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Some Tips On Scoring Tickets To A Hot Show

(CBS) -- Frustration is the word for it. Your favorite band comes to town, and the tickets are sold out in minutes.

CBS 2's Marissa Bailey looks at just how many tickets are available to the general public for hot concerts -- and how to increase your chances of getting one.

Crystal Raygoza couldn't wait to get her hands on Adele tickets.

"I right away knew they were going to sell quickly," she says.

So, she signed up for the singer's fan club presale and scored a ticket -- but many others didn't.

Why is it so difficult to get tickets? One group got records from concerts across the country to see just how tickets are sold.

Among the shows studied: a 2012 Justin Beiber gig at Rosemont's Allstate Arena.

Of the roughly 14,000 tickets available, documents reveal 10 percent -- about 1,400 -- were given to the artist, the producers and the venue to use.

Of the remaining 12,000 seats, nearly one third went to Bieber's fan club presale.

Another 60 percent went to a presale for American Express cardholders, leaving only about 1,200 tickets for the general public.

"We'd seen it in Tennessee, where the hold-backs were as high as 93 percent. We'd seen it with other artists, too, not just Justin Bieber," Christoper Grimm, executive director of Fan Freedom.

Tiffany Kinser spent almost 45 minutes trying to get Adele tickets, before giving up.

"Not even an hour later and they're already up on those ticket-broker sites," she says.

A recent New York attorney general's investigation revealed for one U2 concert, brokers used computer programs to gobble up 1,000 tickets in just one minute.

That's not the only way resellers get their hands on tickets.

"Through our freedom of information requests we've learned that artists such as Justin Bieber and others have taken tickets out of circulation out of the primary sale and sold them directly on the secondary market," Grimm says.

CBS 2 checked at the box office for Bruce Springsteen's January concert at the United Center the day of the show and found tickets still available.

Stefan Dahm waited until the last minute and got a great deal from a reseller.

The best way to get tickets  is to sign up for those fan club presales or credit card presales. You can also wait until closer to the show, when VIP tickets might be released to the general public -- or resale tickets get cheaper.

The group Fan Freedom and the New York attorney general have both spoken out for more transparency in the number of tickets available to the public.

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