Have you ever wondered why concert tickets can sell out so fast?  Burlington start-up CashorTrade has the answer, and aims to provide a solution to this problem. CashorTrade was started in 2009 by brothers, Brando and Dusty Rich, after they tried to buy tickets to see their favorite band, Phish.  In the process they discovered a problem. The show they wanted to go to had sold out almost instantly once the tickets went on sale. What the brothers found was that scalpers were getting their hands on huge amounts of tickets by using scalping programs and selling tickets for prices much higher than their original value.  “When everyone else is sitting by their computer clicking to get them, there’s [scalpers] that are just scraping thousands of tickets off the top,” Dusty said. “Then they turn around and go to places like StubHub, where they can sell them for way above face value,” he said. For them, they created CashorTrade as a means to fix a problem they said was “ridiculous.”  They crafted a free trade online market that they said would “benefit all parties involved.” The brothers said they believe the negatives go beyond the fans paying more. In addition, bands end up playing to technically sold-out shows that have empty seats because of the scalping programs, the duo said. As well, the concert vendors end up not profiting as much as they could be. “The artists lose, the vendors lose and the fans lose,” Dusty said. “But the scalpers gain,” Brando said. CashorTrade is a grassroots organization and fair-trade marketplace that helps users buy, sell and trade concert tickets. Tickets are sold at face value to eliminate ticket scalpers and steep prices, said Gabi Natale, an intern at the organization.  The community and inner working of CashorTrade functions by allowing a user to find a post or an ad on the site with someone who is willing to sell their ticket at its original price. Both users “commit” to the trade, thus making the deal final.  Payment is made through whatever means the buyer and seller agree on, whether it be in-person trading or by PayPal.  After the transaction, both users can rate each other’s reliability, giving them what Dusty called a “tangible karma.” “People work hard to get a positive review, “If they show that they sold, let’s say, a New Year’s Eve show ticket for face value, when other people see that on their reviews they’ll be like, ‘Oh, that guy’s awesome – they could’ve scalped his ticket but they didn’t,'” Brando said. He particularly sees the immediate incentives for people to use the site as less important than the way in which it can solve the problem on a  grander scale. All in all, the brothers said they see this site as being most useful to students, as, to them, “they cannot afford the markup.” Visit cashortrade.org to use the site and see what it has to offer.