An open letter to Poets of the Fall

January 15th, 2016

Dear Poets,

You know I love you for your music, your concerts and all the little things that make the world. You should also know that I’d follow you almost anywhere and try to make it to as many concerts as possible.

However, it feels like this has gotten considerably harder in recent years, because you often announce your concerts only three to six weeks before they actually happen. I have asked, begged and pleaded with several of you at several occasions to do otherwise, but to no avail. Only recently it occurred to me that you may only think I am impatient, so I have decided to explain to you, why it is so important for me (and other traveling fans as well) to know about a concert as early as possible.

It is quite simple – the later I book my trip, the more expensive it gets. Let me give you an example: When I first saw tickets for a concert at Pressa on February 27th around Christmas, a flight from Düsseldorf to Helsinki would have cost me 180 €. As of now, the same flight cost 280 € and the gig is still not confirmed.

Since it has already happened several times that tickets were on sale, but the concert was either moved or didn’t happen at all, like last year at Pressa for instance, I cannot just book, but have to wait for your confirmation. Usually I grit my teeth and cough up the money, but according to my estimation this has cost me several thousand Euros over the years. Several thousand Euros I could have and would have spent on going to more of your concerts and probably on some of your merchandise too. I won’t even get into all the concerts I could not go to, because they were announced too late to get vacation or apply for a visa to go there.

The thing is: I really do not understand why you always make such a big secret of concerts dates and often wait until the very last minute to make them public. Sure, I get it that it sounds better to say “we are going on tour” instead of “we are playing one (or a few) concert(s)” if you release the information to the public. However, I do not need a big announcement, I just want a confirmation that the gigs I might have already read about are actually going to happen. To achieve this it would be enough if you just posted them on your website as soon as you know them.

You could still do a big official announcement in the (social) media. Chances are that the people who such an announcement is aimed at, i.e. the general public, would not even have noticed concert dates on your website, because these are not the people who check your website and social media regularly. On the other hand, the people who do, do not need a press release to tell them a tour is going to happen, because they have already searched every possible source of information.

In my humble opinion, posting concert dates on your website as soon as they are confirmed may mean a little bit of extra work for you, but would not hurt anyone and would greatly help the people who travel to your concerts. So I am asking you kindly to consider doing this in the future.

All the best,
Stefanie

 

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