It’s first thing Friday morning, Longitude tickets have just gone on sale, and that blue bar in front of me is moving slowly.
This looks like being the first Longitude music festival to happen since 2019, and I’m not the only one who hopped onto Ticketmaster when it opened ticket sales at 9am, Friday February 4th.
The three-day outdoor event in Dublin’s Marlay Park on July 1st-3rd announced its 2022 lineup at the end of January, and today the tickets were released for sale. A generation of teens who’ve missed many of life’s markers await (not that every teen wants to go to Longitude, far from it, but ya know, plenty do; maybe my lad too).
There were 40,000 people at the 2019 Longitude. There were plans for 2020 and 2021 Longitudes too, but Covid scuppered them.
This year, with Omicron less severe, restrictions on the way out the back door, and a version of normal life tentatively poking its head around the front door, it’s looking like large-scale music festivals might happen. Hold your hats for Body&Soul, All Together Now, Forbidden Fruit, Electric Picnic, Sea Sessions, Another Love Story, Indiependence and lots more.
What a genuinely exciting prospect.
So here I am, fingers on buzzers at 9.06am, in the virtual queue for a three-day ticket, and there are a mere 25,084 people ahead of me. I’ll sit down so.
They bomb through the queue, all the same – a minute later there are 24,649 ahead of me, and by 9.15am a mere 16,917. The nerves.
Longitude’s headliners this year are A$AP Rocky, Dave & Tyler, the Creator. A$AP Rocky had to drop out of Longitude 2019 because he was arrested in Sweden. (He was held in prison for a month awaiting trial, then found guilty of assault, but didn’t have to serve additional time. This year the rapper sounds like he’s in a different space, and is expecting a baby with Rihanna.)
Yep, I’m reading all about it as I wait.
Among the rest of the lineup, Megan Thee Stallion has her first Irish festival appearance and there are also: Doja Cat, The Kid Laroi, Jack Harlow, Baby Keem, Polo G and Ski Mask the Slump God (who plugged the gap in 2019 while A$AP was in the clink).
I decide to join another queue while I’m waiting around. At 9.17am the Friday-only queue has 11,727 people ahead of me, while 10,377 are waiting on Sunday and 9,657 for Saturday. At 9.21am there are just 6,627 people waiting ahead of me for the full weekend tickets and the tension is building.
I scan around.
Ticketmaster doesn’t seem to display the ticket prices of what I’m queueing for, and you get to see the various ticket prices only after you’ve queued and are at the point of purchase, with a ticking clock. Seemingly the teenage audiences are expected to be in a money-no-object situation, I muse.
I search elsewhere for the prices. On its press releases, MCD Productions says 2022 tickets are (50 cents less than) €240 for the three-day weekend, with day tickets €100 each. It states “these prices are inclusive of booking fee”.
That’s quite an increase on the 2019 prices (€200 for three days, €140 for two days, and €80 for a day ticket, so they’re very well ahead of inflation indeed).
But I’m distracted, and haven’t noticed that at 9.25am I was offered Sunday tickets. Yikes! I click for one, but it offers none. Maybe there’re only selling in pairs? Nope, the purchase of two doesn’t proceed. I wasn’t fast enough and I seem to have missed the boat.
But at 9.40am the three-day ticket queue offers me tickets – not bad for just over half an hour’s wait. But but but, it says €479 for two full price tickets “+ fees”. Huh? But didn’t they say the prices included fees?
Nope, a rose by any other name, and they are adding an additional tenner per ticket for “service charge”. Underneath that they have helpfully added “delivery of €4.75”, to make a grand total of €503.75 for two tickets. That is pretty grand alright.
I later see that I could have opted for free etickets rather than the automatic option of “speedy dispatch with Gift Wrap via Standard Post” that came up. They also offer DHL Secure Courier Republic of Ireland €23, but the free and courier delivery options were over to the left on my screen, and I nearly missed it.
In fact, I did miss it, because with all that faffing and consideration of over €500 for two tickets, it’s timed out again and they’ve whipped ‘em away. Too late, next!
Shucks.
(But don’t panic. At 10.40am they are still selling those €250-a-pop tickets, and they come up instantly with no queues. At time of publication the three-day tickets are available, but the one-days are running out fast.)
