Next month Alicia Keys is in town to play the Royal Albert Hall in a one-off gig to mark a decade since the release of "Songs in A minor"
Yes, ten years already....
But that's not the remarkable thing.
What is very interesting is the ticketing arrangement (yes, I know I have banging on about Olympic tickets recently and I'll resume to normal non-ticket non-sport service soon).
To gain admission to the RAH, you need not only your ticket but someone in your party needs photo ID to show that they're the buyer of the ticket. Here's the RAH announcement on it.
I'm in favour of this in principle. It'll reduce touts. (It can't stop it as you'll always get unscrupulous touts and desperate fans wanting to chance it)
But it'll be interesting to see if the Albert Hall follow through on this.
I remember in the build up to the France 98 world cup seeing much UK government-funded TV ads saying that fans will be turned away at the gates if they come with tickets in someone else's name. This, to the best of my knowledge, didn't actually happen.
But it does happen at Glasto.
Yes, the Alicia Keys fans might need to be a bit patient in the queue in case someone is there sans ID. And, yes, there may well be some, if not ugly then sad, scenes.
Though, if this becomes the norm for big gigs in London, it'll eat away at the touts and their habits of bulk-buying anything at sizeable venues even if they've never heard of the acts concerned (thus reducing access to real fans).
So, Alicia and management, more power to your elbows.....
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