and a half.
For avid gig-goer Nathan Flaskett, who has also collected signed albums and posters for many years, his ticket stub collection (which recently went viral on TikTok) is full of nostalgia. “I like to look back at memories I’ve had over the years,” he says, “even just to keep track of who I’ve seen because it’s easy to forget.”
Having kept a physical record of these memories, and particularly the variety of gigs he attended — from Justin Bieber to Bring Me The Horizon —makes him feel connected to artists he grew up as a fan of. It also often prompts him to get back into certain artists that he feels he’s grown out of. “I may see the ticket and think, ‘I’ve really got to listen to them, it’s been forever,’” he says.
With most tickets now being digital, Flaskett feels that the art of ticket stubs has been truly lost – especially when it comes to festivals. “I remember Reading 2015; I have a ticket and it’s pristine. I know you still get wristbands, but they get dirty. There’s nothing quite like a ticket you can keep.”
In a 2023 article, journalist Scott-Ryan Abt observed this unfortunate change, suggesting that two things are now “missing from the concert experience and not coming back”. Ticket stubs and cheap t-shirts, he argued, were once “the evidence that it actually happened and that you were there. But advances in technology insist that there is a better, more efficient way”, he added. “As a result, we are missing something without the physical paper tickets that used to be a part of going to a show.”
With all this in mind, it seems unfathomable to think that concert tickets were once treated like pieces of art — a timeless collectable, even — by the biggest bands of the 60s, 70s and 80s, including Led Zeppelin, Motörhead, The Grateful Dead and The Beatles.
“It’s actually pretty tragic,” says Blaise Hayward, a Canadian artist who has lived and worked in New York since 1996. His recent online art collection, Tickets Please, chronicles some of the most iconic gig tickets ever printed. Full of colour, character and personality, these are items that a collector would be ecstatic to own.
An avid music fan and admirer of fonts and graphic design, Hayward began making his collection in March 2023. The inspiration? He walked by Irving Plaza concert hall in New York and noticed groups of music fans heading into a concert, flashing their phones. “It made me start to reminisce about my youth,” the 60-year-old photographer and sculptor recalls. “I began thinking about how I cherished my stubs as a teenager.” During his youth, he’d purchase tickets at a physical outlet, keep them safe in a scrapbook and pin them on a wall.
“It was all part and parcel of the experience,” he enthuses; “you would treat them like gold and make sure they were very secure in a pocket and want to go home to put them somewhere safe so you wouldn’t lose them”.
Around the same time, a friend lent him some ticket stubs to photograph, and Hayward’s “labour of love” quickly escalated into an official project. Curated from a number of music memorabilia websites, eBay, private collectors and word of mouth, he describes himself as “pretty selective” when sourcing tickets, adding that he “doesn’t always buy the first one I see”. Some, he says, have proved elusive, such as The Last Waltz, though he does have Japanese tickets and one for a Russian Nine Inch Nails gig among his collection.
With Tickets Please now spanning 1964-2015 and including artists as wide-ranging as Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, he hopes to have a ticket from every country.
While his ambition for “music and authenticity” is unending, Hayward finds it “a shame [that] it went from beautiful ticket stubs to terrible-looking QR codes”. But why? Hayward thinks that while environmentalists would be happy that paper and harmful inks are no longer being used, the main reason is likely band economics.
“I think it’s a cost-cutting measure, and it’s just moved with the times that we live in now – everything is digital and on your phone,” he says. “[Artist] management would probably say, ‘Why do we want to spend $50,000 on printing these tickets if we can just do it on a QR code? It’s lost money?’ But I don’t think they’re thinking it through.”
Hayward also feels that bands have missed out on an artistic aspect of their livelihood. “Ticket stubs allowed bands to stretch their artistic muscles, brand themselves and have fun with it,” he considers, citing that groups would collaborate with artists to work on the graphic design. “They’re all out of business, and no one’s doing it anymore.”
Now, the only band Hayward is aware of that still issues physical tickets (“with stunning designs”) are American rockers Phish, who send tickets via post (for a small fee) for use at the point of entry.
LP Giobbi, meanwhile, focuses on physical concert programmes as opposed to tickets. The electronic artist hopes her handwritten, beautifully designed creations, which outline what to expect at her gigs, will have a similar impact to Phish’s stubs.
“I grew up playing in high school bands, and there was always a programme handed out so people could get excited about certain parts or know where to go to the bathroom during others,” she says. The idea with her programmes is for her audiences to have “an open mind and be ready to go on a journey”. Beyond that, she hopes her fans will want to keep them. “I definitely wanted people to walk away with something to remember the show by,” she says. “I used to love collecting concert tickets, so maybe this can be that for them…”
With plans for a book and gallery shows to present his Tickets Please collection in different ways, Hayward is optimistic about a potential return to the golden age of ticket stubs. “It would take a popular younger artist of the current generation — Taylor Swift, or Post Malone, or Billie Eilish — to come in and say, ‘We are now going to be issuing the coolest tickets’ to start the ball rolling. And I guarantee, if one of them did it, others would follow suit, and it could be a rejuvenation of the entire concept.”
