The lights dim, the band rushes on stage, and the floor reverberates as the artist makes their entrance. I’ve experienced this feeling 38 times in my life. Recently, concert tickets have spiked up in prices, and are becoming more challenging to secure. Here are four helpful tips to successfully purchase concert tickets and stay in the know about your favorite artists.

Create a Ticketmaster, Live Nation, or SeatGeek account.

Setting up these accounts will help as their websites and apps can send you weekly notifications and emails about upcoming live events, and let you know when an artist’s tickets are on presale.
A presale is when fans get selected by Ticketmaster to have an early access to buy tickets before the general sale to the public. To be selected for a unique presale code, it’s best to sign up for an artist’s newsletter with your personal email through their official website. This boosts your chances of getting a presale code, and provides you with more information from the specific artist that you wouldn’t get from Ticketmaster.
Presales are typically on Friday’s at 10 a.m. CDT, but can change depending on the artist and their decision on when the tickets go on sale, so be sure to double check before sleeping through the presale!
Also when you create your account, make sure to add your debit or credit card information on file. This early measure will ensure a smoother ticket-buying process later on.

Be prepared to get up at any time to ensure tickets.

As I said in the first tip, 10 a.m. is the set time for most artist’s presale. However, there are instances when artists pick other random days for their presale. I once woke up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning during spring break for The Weeknd’s AT&T Stadium presale. The stadium venue holds over 70,000 people, so getting up early was crucial to securing good seats at a fair price.
It may sound silly to get up early just for a digital ticket, but if you’re passionate enough to see an artist live, hopefully you will have no issues going the extra mile of waking up early to ensure your spot at their concert.

Get into the Ticketmaster queue line 10 minutes before presale starts

If you don’t buy tons of concert tickets like me, you likely don’t know the hack that can totally revolutionize your ticket buying experience. Although some people join the queue line right at 10 a.m., it’s more effective to get in line 10 minutes before the presale starts.
In my experience, joining the queue line early prevents your computer or phone from lagging, especially when you’re connected to the school wifi. I also recommend joining early because, in most cases, it can boost your spot in line and speed up the process of buying the tickets.
Joining early can also prevent you from being kicked out of the queue, which has happened to me multiple times in the past. In the event that you do get kicked out, I suggest that you rejoin as quickly as possible as you can’t get back into your original spot in line.
If you’re in a class before 10 a.m. and are unable to join the line early, don’t worry. Ticketmaster claims that they selected spots in the queue at random, so there’s a chance you can still get good seats.

Convince your parents

I typically use my own money to buy tickets, but when it comes to bigger tours such as Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, my parents did help purchase tickets. To convince your parents, my go-to argument is that a concert is a once in a lifetime experience, and you have no idea when the artist will go on a tour like this again. Especially if you’re going to see an older band or artist such as Queen or Elton John that go on farewell tours, it’s important to use this reasoning to your advantage in order to persuade your parents.
With newer artists such as Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour last spring, I explained to my parents that this was Rodrigo’s first world tour. This made the concert more sentimental as I would see her perform live for the first time in my city. I also love to tell my parents that I wouldn’t forgive myself if I had the chance to go to a concert and didn’t, only to end up regretting it later on. Making your parents feel sympathetic as they think back on their concert experiences also increases the chances of you being able to go to the show you’ve been looking forward to for months.
The final way to convince your parents to pay for your concert tickets is to work hard in and outside of school. By getting your work, college apps, and chores done, your parents will see your productivity, and hopefully reward you with those hard earned tickets.

I hope you all find this information helpful, and that one day you will be able to beat the Ticketmaster scammers and buy tickets for an artist you truly enjoy. I’ll keep you all updated on how my next presale is!