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New Ticketmaster App Helps iPhone Users Buy the Best Seats

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Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

Ticketmaster, the world’s biggest ticket seller, is giving iPhone users an advantage in buying the best seats.

The company’s first iOS redesign in 18 months became available Monday, and eliminates steps to buy tickets. Notably, with push notifications turned on, the app skips CAPTCHA, a security measure used to thwart bots that requires users to enter a series of letters and numbers shown in a distorted image.

Through the use of push notifications, Ticketmaster can tell that a single user — as opposed to automated software — is trying to buy a ticket, according to Mike Lane, the company’s vice-president of mobile products.

Bypassing that clumsy security process can make the app several minutes faster than Ticketmaster.com — a period of time that could be the difference between sitting on the floor or getting stuck in nosebleed seats when a high-demand show, like Jay Z and Beyonce’s concert, first goes on sale.

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About 16% of the tickets sold by Ticketmaster in the first three months of 2014 were on mobile devices. Removing CAPTCHA could increase that by about 10%, Lane told Mashable at Ticketmaster’s offices in Los Angeles. “Each step we can eliminate historically leads to 10% more transactions,” he said.

The iOS app also improves on some features that are already available. Users can buy tickets to a concert, send one to a friend (without paying a fee), automatically set a calendar alert and access information about the show, ranging from parking to set lists.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFHd4KnnVMU?enablejsapi=1&&w=560&h=315]

About 60% of Ticketmaster venues allow people to use their phones as their ticket. To avoid a scalper from selling screenshots of the same ticket to multiple buyers, the company inserts an animated watermark on each ticket.

Fans can also sell tickets using the app. Enter a price, and Ticketmaster lists the ticket on its online marketplace, a competitor to Stubhub. Ticketmaster charges a fee for this service.

Once it’s purchased, Ticketmaster digitally transfers the ticket to the new owner, and deposits the money to the seller’s credit card. Just like on the website, mobile buyers are able to compare tickets that are still available with seats that others are trying to sell.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyeuC_GxQdE?enablejsapi=1&&w=560&h=315]

However, the iPhone’s advantage won’t last long. Ticketmaster plans to release a new app for Android by the end of the third quarter, Lane said.

“Android is a major area of growth,” he said. “Instead of translating the iOS app, we wanted to build something completely native.”

Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/06/09/ticketmaster-iphone-app/

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