Crucially, Hayward’s confident that “their fans would go absolutely bonkers for them”. He adds that the merchandising opportunities are endless: “they could take the art they do for the ticket and print it on hoodies, t-shirts, beanies, keychains and coffee cups”.
However, Ticketmaster, which offers the option of souvenir tickets at the point of purchase, argues that it’s already on the way there. Having first launched souvenir tickets in 2021 at Sheffield Arena, they have since been rolled out across hundreds of events, covering everything from music and comedy to sport, family shows and theatre.
“These are collectable versions of traditional paper tickets that fans can keep as a memento after the show,” a Ticketmaster spokesperson tells MusicTech, adding that these are “especially popular” for milestone gigs or special one-off performances. “We’re the only ticketing agent offering this kind of souvenir in the marketplace,” they said – “it’s a simple, unique way for artists and event partners to add a personal touch to their fans, giving them a special way to remember the moment forever”.
Ticketmaster feels that feedback on these souvenir tickets has been extremely positive —“We’ve seen great uptake so far, and fans love having something tangible to remember the event by” — but not everyone seems to have been impressed by what they receive in the post.
In a Reddit thread from three years ago, a concert-goer branded the souvenir ticket he ordered for metal band Ghost’s Manchester show as “bog standard”. He added: “when they eventually turned up, they looked like the tickets that we would have originally received pre-Ticketmaster-app.” Concluding the post, he said: “Absolutely would not do it again”.
Having paid £3 to commemorate their first ever gig experience, a third buyer said their souvenir ticket for Conan Gray was “just paper with a shiny stamp on it. I thought it was going to look much more special,” they added.
Ticketmaster’s efforts are certainly positive steps towards a more artistic ticketing experience, but the current offer to customers is a far cry from the eye-popping stubs of the past.
Savvy tech companies seem to have noticed this fandom-led gap in the market in recent years, with the likes of Tixologi offering attendees the chance to ‘immortalise their tickets as a unique printed memento’ in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) — a term that, frankly, may elicit a groan from many readers. But Tixologi is optimistic: “We don’t offer hard copy tickets today, but our tickets are digital collectables that live on forever as a memory of the event,” Asher Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Tixologi, told Forbes in 2023.
Weiss added that the original idea for Tixologi came from fans and attendees missing the collectable aspect of the ticket. “We have found a way to bring that back in a mostly digitally-ticketed world and give attendees something to hold onto for years to come,” he told Forbes. “Today, our tickets can include special imagery from the event, and in the future will include event highlights, videos, songs, and partner offers…We see this as the rebirth of ticket stubs, but better.”
In a 2023 article for NFTnow, journalist Langston Thomas seemingly backed this claim, arguing that NFT tickets are actually the future of live events. Crucially, Thomas suggested there are benefits for both parties. “Issuers can keep a more in-depth record of attendance numbers by utilising the blockchain as a ledger, and then send out notices, host surprise giveaways and create token-gated sites and services,” they said. Some might question the ethics of such data-mining, but Thomas adds that “NFT tickets grant holders access to exclusive experiences, including fan clubs made up only of holders of similar NFT tickets”.
Also in 2023, Mixmag argued that the adoption of NFT ticketing was “inevitable for music festivals”, citing EXIT in Serbia as the first large-scale festival (bar Coachella) to employ the technology. One of the main advantages, it said, is “the potential to create a sense of exclusivity and reward for dedicated fans”, with the ability to add perks such as backstage passes, meet-and-greets or exclusive merchandise to the digital collectible.
Perhaps younger music fans and new artists are unaware of what came before — “I’ve had people completely unaware that ticket stubs ever existed”, Hayward says disheartenedly — but there’s no denying the longevity and sense of connection that comes from physical tickets.
In fact, a scan on Etsy reveals several homemade tickets for Sabrina Carpenter, Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Busted and more with different designs that fans can snap up to commemorate her BST Hyde Park show in London this July. They’re unofficial and fan-made, but the attention to detail is very impressive, and it’s easy to imagine fans purchasing them as keepsakes of an unforgettable concert.
If artists and labels start paying attention, the comeback of physical stubs might not just be wishful thinking — it could be the return of a merch goldmine.
Check out Blaise Hayward’s Tickets Please collection at blaisehayward.com
The post The Lost Art of the Ticket Stub — and its Futuristic Revival appeared first on MusicTech.
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