Any fan of a popular band has likely fallen victim to a scalper bot — a computer program that ticket scalpers use to buy tickets faster than actual humans can. It’s estimated that 60% of tickets are purchased by bots! Scalpers then sell those tickets online for ridiculous prices.

These bots are often the reason that the tickets you tried to buy instantly sold out but if you went to a secondary ticket site you’d find plenty of them available — being sold at 100-500% above the original price. That $75 ticket is now $150-$375+ (plus the service charges).

Because there’s no federal law to stop these bots, many people just fork up the extra cash or completely give up. This is a broken system.

Fortunately, we can change this. After thousands of Paul McCartney and Rolling Stones tickets in New York were bought up by scalper bots and resold for absurd prices (like $8,000!), Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Marsha Blackburn are working to pass the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, legislation that would prohibit the use of bots and make selling any ticket knowingly purchased by a bot punishable with a fine of $1,000 per ticket.

As live music fans, this bill is common sense to us.

Please sign Live for Live Music’s petition on Change.org, asking Congress to make the use of scalper bots illegal, so that we all have a fair chance to see the concerts we want!