Confident Consumer: How to get hot concert tickets

• Scoring hot concert tickets involves planning and attention to pre-sales
• Signing up for fan clubs help - but only if they aren%27t fake fan sites
• Read the fine print about reselling or gifting any tickets you can%27t use

The easiest way to get tickets to a hot concert is to "get to know a rock star -- or a rock star's mother."

Nothing else quite compares with those options offered by Mark Campana, co-president of North American concerts for Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent company. But there are, fortunately, other ways to increase your chances.

The advocacy group Fan Freedom says the odds are working against consumers hoping to get good seats -- or any seat -- when concert tickets go on sale to the public. Up to 90% of the seats may already be sold.

Many tickets are allocated to various pre-sales outlets, including those for the artist's fan club, radio station listeners, certain credit card holders and season-ticket holders at the place where the concert is being held, says Fan Freedom spokesman Chris Grimm. These pre-sales typically take place in the week leading up to the public sale.

That phenomenon makes it sound a bit less impressive when an artist such as Justin Bieber sells out, say, Madison Square Garden in a matter of minutes after the public sale starts.

Nashville's NewsChannel 5 reported that the public sale last summer for Bieber's concert in that city only included 1,001 tickets out of almost 14,000 issued. The station also released documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Bridgestone Arena showing Bieber's tour sold at least 17 close-in seats on Ticketmaster's resale site, TicketsNow.

A spokeswoman for Bieber did not respond to a request for comment.

Eyebrow-raising ticket activity is hardly limited to the artists. Ticket resellers, known pejoratively as scalpers, aren't only seedy-looking types lurking outside arenas. It's become big business, as some resellers use software tools known as "bots" to buy large blocks of tickets while making it look like a bunch of individual purchases, says Campana. He notes prices in the resale market for different artists' tickets are tracked as if on a stock exchange.

The big ticket companies, in an effort to clamp down on scalpers, are increasingly making it tough for average ticket holders to sell or give away their own tickets. Paperless tickets now often can't be used by anyone other than the purchaser, or at least, the purchaser has to show up with identification and the credit card used to buy the tickets.

A coalition of consumer groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, joined Fan Freedom recently in asking federal and state officials to clamp down on electronic tickets that prevent consumers from freely transferring or reselling them.

The Federal Trade Commission hasn't commented on that practice, but did reach a settlement with Ticketmaster and TicketsNow, in 2010 about what it called "bait and switch" practices in ticket sales for Bruce Springsteen concerts. The companies told people who went online for the public sale that none were available and steered them to TicketsNow, the FTC said.

Ticketmaster agreed to pay refunds to consumers who bought tickets for 14 Springsteen concerts through TicketsNow, and "to be clear about the costs and risks" of buying through its reseller sites.

Ticketmaster also failed to tell buyers that many of the resale tickets advertised on TicketsNow.com didn't exist -- even though they often took money for them, the FTC said. An important red flag for any ticket shopper: Watch out for anyone selling tickets who can't say exactly where the seats are.

Against all the odds, it's still possible to prevail in the world of concert shopping. If you can't beat the system -- and you really can't without that rock star relationship -- the best advice is to get in on the pre-sales and read all the fine print before making your purchase.

Artists, not surprisingly, reserve a big chunk of tickets for members of their fan clubs, some of whom have to pay to join the clubs. Membership can also include advance notice of upcoming tours.

"Fans who are not a member of the fan club have no clue if they're competing for only 1,000 or 2,000 tickets available," says Grimm.

More to keep in mind:

• Other pre-sales: Credit card companies, especially American Express, often get the second biggest chunk of early tickets. Citibank and Mastercard, as well, often have special deals for cardholders. Radio stations that have pre-sale tickets will usually alert listeners to check their websites to get the code needed to order tickets. Several independent websites also offer pre-sale codes, often for a fee, but Grimm warns against using them.

• Standing in line: It can still work, Campana says. Venues that open their physical box offices will often count the people standing in line -- if it's a reasonable number -- and take that number out of public sale.

• Additional options: Even if you missed the pre-sales and struck out during the public sale, there can still be hope. Tickets can surface in the days and weeks before a concert. People sometimes return tickets, or seats become available again because credit card payments are declined, says Campana. Tours may release additional seats to the public, sometimes even in the day or two before the event, when plans for the stage change and there's room for more seats, for example.

• Watch out, though: If there's a chance you may not be able to use tickets, make sure you can sell or give them away if it would otherwise be a financial -- or emotional -- loss. Be careful when looking online for tickets or pre-sales. As with any big-ticket purchase, there are plenty of impostors out there.

• Don't get mad at the ticket seller when you can't get tickets. The musicians and their tour managers control much of what goes on with ticketing, says Campana. The tour selects a concert promoter in an area. That promoter selects the concert hall or other venue, and that determines who's selling the tickets, because of contractual relationships.

"They can allocate however they want -- we just want them to be honest," Grimm says of artists, ticket sellers and concert venues.

Who's behind what in the ticket world:

• Live Nation: A concert promotion and ticketing firm that also owns the biggest ticket seller, Ticketmaster.

• Eventbrite: One of the largest primary ticket sellers.

• TicketsNow: Ticket resale site run by Ticketmaster.

• Fan Freedom: Advocacy group funded by the ticket trading site StubHub, among others, to fight the move toward non-transferable tickets and other ticket sale practices, including a lack of disclosure about available tickets.

• Fans First: Lobbying group backed by the ticket and entertainment industries to fight scalping.

• Ticket Liquidator: One of the biggest ticket resellers.

• TicketNetwork: Another big ticket reseller.