Inferno Listening Parties - 22/5/2026

[observation]

Sold out by the time I got to the front of the queue (London). TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

You have to remember these things aren't designed to give fans an advance listen. They're designed to create "buzz", and in the mind of a marketer someone getting in is way riskier than ten people not getting in. Cos if someone gets in and hears the album and only kind of likes it, that's a problem. Ten people not getting in are CONVINCED that they're missing out on something awesome. Kinda cynical, but that's marketing!

That's a very good point. Sadly.

[outhudd]

TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

I had the same attitude.

[Den]

TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

I had the same attitude.

Could you share your timing on clicking the link? Do you just click the ticket link in the email and then enter the code? I still have a few hours here in New York before it’s time.

[Sherbet Head]

What a shit show that was. Very disappointing.

The companies who run these online sales (and I don't mean Warp or BOC, I mean the 'delivery partners' or 'third party event management vendors') know for sure that certain events like Taylor Swift or Oasis or BOC will have exceptionally high demand. The first-come-first-served model just means that the company itself creates a massive DDOS on its own site.

It might be more fair (and easy to engineer I suspect) if your access code is time stamped when you first access the site. From a cursory search for 'Internet Time Resolution' :

"Precision Time Protocol (PTP): Used where higher precision is required, such as in financial trading or industrial automation, offering sub-microsecond or even nanosecond-level accuracy."

Now I do think that it is overkill to require us all to have access to satellites and a freaking time-machine to buy tickets for a show. However, if one makes big hype and bestows limited access to an event, give people a chance to take part fairly and hopefully use the tools we have to get access to something they feel is important to them. If there are any software engineers/network developers here, can you explain to an idiot (me) some of the factors that could improve situations like this? Even if a company "books" high Precision Time Protocol access for a few hours it might simplify or streamline the experience for users. At least people might know where they stand if they have a message saying 'your access is in 45 seconds' or '3 minutes' rather than just a 504 or 'this page is busy right now' message.

This seems like a good solution, but surely you aren't the first to think of this? Makes me wonder if there must be a significant drawback is to implementing such a system.

I don't understand how I was meant to win that. It told me to join a fucking waiting list. It never even presented the option to purchase a ticket. Honestly, I am giving up. That was that. Oh well.

Yeah. I'm struggling to grasp the relevance of 'Register for First Access'. What did we get first access to, exactly?

[belchmaster]

Could you share your timing on clicking the link? Do you just click the ticket link in the email and then enter the code? I still have a few hours here in New York before it’s time.

The site was inaccessible for like 15min. Kept clicking the ticket link in the email. Refreshing didn't seem to work.

[Strop]

.[/quote]
Yeah. I'm struggling to grasp the relevance of 'Register for First Access'. What did we get first access to, exactly?[/quote]

Disappointment

[bingo wings]

TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

I had the same attitude.

Could you share your timing on clicking the link? Do you just click the ticket link in the email and then enter the code? I still have a few hours here in New York before it’s time.

Yes, click the link in the email. I had clicked it before 11 expecting the BoC website to change but nothing happened, but the link in the email takes you to the ticketing site.

Good luck!

[atubofturquoisecustard]

Sold out by the time I got to the front of the queue (London). TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

You have to remember these things aren't designed to give fans an advance listen. They're designed to create "buzz", and in the mind of a marketer someone getting in is way riskier than ten people not getting in. Cos if someone gets in and hears the album and only kind of likes it, that's a problem. Ten people not getting in are CONVINCED that they're missing out on something awesome. Kinda cynical, but that's marketing!

Yeah that's fair tbh, It would have been a very stressful journey for me to get to and from the event anyway. But it would have been nice to meet other Boc fans irl and all listened to album for the first time together. Yeah the whole ordeal felt too depressingly familiar with trying to get tickets for other gigs in recent years. I reckon their gonna do a secret free gig in-person in the Pentlant Hills somwhere and only certian people will know some crazy secret code to find the location.

[outhudd]

TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

I had the same attitude.

Could you share your timing on clicking the link? Do you just click the ticket link in the email and then enter the code? I still have a few hours here in New York before it’s time.

I would say the main preparation you can do is to prepare to miss out, sadly.

Click the link, you'll get "This page is not available right now." many times, eventually after a few minutes you'll get in. (I was opening multiple tabs until I saw one from the tab title that was different)

I had time.is open and once it got to 15 seconds to 11am, I started opening the link in new tabs.

When you get in, page looks like this: https://x0.at/PV4q.png

Click select tickets and you get this: https://x0.at/dJeB.png Didn't get any further

[Mexicola]

Gaaaah, was number 20 in the queue. Got to checkout and a Cloudflare timeout error.

Now 220 in the queue...

Pain.

For some reason I couldn't click 'Accept' on the cookies box for a while.

This. It eventually let me past it, but wow did it take an age.

[llydia]

I was queue position 1 to Glasgow, even took a screenshot.



and when I got there. No option to purchase after I put in my code, just be added to waiting list. Refreshed. Immediately sold out. I nearly threw my PC out the window. I swear to god something fucked up. I am just going to let it go now. Its really driving me crazy.

