Most Human decisions are based on patterns, and this is something that a lot of the digital world seems to have cottoned on to. My TiVo box 'thought' I might like to watch Sunshine because I recorded 127 hours, that I might like Futurama because I gave The Simpsons a thumbs up and Last.fm suggested that I listen to Eagleowl because I've listened to Meursault and King Creosote.
They do this by making a database of all information on any film, tv show or music track with as much relevant information as possible. Then whatever I've watched or listened to is compared to other entries in the database and those which have matches are returned.
127 Hours was directed by Danny Boyle, so when another of his films, Sunshine came on TV a few weeks later, it was flagged up to me. Likewise, The Simpsons and Futurama are both created by Matt Groening, and Eagleowl, Meursault and King Creosote are all Scottish artists tagged as similar genres and have shared members and played in similar venues. It's also very possible that these suggestions were based on the habits of other users.
These suggestions and the methods for generating them are becoming pretty commonplace but one place that still doesn't seem to have bothered is Ticketmaster. As I'm sure their terms and conditions say, they have access to my entire order history. On inspection, they'd find that I've bought dozens of tickets, dating back as far as about 2006. I've since bought tickets to T in the Park, several Fringe shows, Radiohead, Biffy Clyro, Death Cab For Cutie, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad, Admiral Fallow, Ross Noble, Stereophonics... and so on. The vast majority of these shows have been in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.
With this information, it ought to be pretty simple for them to get a general idea of what I like to go to, where I like to go to, or otherwise pigeon-hole my habits so that they could somehow use it to target the advertising that they send me.
Instead they send dreadful weekly emails which have no bearing on any of my past purchases. One of the worst examples I remember was headlined "Don't miss Take That" when the closest show mentioned was in Birmingham, over 300 miles away. The whole point of sending out emails in the first place would be to rouse interest in anything they had to offer, but instead it just leads me ignoring the emails, and once they started piling up, I would unsubscribe. Now, even if there were anything I were interested in paying for, they have lost their chance to sell it to me. When will they learn?
Apart from this, the ticket site (and it's definitely not just Ticketmaster) ought to realize that they just aren't likely to be the place where I'd first hear about an event. It's far more likely that I would subscribe directly to newsletters, tweets or facebook posts directly from an artist in hope of hearing about any upcoming gigs from a less crap-polluted source.
I guess it's not really a problem because as I've pointed out, I chose to subscribe in the first place, but I still manage to get wound up knowing that there is crap floating around the internet.
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