Hi, haven't been online for a few months so sorry if this has been discussed somewhere.
Just to give context: I live in a third-world country and often have ideas (a lot of times borrowed from first-world solutions) to improve things. For example, we have a ton of concerts/events over here but there is no easy digital ticketing system to just fix the mess of manual stamps and having to get your tickets physically beforehand. Since I've worked at both event management and ecommerce software, I kinda know how to build this.
But the problem with this and any idea I ever get always comes down to -> I don't want to charge for it. It just ruins all motivation for me, since I'm not actually creating anything, I'm just making things smoother in the middle. Why can't it just exist as a thing? I know I can't run it without money, I know I can't convince anyone to help me with the project without money. Especially in a country like mine where people just can't afford to work on things for free.
So, I wanted to ask if there are any resources or books I could study on financing a product in a sort of non-capitalist way? I'm sorry if I sound dumb I don't have much idea about this.
TL;DR: how to run a service/business without going broke and without feeling shit
I understand that you are seeking for a different answer than I give, but I would like you to present a bit context from my perspective about why you might create a service that is more than "easy" and even easy works deserves a pay, though monopolies might become a problem. You aren't a monopoly as long as ticketmaster exists.
You are. You are building upon existing infrastructure, but you are creating a technical solution and handle societal expectations within that project. Which increases productivity. [See link on the end for something in regards to that]
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In terms of ticketing software the problem isn't so much creating the software, it is brand recognition, trust and the capital resources to keep it going. This includes in conflicts and the handling of money, which brings with it a ton of work in regard to fraud and scams. Then both people must use it and events/locations use your ticketing system. Which they often rather not.
While you can totally create a system and run it, as well as keeping it afloat financially it isn't as easy as it seems. However if you do succeed this often means that you have a cultural understanding for the location you serve and can talk to people / get them to use your service.
In terms of your solution you do factually cut time spend searching for tickets down when people can trust your site/system, when locations, venues and artists still can sell tickets on the site and your prices are lower than what it would cost to search for other ticket systems you don't quite trust.
So what you would sell is trust, ease, familiarity, availability, variety, habit, and time saved, not just tickets. Though once you got your system running then it might be cheap to run. If you do decide to run a ticketing software it is good to work together with marginalized groups to enable access for them, i.e. have some (free/reduced) tickets for unemployed, students, people with disability, etc. A further function of such a site could be giving info about the location and event, i.e. is there smoking inside (which smoker will like and people with lung problems will want to know, as that might mean they can't attend). If you force locations to post whether they can be entered (and people can use the toilet) with a wheelchair, that would be another service, too.
So I'd say don't feel bad for trying to compete with Ticketmaster, which do have a revenue (not profit) of $10+ billion annually.
In terms of who you take money from, that will be venues/artists, attendees and other options (ad revenue, municipal money to advertise for events, shops, affiliate links to artists). In terms of the money you take from venues (if you do it directly), the calculation is:
How much money would a location spend to sell the tickets themselves (so person work hours which translates into money), to handle the fraud, to handle the money and risk involved with it, to handle the payments and print out/give out the tickets (I am a fan of QR codes, with something human readable on them). You also guesstimate how many more people will attend an event when they can buy the ticket from your website (maybe cause they trust it, or cause they only find the event from your website). This means having a trustworthy website, maybe with easy to understand cryptography that it truly is yours (watch out for keeping your SSL keys updated!) and having a low amount of clicks to buy stuff. This on the other hand is bad for quite a few people and refund options would've to be handled by you, too.
If you want to reduce price skimming you would have to handle changes of tickets on your website and thus create a sphere of control, which of course isn't ideal. For low cost events this isn't necessary and identification isn't needed. For Metallica playing in your city, it might be good, else price skimmers will get all the tickets to rare events, which is fine for you since you handle the tickets, but bad for us others.
If you create such a project and you take outside help/work do ensure they get a stake in the project or a sensible pay for it. Try to get funds for the arts, or the government or patron stuff.
However I feel like a service as you tell would be a good starting step for you to create a system and see if people are willing to pay for it. For large scale software projects after the initial funding phase is over you have typically much lower costs:
The truth is you can try patron stuff (which will not work directly) and yourself subsidize the project a while (or have other people in the project which do that) OR try to earn money from it. Write down how much money you are willing to burn on your project before you start it. Funding an association would be another way, put a number of artists together and/or venues and create an association from them which will pay a certain amount to deliver the service. This needs lawyers, likely. Unions for artists and venues might be interested in such a thing, too. If you don't have a track record and connection to relevant places they likely will not give you money though. However it is worth asking if there is a fund for stuff like that.
In any case if it fails you learn stuff, if it succeeds you can try to switch over. Angel investors do give people money so that new corps don't have to take money for what they provide and capture the market only after the brand is established.
Open source solutions for ticketing software do exist, but have to be adjusted and tailored to the location you are in.
In any case if you deliver a service which makes people save time (going to the venue to buy the tickets) and don't go out with millions while wage workers do the work I don't have a problem with you.
A syndicalist answer would be create a syndicate which does the ticket selling, but that takes different skills than those you did describe.
Especially by people I know (coming from a family that struggled with money for my childhood) that grew up somewhat precarious there are a ton of scruple to take money for stuff.
To feel better you could also take the median hourly income in your country and write down how many hours you work, then multiply those values and add the costs for your project and spread that out over the tickets. Creating a similar service would likely cost roughly the time you spent and that means the product you create has value and is worth money.
Productivity increases are good
The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed. In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
Maschines can help us
Machine Fragments of Marx:
https://thenewobjectivity.com/pdf/marx.pdf
Hey, thank you for the long response. I'm saving this since I really needed this kind of overview. You're right about the success condition: I do rely on cultural and local understanding. Rarely do we get an international artist here, so with only local gigs no one can use products like ticketmaster (or any other foreign service) because currency conversion makes them too expensive. Events are very unorganized and hands-on, so it is difficult to compete here without being involved in the scene themselves.
And thank you for the "productivity increase is good" bit, I had not thought of that.