Listening In: Magnolia Miracle; Putting An End To Ticket Scalping, One Miracle At A Time

So back in 2013 I found out about the greatest Facebook group and organization in the music community (or at least I think so!). One of my best friends wanted to see Pretty Lights for the first time, and wanted tickets to the sold out show in Atlanta the following week. Tickets sold out in about 5 minutes, and were only $50 with fees at the time. We were looking everywhere for tickets for her but could only find a $150 ticket on StubHub. As a broke college student, she didn't have $150 to just drop on one ticket and she definitely wasn't about to help a scalper make $100. Honestly, she didn't really feel comfortable spending even $50 and although unlikely, was looking for a cheaper ticket. All hope seemed lost until I posted in the 'Pretty Lights Family' group on Facebook and someone commented, "Have you ever heard about Magnolia Miracle? You should look in there! I'll add you so you can see what it's all about" After being accepted to this secret Facebook group, I was able to easily find someone selling a ticket, and for only $25! They conveniently lived in Athens and she met up with them to do a trade for the hard copy ticket.

Photo Taken By Music Metamorphosis; Magnolia Miracle Interview

Kylie McGregor started the Facebook Group
'Magnolia Miracle' in January 2010.
As of April 11, 2016, the Magnolia Miracle private Facebook group has 23,323 members - many new members are added daily.

The organization is headquartered in Atlanta, so many of the posts for tickets are within the Southern region - obviously a huge portion in Atlanta and Athens. Although, when summer festival season rolls around, the locations of members looking for tickets are spread across the entire country.

Kylie's vision has always been to help people find tickets at FACE VALUE or LESS. There are a lot of rules you must abide by, but that is to protect all of the members, and the integrity of this community.

Not only are people allowed to post about selling tickets, but people also regularly make an "ISO" (In Search Of) post, when they're looking and in need of a ticket.

Facebook has recently updated to create a "For Sale" tab in groups, making this entire process even easier on users. This section looks like the screenshot below:

Magnolia Miracle is trying to stop illegal scalping for good.

Scalping is such a huge problem now, and many people regularly pay twice as much, to sometimes even 10x the actual price for a ticket. This disgusts me. I really hate scalpers. People who love music and just want to see their favorite artists shouldn't have to be spending all this money. It's just not fair - which is obviously why it's illegal. The problem is, it is SO hard to police.

As New York Daily News shows, the highest priced band from ticket resellers was the Grateful Dead in 2015, with tickets costing $1016.20 on average (face value: $71.17). Madonna trailed in second at nearly half the cost, with tickets approximating $496.82.

Another problem is online ticket fraud.

According to new research:

"Online ticket fraud leapt by 55% in 2015 as criminals increasingly made use of social media to rip off music and sports fans, according to new research. More than a fifth of the crimes were instigated via Facebook, with Twitter accounting for a further 6%. "

Purchasers of tickets sometimes post pictures of them on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Scammers search sites for such posts and are able to create fake tickets by copying the barcode. It means that when the genuine holder arrives at the event, he or she could find that someone who bought one of the fakes has already used it to get in.

The figures come in the wake of warnings that some fans are putting themselves at risk by sharing images of event tickets on social media sites that can then be used by scammers to create fakes.

This is where Magnolia Miracle comes in and does its REAL job,

other than helping people just find or sell tickets.

The phrase "Keep it in the Family" is often used by Magnolia members - it refers to keeping the tickets amongst people without profit as their primary intention, because we are all family.

One of the most useful things Magnolia does to help its members is that the admins have created a file for all of the people banned from the group and people you should BEWARE OF and not trust under any circumstances. There is a huge list of people known in the music community to have scammed MANY people out of a lot of money - for fake tickets.

Also, People wanting to be added have to be approved by the admins, and have a statement from at least 1 other member (but this has been increasing to ensure the overall safety of Magnolia members).