Some local music fans shut out of weekend 1 of the Coachella festival

Many local music fans were unable to purchase tickets to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Tickets reserved for local residents went on sale for weekend one of the festival, Friday at 10 a.m. The problem they sold out in 10 to 20 minutes.

In the past, the promoter Goldenvoice had fans purchase and pick up the locals-only tickets at the same time.

This year Goldenvoice sold the tickets only online.

A thousand tickets were made available for locals, about twice as many as were sold in each of the past two years.

Besides the high demand online — another frustration — it wasn’t clear where ticket buyers needed to enter their local Zip code to begin the purchasing process.

“I’ve already been in contact with Goldenvoice and I hope they can clean up the initial page of that for next week. I did see that it said code, put a code in at the bottom, but it didn’t say Zip code,” said Indio Community Services Manager Jim Curtis.

Next week it will be the same drill for locals who want to attend weekend two of the festival, which like weekend one is sold out.

A thousand tickets will go on sale online Friday, April 11 at 10 a.m. on the festival’s website, www.coachella.com. Coachella weekend one runs from April 11-17. Weekend two runs from April 18-20.

As part of its new 17-year contract with Indio, Goldenvoice is required to offer 1,000 locals-only tickets for each weekend of the festival as well as for the Stagecoach Festival April 25-27. All three events will take place at the Empire Polo grounds in Indio.

The city has set up a ticket hotline and e-mail address if you have any questions about purchasing tickets.

You can call 760-541-7800 or go to concertinfo@indio.org.