Australian Web site Posse.com launched this week, offering fans the chance to sell tickets for their favorite acts and to make a 5% commission on each sale.
Posse.com was set up by alt-rock trio Evermore’s manager Rebekah Campbell, managing director of Sydney-based Scorpio Music.
“On Evermore’s tour two years ago, the Perth show wasn’t selling,” Campbell explains. “This was despite us spending a fortune on bill posters for the show. So we asked our fans to sell the tickets, and it worked. It’s the same deal, but now they have an online platform. We allow them to become promoters, and hopefully find their way into the business.”
Campbell says the model for the site has echoes of her own entry into the biz; as a schoolgirl in New Zealand she sold rave tickets to her friends.
The first act to utilize Posse.com will be Evermore, who this week announced a 30-date Australian tour from May 25 to July 26 behind their Warner Music set “Truth Of The World: Welcome To The Show.” The tour is expected to reach 60,000 fans with tickets priced at $40 Australian ($29.25) each, Campbell tells Billboard.biz.
Other Australian acts will announce their participation in the next few weeks. “It could replace the need for acts to spend their marketing dollars on traditional ads in music magazines or on posters,” she says.
Users who register can add tour banners and link the Ticketmaster sales site to their MySpace profile. Ticketmaster and MySpace are official partners of the site.
“Word of mouth is how many people find out about concerts and Posse is a very smart way to motivate fans to spread the word,” says Ticketmaster Australasia’s COO Chris Forbes.
Adds Brett Murrihy, agent at Sydney-based the Harbour Agency, “[It’s] a win-win situation for artist and fan. Brilliantly innovative yet masterfully simple, Posse empowers the audience with the fan reaping the rewards. “
The technology for Posse.com was built by Sydney-based Pollenizer, fronted by chief technical officer Phil Morle, former chief technical officer for Australian peer-to-peer platform Kazaa.
