QR codes for gig posters
QR codes for gig posters
- Open source
- No sign-up
- No watermark
- Free API + MCP
- In the MCP registry
The life of one poster, mapped week by week
| Stage | What's true | Where the code points | What the page should say |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1-6, on sale | Tickets are available | The ticket page | Buy now, plus the date and venue |
| Final week, selling fast | Close to selling out | Still the ticket page | Add urgency copy on the page itself; a scarcity line converts better than a new destination |
| Sold out | No tickets left | A waiting list or resale page | Sold out, join the waiting list, or the official resale route, never a dead ticket link |
| After the show | The run is over | A next-date or mailing-list page | Thanks for coming, sign up to hear about the next one first |
Never leave the code pointing at a dead ticket page
A fan who scans a sold-out poster and lands on an expired checkout or a Stripe error message doesn't conclude the show sold out, they conclude something's broken, and some of them message the venue to ask. Repointing to a proper sold-out page is a five-minute fix that removes the messages entirely.
What the sold-out page should actually contain
Sold out is not the end of the poster's usefulness, it's a handoff. A good sold-out landing page offers a waiting list signup for returns, a link to the official resale route if the promoter uses one (never an unofficial tout site), and a short teaser for the next date if one is already booked. All three turn a dead end into a captured contact or a second sale, from a poster that's already paid for itself once.
One poster, more than one code
Larger posters increasingly carry more than one code: tickets, a Spotify presave or social follow, sometimes a merch preorder, all on the same sheet. That works, but two unlabelled codes sitting close together is a genuine, common misscan, a fan's camera locking onto the wrong one. Caption each code in a few words directly underneath it, "Scan for tickets" beside "Scan to follow", and give each code breathing room: leave at least a code's width of clear space between two, rather than letting them touch.
Repointing on the night:
- 1
Decide who holds the login in advance
The promoter, or venue staff physically on the door, agreed before the show, not worked out in the moment it sells out.
- 2
Have the sold-out and next-date pages ready beforehand
Write them before the show, not in the queue while people are already messaging asking what happened.
- 3
Repoint the moment the state changes
It applies to every printed copy still on a wall or noticeboard at once, with no reprint and no sticker.
- 4
Automate it if you run several shows a year
The same repoint can be scripted through the API on your own clock rather than done by hand each time; see the guide on scheduling and rotating destinations.
For a solo artist or a DIY promoter running their own poster run, one dynamic code for the whole show comfortably fits inside the free allowance of three. It stops being free once the scale changes: several shows a year, or one poster carrying separate codes for tickets, merch and a presave link all at once, adds codes up faster than it looks, and that's a genuine Pro (£9/month) decision rather than a trick to get there.
Sizing a poster code for where it's actually stuck up, a flyer versus a lamppost versus a stage banner, is already covered in full in the print size guide and in this vertical's own sizing table. The number that matters most once a poster carries several codes isn't the size of any one of them, it's the gap between them.