Are DICE changing the way Bristol thinks about buying gig tickets? | Jen Long Interview

As soon as I saw the potential DICE had to change live music ticketing for the better, I couldn’t say no.

As DICE launches in Bristol, we took a minute to chat with the fab Jen Long about how her and the guys are re-jigging the way we think about buying gig tickets. More than just another thing you can now do from your phone, this nifty new app boasts no booking fees — and some other cool features to boot.

Hi Jen, thanks for chatting with us. How did you get involved in Dice and this new take on gig ticketing?

I got involved with DICE last summer. When it was announced that Radio 1 were cutting the BBC Introducing show I’d been presenting, DICE approached me. I wasn’t looking for another job as I was still working every day at BBC 3, however as soon as I saw the potential DICE had to change live music ticketing for the better, I couldn’t say no.

Great to hear you’re launching in Bristol, what sorts of events have you been involved in here so far? How do you pick the shows to include?

We launched in Bristol ticketing the Red Bull Music Academy tour dates. The first events we took on were the Summer Series shows with George Ezra and Kaiser Chiefs. Now we’ve begun working with local promoters on upcoming gigs such as Wolf Alice, Los Campesinos!, and The Orb. I used to live in Cardiff and have seen many great shows in Bristol - hopefully this is an excuse to see more!

So the big difference with you guys is that gig-goers pay literally no fees when buying a ticket?

Literally, No. Booking. Fees. That is definitely a big difference, but I think another difference fans might notice is that our gig list is totally curated. So if a gig or club night is on DICE, you know it’s good.

And the tickets go straight to you phone?

Straight to your phone. No faffing about with missed recorded deliveries. No more having to pay to print your ticket at home.

The ‘waiting list’ feature sounds awesome, d’you want to let everyone know how that works?

Whenever we sell out of our allocation of tickets for a show on DICE we switch to letting people join the Waiting List. We then work with the promoter to see if any further tickets might become available. When George Ezra played at Brixton Academy in London for example, an extra 100 tickets became available on the day. So that was 100 happy fans who otherwise wouldn’t have sung along to Budapest.

And people can even return tickets for free, straight to those on that list?

Yes! That’s another bonus. If you have a ticket to a sold out show and you can’t make it, you can return your ticket back into DICE and it goes to the next person in line. You get your money back and another fan gets to see that artist and only pays the ticket’s face value.

So that would both help our venues get more people in over all, and also take a bite out of the dodgy resale market? Sounds like the way forward to us…

Me too. As a fan, I loathe secondary ticketing sites. I think things like Chvrches #leaveoutthetout initiative are great. More needs to be done to protect fans and I’m happy to be a part of that at DICE.

Grab DICE from your favourite app store and check them out online here.