Business Analysis
Image: Rolf Klatt
Popular Barcelona festival Primavera Sound has become the first major music festival to completely ditch paper tickets in favor of mobile-only ticketing, as reported by the BBC. It’s partnered with digital ticketing platform Dice, which will service Primavera Sound and all other Primavera events, like Primavera tours and the club night Nitsa at Sala Apolo, in Barcelona, starting in 2020.
The hope is that using Dice will curtail ticket scalping, as the platform locks every ticket purchase directly to your phone. Dice has also taken a lot of other steps to minimize scalping where possible. Tickets bought on Dice can’t be resold on other sites, but they can be transferred between devices if, say, you bought one for a friend, but the other...
Image: Hulu
Not long after rolling out a long-awaited feature (offline downloads), Hulu is today announcing a slew of improvements to the experience of actually using Hulu. First up, it’s changing the method by which subscribers give feedback on the service’s recommendations. Hulu is introducing a like and dislike system, letting you give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to individual movies and TV shows that the algorithm suggests.
Disliking a piece of content will prevent it from being recommended again. This replaces the “stop showing this” option that Hulu already had. Liking something tells Hulu that you want to see similar shows and movies surfaced by the app. The like and dislike system is rolling out today on the web and Amazon Fire TV devices,...
Image: Meetup
Meetup, an online platform that lets you find events and meet people offline that have similar interests, has announced it is testing out a new payment structure that will charge users to RSVP for an event. The company tells The Verge it began this test last month, and it’s been charging a subset of users $2 simply to say they’re going to an event. The change has naturally upset some in the Meetup community.
Prior to this test, the only people who were charged to use the service were event organizers. Organizers pay between $9.99 and $23.99 a month, depending on location and the subscription model of choice. This allows you to organize up to three groups with unlimited members. In the new payment version Meetup is testing, the...