Wanting it more

I'm not sure Marco understands what "merit-based" means.

I know, there'll be arguments that Apple should look after it's most devoted fans, but the same applies to any band / artist. If the current biggest fans don't get tickets, the band / artist don't really care as they've sold the tickets to people who will be the next biggest fans. What the companies / artists / promoters are forgetting is that their customers now have the ability to communicate very quickly and effectively with each other. This leads to lots of public, negative feedback. This isn't currently a large enough effect to change system.

Thankfully, with this problem existing in a much larger space than software developer's conferences, the negative feedback effect should become quantifiably apparent to various music promoters well before it becomes apparent to any developer's conference promoters, and the pattern will change.

In both cases I see this being a variant on some form of loyalty reward. Maybe, if you buy the album / release an app, you get (for example) 10 minutes advance notice for ticket purchases. I can see this working, but it will take a while for the ecosystem to work out the correct ratio of loyalty to reward.

I hope it happens soon, I'm sick of missing out on concert tickets because they sold out in half a second. (slight exaggeration, but it won't be long before it's reality)