MINNEAPOLIS — Music fans have waited in long virtual lines, only to be told last-minute they can’t buy tickets because the app thinks they’re a bot. Or it erroneously declined their credit card. Or it already gave their seats to somebody else.

Even worse, many concertgoers have bought tickets to a show and then found themselves stuck in a real-life line outside the venue because the app won’t properly load their tickets onto their phones.

Are these more complaints against the oft-derided Ticketmaster? No, these stories pertain to Ticketmaster’s most viable competitor, AXS, which has increased its foothold in Minnesota — but it isn’t making a lot of fans from music lovers here.

“I’m pretty competent at using technology, and First Ave shows are the only shows I can remember being literally stuck outside,” griped Rosei Skipper, a live-music booster from Rochester.

In one of several instances where her AXS app would not properly load at a concert, Skipper was stuck outside St. Paul’s Turf Club in freezing weather with a friend, whose ticket was also on her phone. The reason she bought for him, she said, is because “he hasn’t been able to buy tickets from AXS for years.”

“For some reason it will never validate his credit card address.”

AXS is the ticketing service used at First Avenue and all its sister venues in the Twin Cities, including the Palace and Fitzgerald theaters, Surly Brewing Festival Field, Fine Line and Turf Club. These are places frequented by avid concertgoers who generally know the ins and outs of buying tickets in the digital era. And yet music fans still report many problems using AXS.

AXS representatives said many of these issues are a byproduct of their security practices used to combat bots and other technologies used by ticket resellers, who scoop up large numbers of tickets and then jack up the price on secondary-market sites.

“We work hard every day to fight bad-actor abuse and ensure fairer access for fans,” said Dean DeWulf, head of North American Venues at AXS.

A lot of Bruce Springsteen fans were also raising “Cain” online over AXS in February, when tickets for his March 31 concert at Target Center went on sale. Managed by concert promoter AEG Live — which owns AXS and is the chief competitor of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation — Target Center also uses AXS for most of its concerts.

Among the complaints from local Springsteen fans:

*Colleen Sheehy of Minneapolis said she watched the “walking figure” on AXS’ website for 20 minutes (the icon that tells you you’re in line), and by the time she finally got in she could not find any decent cheap seats.

*Cyndie Lind of Oakdale kept getting an unspecified “Oh no!” error message and gave up.

*Tom Smith of Minneapolis said he kept selecting seats and then running into a “those seats are no longer available” message at checkout, eventually leaving him with a spot behind the stage.

*Steve Rood of New Prague could not buy three seats together, so he wound up buying a pair and a single separately. Then he later found three together. So now he has six tickets.

“My biggest complaint is you have to verify by text code every time you log in," said Rood, a former record company representative who attends several concerts per month. “Even if you just logged in yesterday.”

Speaking specifically about Springsteen’s Minneapolis show, AXS’ representatives at its Los Angeles headquarters deemed the concert’s on-sale process a success given the high demand for it.

“Hundreds of thousands of fans looking for tickets for one arena show,” said DeWulf. “So, when milliseconds decide who secures a seat, cart collisions unfortunately can occur.

“We blocked nearly 3 million malicious requests to prioritize real fans having the best chance to buy tickets,” DeWulf added. “When demand greatly outstrips supply like this, we can’t sell everyone a seat.”

AXS representatives also offered tips for Minnesota users to avoid mechanical errors, such as: avoid using VPNS, having multiple tabs open in your web browser or buying tickets in offices with multiple users on the same network. Any of those options might set off bot alerts. Also, make sure your account info is up to date before a big sale, and avoid having multiple AXS accounts under different emails.

AXS was launched in 2011 in partnership with Live Nation’s top competitor, AEG, which took over full ownership of the ticketing platform in 2019. More than 1,300 venues worldwide now use AXS for tickets, up from around 30 in 2013.

In recent years, though, AXS has not differed much from Ticketmaster on the fees front.

AXS’ user fees — those tacked onto original ticket prices — are generally close in cost to Ticketmaster’s notorious add-ons, sometimes reaching over 30% of the original price. About the only difference is in facility fees set by venues, which are sometimes lower on AXS than what Ticketmaster charges at venues owned by its parent company, Live Nation.

A lot of AXS’ territory in the Twin Cities is in smaller venues with cheaper original ticket prices, so the fees may not seem so bad to the bottom line. That’s all the more reason fans believe using AXS should not be more complicated.

“It’s not like there is some huge security risk that requires a complicated system so nobody sneaks into a $25 show,” said Skipper, the Rochester fan who got stuck out in the cold at the Turf Club.

“I don’t think we should just expect things to be a hassle in 2026, especially for relatively inexpensive shows.”

First Avenue’s general manager Nate Kranz said the independently owned concert company knows and sympathizes with the issues its customers can face with ticketing. But he still believes AXS is the best option for filling the ever-muddying role of ticket purchases in the bot-endangered modern era.

“Our staff is working with their staff all the time with identifying suspicious activity or working through issues,” Kranz said. “I’m quite certain we would not have that kind of close relationship working with Ticketmaster.”

Kranz said even back in the day of printed tickets, there were headaches because of illegally sold fakes: “You’d scan one ticket, and then 50 other people would show up with the same ticket,” he recalled. That problem has largely been eliminated with AXS digital tickets.

One big improvement in recent weeks: First Ave venues have been installing new equipment that allows them to read AXS tickets downloaded into Apple Wallets on iPhones — eliminating the need for Wi-Fi or a cell signal in a crowded entry line.

Target Center’s representatives declined to comment for this story or offer advice to fans headed to the arena for Springsteen’s upcoming concert — the ones lucky, rich and/or resilient enough to get tickets off AXS, like Smith, who will be watching from behind the stage.

“Still thrilled to be going,” he said.

Let’s just hope his AXS app loads OK when he gets there.

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