大象传媒

Many of us dream of quitting comfortable but unfulfilling jobs to pursue a life in music. Few actually take the plunge. Even fewer turn that dream into a multimillion pound international business.

At 16, Phil Hutcheon organised ticketed dance music parties for thousands of people. After leaving university he started working for a financial services firm designing pension apps. But the allure of the night club was too much to resist as he spent every weekend DJing across London.

When his boss sent him to New York to study an MBA, Phil saw his life flash before him and decided this wasn鈥檛 what he wanted. He left the firm there and then and got a job with a small record label.

It was there he saw a gap in the market. 拢20 gig tickets for the labels artists would sell to fans for 拢30 once extra fees were added. Once those sold out fans were forced to pay hundreds on the resale market. When Phil asked if things could be done differently those around him shrugged. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 just the way it is,鈥� they said.

Phil wasn鈥檛 convinced. In 2014 launched a gig ticket app called Dice. Its main features are clear pricing - what you see at the start is what you pay at the end. Phil also designed it in such a way that tickets bought from it are incredibly difficult if not impossible to resell at inflated prices.
Starting in London where its been used over a million times, it鈥檚 now up and running in multiple UK cities and several countries around the world. We find out how he made it work, the challenges of getting investment in an industry dominated by a handful of big players and how his business survived more than one near death experience.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah
Producer: Julian Paszkiewicz