Part 2: Ticket payment system and the future

Where's the advantage for the buyer?
The buyer has several advantages. He or she doesn't have to give us any financial data - just a name and delivery address. So there are less security fears. And they have the security of knowing that they only have to pay when and if the ordered items are actually delivered.

It should also be said that credit cards are not popular here - very few people are prepared to pay online in Austria using credit cards - so we have to offer this "secure" alternative.

And how does this work out for you as the seller?
Well, we have no problems with credit card fraud or chargebacks of course. Sometimes tickets go undelivered or are not picked up from the post office. We then have to pay the delivery fee, but this only happens in maybe 1-2% of cases, and we can still resell the tickets. We also save the 8-10% distributor margin that we're paying ticket outlets. At the moment, about 12% of all ticket sales are accounted for by online sales, which is pretty good we think.

This payment system can't work for international sales though?
Well, we can sell like this in Germany and Switzerland. Visitors from elsewhere can also simply reserve tickets at the early-bird discount price and pick them up from the ticket office on the day of the festival.

To be honest though, although the website is an ideal way of reaching a broader, more international market, there's really little demand for festival tickets outside of Austria. 97-98% of visitors to the festivals are Austrian. In a good year, the Jazz Fest may get 4% from outside the country. But most of these are from neighbors, mainly Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

It's not just a question of marketing and reaching the international audience - that's not the barrier to more international visitors. It's a question of what we have to offer. Most people can see the same bands and musicians in their own country - there's simply no need to come to Austria. So the "internationalization" really depends on who happens to be playing where in Europe in any one summer.

Last year, for example, we had the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing. As they only did a handful of gigs in Europe, we had 300 Italians come up for the performance. When the Bueno Vista Social Club played here earlier this year, four bus loads of Hungarians arrived from Budapest. But these tend to be exceptions, which we can't usually plan for - artists chop and change schedules, and we can't control where else they'll appear. So there's no real justification for us to invest a great deal of energy or money in "going international" - though of course we do what we can.

What are the plans for the website?
In about a month we'll begin selling merchandise online - t- shirts, posters etc. At the moment, everyone knows that you can't make money here selling over the web, but everyone also knows that one day you will be able to make money selling over the web - that's why they're pumping so much money into it. But we're too small to be able to make that early, heavy investment. So our philosophy is to start small, test the waters inexpensively, and treat it as a customer relationship measure. If we can sell a little merchandise, then we've increased awareness and helped the brand. We're not looking to make real money from online sales at the moment.

We're also going to get a webcam going, with music, from the discos and events that take place in our smaller pub premises. So you'll be able to see lots of people dancing, or more likely, lots of people hanging round the edge of the dancefloor desperately trying not to be recognized.

Why the webcam?
I ask myself the same question quite often. It's really an experiment - to see how things work out technically and whether it generates more interest in the Jazz Pub events. But basically it's our way of learning about the technology of live music and video on the web. If we can manage that first step, then we'd be interested in expanding the idea. I can envisage showing some of our festivals, or parts of our festivals this way. But to do that we'd have to secure broadcast rights and find some strong partners and sponsors to make the project feasible.

I guess you must have the support of the boss for all this to be possible?
Yes, Franz (editor's note: the owner) is what you might call a technology freak. He was very much behind the idea of a website in the first place and wants to keep us moving forward on that front. He sees the technology available to us to do things on the Internet as just as important as having the right sound system or lighting for the bands - we don't cut any corners on Internet infrastructure costs. The aim is to be able to offer some state-of-the-art stuff - I mean we're in the entertainment business and at the cutting edge musically, so this has to reflect in our Internet activities.