Irritations of a fan
You know those times when you kind of feel mistreated as a fan? Well, these times are here right now for me and a couple of my buddy fans.
I have been a (die hard) fan of a Dutch rock band called Kane for a while now. Yeah, I know it's not cool to be into them, but so be it. I am not in it for the coolness, but for the chemistry that's between me and their music and their performance.
Right now Kane is trying to get a breakthrough in other countries like Germany and they released a single over there, which was not available here in Holland. But it was possible to order the single from the German branch of Amazon. On their website Kane, called out to their fans and asked them to get the single and to make it interesting they turned it into a competition. You had to send your receipt to their manager's office and twenty people could win tickets to the HMH show on December 20th, including a VIP treatment and a meet & greet with the band.
Since I was going to Berlin to see the Black Eyed Peas (great show!) anyway, I thought it would be easier to get my copy in Berlin and I also bought more copies for my friends. I even asked the cashier if I could pay for two of them separately, so two other buddies of mine could also enter the competition. And, surprise surprise, we won. (I think we won because our receipts were actually from a store in German as opposed to the receipts from Amazon.de). But to our bigger surprise we won only one ticket, so you have to go all by yourself unless a friend of you has won as well or is willing to buy one, and the ticket was for the show on December 19th as opposed to the 20th.
So I send an email to one of the band members and asked if we could bring anybody and what had happened to the meet&greet and the VIP treatment. And the answer was that we could not bring somebody and that they had changed the date cause there were still tickets available to that show, so if you wanted to bring a friend you could go out and BUY a ticket. And he didn't know anything of a VIP treatment, but we were getting the meet & greet. What he didn't know was that at the time we got that information, the 19th show was also sold out, so ever winner had to go just by themselves. What fun! Not!
(I luckily have friends who have also won. I guess I probably wouldn't have gone to the meet & greet just by myself.)
So what happened later on. Suddenly prices were being given away through radio station Yorin FM and those winners can bring someone, will get the VIP treatment and will get to go to the afterparty, which is probably only held after the 20th gig. But to their defense, they probably didn't arrange that themselves and was just totally Yorin FM's doing.
And today came the biggest surprise. They have these id tags and they have unique numbers on them and they use those sometimes for winning free tickets and stuff. I got one, and so do all my Kane mates. So unannounced, they selected 5 id tag holders and had them win tickets to the 20th show including VIP treatment, a meet & greet and tickets to the afterparty. Except for the fact that those winning numbers were all above 1000, which means that none of the fans who have been supporting them from the very beginning won, AND they also get to bring someone.
So the people who went to the trouble to get themselves a copy of the German single, which ever way you got it, get the least interesting price. So to me, that's the same as saying: Yeah, we like it that you guys are always there, but those people who don't always buy anything released and come to all our shows even when they don't have a ticket or when it's in the middle of nowhere, who don't go through the trouble of going to tv shows if they are a guest while you prefer not to have your face shown on TV and who haven't been there for ages, well they're just more important to us.
Well I think I will keep my money in my pocket and support artists who do really appreciate fans and show it. I am just so fed up with this.

Ow and VIP treatment is way overrated and I am not really interested in it, but I do like the free food and drinks that you get. ;-)

Having said this, I hope I will have a great time tomorrow at their Hardenberg gig. Well, you know, I already have the ticket. It's a shame to waste it. And when you're used to go to every gig, you have to slowly cut back. ;-)