radio station contests are a pain but when you do get seats from them, they are usually medium good to great. The radio stations are however a big problem with why the general public cant get good seats. Cause the promoter gives a way tons of good tickets to radio stations and other places.

It also helps to have a friend that sells tickets at the venue of the event. Not easy to pull off but its awesome when that works out.

for the majority of fans who do not have these special connections, I guess the advice is keep looking for the cheapest ticket online.

some online sites have special discounts from time to time, like 10% off. Especially newcomers may do this for even the biggest concerts-- to gain some market share. You might want to try them if all tickets are sold out at the venue or on ticketmaster.

Have a credit card, find out the times where pre-released tickets are available to those with credit cards and hit the refresh button! I always get my ticket doing it like that. But most of the groups I see there are usually heaps of tickets due to the population being smaller here.

refresh button?
 

Thank you for the great tip, Vanilla. But what do you mean by "hitting the refresh button? you mean on the checkout page? Also, which site do you usually use for that?

No problem. :)

Basically you just need to know the time when tickets are released and aim to be reloading the page of where the tickets will come up so you can get quickly in the line of those buying tickets. I'm from New Zealand so I mainly go to:

Ticketek New Zealand and Tickets for Concerts, Sports, Arts, Theatre, Family, Events, more. Official Ticketmaster site, which are also in international forms too. You just need to get to know the sites reasonably well first. Paying the extra booking fee is well worth it when you are going to see an artist/band you absolutely love.

I always buy floor tickets if they are available and just get there early so I can be up front. (Hey some opening bands kick ass)

If its a venue with seats call BEFORE the tickets go on sale and ask where the better seats are being sold through. Some venues will sell off the better seats to ticketmaster etc. or keep them for a local ticket wholesale place (Or sometimes actually sell them at there own box office). Its rare when venues are fare and divide the good seats between the wholesalers.

Also don't be afraid ask around about the tricks for each venue. You will be amazed at what you can learn about venues by just talking to random concert goers.

This is great advice. Be sure to check time.gov as well so you know exactly when to reload.

I recently used a relatively newer site TicketRight for a concert that was already sold out. Prices were higher than ticketmaster (where my attempts to buy tickets failed in the first minute or so and I was told there were no tickets left!), but lower than other re-sellers out there.