Ticketmaster unveils ticketing app that uses Lisnr tech to send data over audio between devices, for ticket-less check-ins and tracking locations of users
Ticketmaster will soon be able to admit you to live events and track your movement using nothing more than a discrete digital audio broadcast from your smartphone.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ticketmaster's Lisnr-powered app is its earliest move toward making the phone itself the ticket: an ultrasonic handshake between devices replaces the barcode scan at the gate, and the same channel lets the venue know where a fan is standing. Two years on, the company doubled down on phone-bound entry with Safetix digital tickets built on NFC and refreshingly encrypted barcodes.
The timing matters because Apple had just opened the iPhone's NFC reader to third-party apps — MLB put it to work almost immediately when the Oakland Athletics adopted contactless iPhone entry at the Coliseum. Ticketmaster was testing whether audio, which needs no special hardware in the scanner, could do the same job across every venue it serves.
First-order effects
- Fans at Ticketmaster-served venues can be admitted with no printed or scanned ticket at all, while the venue gains a live map of where each attendee's phone is located during the event.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms are pushed toward their own phone-native entry and distribution plays — SeatGeek answered on the sales side by building the first ticket-buying flow inside Snapchat Stories rather than competing on gate hardware.
- If audio works everywhere but NFC works better where phones support it, Ticketmaster ends up maintaining both credential types, as it later did by pairing Safetix NFC with encrypted rotating barcodes.
Third-order effects
- The ticket stops being proof of purchase and becomes a persistent device-bound identity: once entry is tied to one phone per fan, enforcing transfer limits and cracking down on bots becomes technically enforceable — precisely the resale and bot failures the FTC later alleged Live Nation and Ticketmaster permitted.
- Location tracking at the turnstile normalizes in-venue fan data collection, the same live-music data layer that apps like Mixhalo later monetized as premium experiences for artists such as Aerosmith.
The trend: Event admission is shifting from transferable paper and PDF tickets to phone-bound digital credentials that double as identity, anti-scalping enforcement, and in-venue data collection.