Kraftwerk At MoMA #TicketFail: New York Fans Lose Out To Scalpers In Online Scramble

Remember the announcement that Kraftwerk were going to do an 8 night stint at the Museum of Modern Art? And how excited everyone was?

Well, unsurprisingly, no human beings we know of got tickets. Almost appropriately, passes for the cyber-obsessed band's first gig in New York since 2005 were gobbled up by robots--scalper robots, that is.

MoMA used ShowClix to pawn off the tickets and area Kraftwerk fans found themselves waiting for an hour in an online queue only to be told Nein, no German electronica-robot-pop for you! (Incredibly rich New Yorkers out there can know hope however-- you can always buy a ticket for $42,413. Chump change, really.)

Even MoMA employees felt the pain:

@jpersse
Jason Persse

Take heart, Interwebs: not even MoMA staff is immune to #Kraftwerk ticket FAIL. Success rate in the office near zero.

February 22, 2012 5:43 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite

A lot of people are upset. And look at all these desperate mortals trying to buy tickets on Craigslist:

The CEO of Showclix ended up apologizing for the debacle, saying "ultimately, we failed you."

Maybe Kraftwerk should pull an LCD Soundsystem, and extend the concert series to like, a whole year or something? Make a documentary about it?

And of course, Hitler predicted all of this would happen:

Comments

[gfreshski1]

04:28 PM on 03/12/2012

Why doesn't Kraftwerk just play at the Meadowlands so all their fans can get a chance to see the show? They can have Man-Machines in each section of the building recreating their live movements.

[ennui the third]

06:39 AM on 02/28/2012

Now if only there would be non-tickets for madonnagaga, the world would be a safer place.

[LLNYRN]

03:29 PM on 02/26/2012

These Hitler "DOWNFALL" memes never cease to be funny.

The most INFAMOUS German on this planet.
And even he couldn't score tickets.

[droopus]

07:28 PM on 02/25/2012

Actually, I'm human, and I got two to Computer World. I had four computers running two browsers each, and they all went into the queue, but only the very first window (Firefox..) actually put me in the sales system. All the rest timed out eventually.

I posted the receipt to my FB page (after Photoshopping out the Ref #s, obviously) and as of today none of my friends know of another person that got lucky.

And I've been a huge Kraftwerk fan since the 70's, so for once, a real fan gets a ticket.

So, I'm not happy about the way it was done, but I'm glad I got lucky just this once. B)

(Tangerine Dream rocks, BTW....)

[Bebop210]

01:46 PM on 02/26/2012

hehe I like the less rigid structure and truly spaced out vibe of early virgin era TD... Seeing Throbbing Grislte in 2009 was a revelation. Kraftwerk to me is the precursor to a lot of crappy synth pop that i could never be bothered to listen to, depeche mode, gary numan, et al. I hope you enjoy the show! Lemme know when Neu! gets back together,,,

[kraftwerkian]

02:36 PM on 02/27/2012

I am a human and got two to Computer World as well. Been a fan since the 80s. Very lucky indeed!

[droopus]

05:35 PM on 02/27/2012

Congrats,you're the first I've heard of getting tickets other than me. See you there. B)

[Whigwam]

10:45 AM on 02/25/2012

Back in the day Kraftwerk was a favorite of black teens in NYC and unknown outside of the subculture, now in the computer world it cost over $40,000. to see them, I wouldn't pay that to see jesus with moses as the opening act.

[stroobs]

06:22 AM on 02/27/2012

Unknown outside of the black teen subculture?! I'm 50 yo and grew up in a lily white Wisconsin hamlet and everyone I knew listened to Kraftwerk in the 70's. Boing Boom Tschak. Take that!

[Bebop210]

10:41 AM on 02/25/2012

Kraftwerk really? All the hipsters I know get hi Gh to Tangerine Dream

[dmgoss]

08:21 AM on 02/25/2012

Maybe they should find someplace outside to do it for free.

[jl4141]

03:09 PM on 02/24/2012

E-scalping like this has been going on for a long time now -- why hasn't anyone figured out how to stop it? Or if there is a way, why is it not routinely implemented? This is one of several times that I have tried to get a couple of tickets for an event on line within *seconds* of their becoming available, only to end up with bupkis because of professional resellers who glom up all the tix. It's wrong, wrong, wrong, and it's way past time that something needs to be done about this.

[Paw1]

04:27 PM on 02/24/2012

Ultimately, jl, it's a shell game. MoMa puts the tickets out at $25, well below what Kraftwerk fans would pay (see Craigslist data above). Then robo scalpers scarf up all of them, resell them at the market value and kick back a chunk to the artist. This helps with the illusion that Kraftwerk and MoMa are not scummy greedheads who want to squeeze every dollar they can out of the event.

The solution is to put the appropriate face value on the tickets to begin with. It's what Van Halen just did. People complained loud and long, but every concert in every basketball or hockey stadium will be sold out by show time.