[Den]

Ah okay, I’ll click the ticket link a few seconds before 11.

[Mexicola]

I was queue position 1 to Glasgow, even took a screenshot.



and when I got there. No option to purchase after I put in my code, just be added to waiting list. Refreshed. Immediately sold out. I nearly threw my PC out the window. I swear to god something fucked up. I am just going to let it go now. Its really driving me crazy.

If it makes you feel better, my queue position also went rapidly down to 1, but I suspect that was more to do with people getting booted off when the tickets sold out. Ie. You made the front...but already sold out (I think).

[losador]

I was on the nose at 11am for Glasgow, straight to a "page not available" page for about 30 refreshes, then eventually taken into the ticket site to tell me it was sold out. I could not have done that better and still a total waste of time and technical shit show. First time in my life I've been physically angry at anything BOC have done!

Unfortunately this is the way of things in the current internet era. No one it seems has come up with a proper way to circumnavigate technical issues, bots and the like. We need something in general to make the high demand events fairer and clearer for people but can't blame BoC for that, this is an issue across the whole live event world!

I'm blaming BOC for knowingly dispersing the live event tickets on a platform prone to crashes and f**k ups. A far fairer way would have been entering your code into a raffle then it being announced at a specific time. This has created a lot of bad feels for the community as you can see.

OK I see what you are saying. A lottery / raffle type arrangement could have been fairer. They could have done a live broadcast, people's codes getting drawn by a cult leader from a big wicker man outside a church or something..!

[losador]

Sold out by the time I got to the front of the queue (London). TBH didn't expect to get tickets though

You have to remember these things aren't designed to give fans an advance listen. They're designed to create "buzz", and in the mind of a marketer someone getting in is way riskier than ten people not getting in. Cos if someone gets in and hears the album and only kind of likes it, that's a problem. Ten people not getting in are CONVINCED that they're missing out on something awesome. Kinda cynical, but that's marketing!

That's a very good point. Sadly.

Probably true.. what appealed to me was hearing BoC on a proper sound system at a venue! Really not the end of the world though for me, would have been nice.. just looking forward to the album tbh!

[Aesthetics]

I was queue position 1 to Glasgow, even took a screenshot.

I was 1st in que right away at Berlin. How is it technically possible to being sold out when one is 1st in que? I wonder if everything went smoothly from a technical point of view, given all the error messages that have been reported...

[llydia]

If it makes you feel better, my queue position also went rapidly down to 1, but I suspect that was more to do with people getting booted off when the tickets sold out. Ie. You made the front...but already sold out (I think).

Yeah, way it goes it seems. I have let it go now. Enjoy all those who managed to win the battle against the internet. I shall just resort to my Plan B. Somewhere out in the peak district with a few funny tasting mushrooms

[observation]

What a shit show that was. Very disappointing.

The companies who run these online sales (and I don't mean Warp or BOC, I mean the 'delivery partners' or 'third party event management vendors') know for sure that certain events like Taylor Swift or Oasis or BOC will have exceptionally high demand. The first-come-first-served model just means that the company itself creates a massive DDOS on its own site.

It might be more fair (and easy to engineer I suspect) if your access code is time stamped when you first access the site. From a cursory search for 'Internet Time Resolution' :

"Precision Time Protocol (PTP): Used where higher precision is required, such as in financial trading or industrial automation, offering sub-microsecond or even nanosecond-level accuracy."

Now I do think that it is overkill to require us all to have access to satellites and a freaking time-machine to buy tickets for a show. However, if one makes big hype and bestows limited access to an event, give people a chance to take part fairly and hopefully use the tools we have to get access to something they feel is important to them. If there are any software engineers/network developers here, can you explain to an idiot (me) some of the factors that could improve situations like this? Even if a company "books" high Precision Time Protocol access for a few hours it might simplify or streamline the experience for users. At least people might know where they stand if they have a message saying 'your access is in 45 seconds' or '3 minutes' rather than just a 504 or 'this page is busy right now' message.

This seems like a good solution, but surely you aren't the first to think of this? Makes me wonder if there must be a significant drawback is to implementing such a system.

I don't understand how I was meant to win that. It told me to join a fucking waiting list. It never even presented the option to purchase a ticket. Honestly, I am giving up. That was that. Oh well.

Yeah. I'm struggling to grasp the relevance of 'Register for First Access'. What did we get first access to, exactly?

I am a literal clown with no technical ability, so I'm definitely not the first to think of it! Which makes me wonder if a clown like me should start a massive tech company.

[Den]

You could’ve still ended up around a bunch of wankers at the session! It’s all going to work out. I’m looking forward to the end of the ticket fanfare.

[Rikkiebags]

Word of advice for American ticket-seekers. Copy the link in the email rather than clicking it in your email client. It'll shave a tiny bit of time.

If you want to go a step further, you can work out what the real link is by opening devtools then throttling your network access. You can find out what it is before it redirects to the Boc site.

So for example, my link was actually this:
https://boardsofcanada.ffm.to/london-yg ... qtN.Rwheqg