Global Citizen Offers Free Concert Tickets For Online Activists

Free concert tickets are to be offered as an incentive for Australian people to become more involved in online activism campaigns as the Global Citizen Tickets initiative launches in Australia today.

The concept is basically as follows: you get involved in online activism campaigns – such as writing letters to government or making small donations of time or money to organisations that need it – and you earn points. When you have enough points, you can submit an entry to win a pair of tickets to a gig from one of the many bands who are part of the initiative. If you win, you get to go to the show for free.

So far the bands and artists involved range from Bruce Springsteen, Cold Chisel and Pearl Jam, to Asta, Tigertown and DD Dumbo, with a whole heap in between.

Chair of Global Citizen Tickets Australia Danny Rogers – who's also the co-founder of the St Jerome's Laneway Festival and And Publishing, as well as the manager of global chart topping star Gotye – spoke to theMusic.com.au about what drew him to become involved.

“As a manager of artists, we're always being asked to contribute to charity events, to perform at them and stuff,” he explains. “Most artists are more than happy to give up their time for charities when they can, but the reality is they're often just surviving and the number of shows they can do per year is limited.

“This two tickets concept came into play and I thought people are going to love this; you're not being asked to contribute to any one charity, there's an array of options which all have a really strong purpose – all you have to do is offer two tickets to every concert you have to the campaign.”

Artists from all sectors of the music industry have jumped on board already and Rogers says they have been fielding plenty of interest from artists in the lead up to today's official launch.

“More and more people are coming on every day, Bernard Fanning reached out to Hugh [Evans - Global Poverty Project CEO] about a month ago, putting his hand up to be an ambassador,” Rogers says. “But it's not really about how big you are, the idea is that anyone can be a part of it, you can be an up and coming band – we've got an act like D.D. Dumbo from Melbourne who'll join it – right up to your Gotye and stuff. I think it's got such a great message and it's also a really positive way for the music industry to work together on something.”

From an Australian operations perspective, Rogers says there a re quite a few people dedicating time to getting initiative up and running.

“There's probably half a dozen people, from publicists to coordinators and stuff like that,” he says.

No doubt punters are going to want to know exactly what it is they have to do in order to go into the running to win. Rogers says that people aren't expected to dedicate huge amounts of time or resources at any stage.

“Not a great deal,” he says of what's needed to be done to earn points. “It's very much about letters to government and letters to particular people about particular issues. It's about getting a consistent voice going across different things. You need to be genuine about it, but at the end of the day there's a lot of good faith involved in people's contributions.

“It's not ridiculous, you're not expected to write 15 letters and donate two weeks of your time, it sort of varies, you have to look at the website and go through it – it's all pretty straightforward. We've tried to make it as simple as possible.”

Given it's an online based scheme, the prospect of people potentially taking advantage of the system and rorting it for their own benefit is a very real one. Rogers is confident that any real

“We're gonna monitor it, of course, and if we see people are taking advantage of it we're going to follow up and ask the questions,” Rogers says. “But most of the things, even if you're doing it as a token gesture, it's still a contribution that is being made to a charity, whether it's your voice or a small donation.”

You can learn about Global Citizen Tickets at their website.