When I was a 19 year-old student, I had gig ticketing down to a fine art: Buy the NME and Melody Maker magazines first thing on a Wednesday, scan their live listings for bands that I liked, then queue up to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale.

Fast forward a few years, and technology was playing more of a role through online booking and – particularly for in-demand concerts – the pattern of sitting at a computer with umpteen browser windows open, hitting refresh from just before 9am until tickets had been secured.

Fast forward again, to 2014, and my smartphone is playing its part in the process: the Songkick app pings me when an artist I like has a gig coming up, often ahead of the official announcement. Sometimes, I even buy the tickets on my phone, although the experience can still be overly fiddly.

Could a new app called Dice, which launched in the UK in mid-September, be the next step on? Perhaps.

Dice is a joint venture between veteran music manager Phil Hutcheon and digital studio ustwo. The latter is the developer behind the Whale Trail and Monument Valley mobile games, but is also a creative agency working for brands like Sony, Google and Barclays – all experiences that have influenced Dice’s Android and iPhone app.

“We’ve gone out and got the best designers, the best data people and the best marketing people to make something that’s miles different,” Hutcheon tells the Guardian. “Our focus has been on whether this is good for fans and artists.”

What is Dice, then? In its current form, it’s a guide to upcoming concerts in London – more cities will be added in the coming months – which also sells tickets for those gigs without booking fees, with the tickets stored within the app ready to be scanned on the door.

“We’re getting rid of the friction: it’s purely about fans going to a show, and all the possibilities that brings. That’s what was in our mind while we were making this,” says Hutcheon.

He adds that Dice is aiming to be an alternative to touts on the street as well as “secondary ticketing” websites that sell tickets for sold-out shows at inflated prices, with some artists controversially taking a share of the profits.

“We’re empowering artists to control ticketing. As a manager and as a fan, I’ve never bought a ticket on the secondary market. I don’t agree with it. Dice is a piece of technology that means the tickets will never make it there,” he said.

“If you’re a credible artist and fans find out you’re participating in the secondary market, you’re kinda dead. No one’s profiting from it except maybe for the companies and venture capitalists backing the secondary market.”

Hutcheon claims that Dice is built to scale quickly if needed – “we can sellout the equivalent of Wembley Stadium in a minute, and allocate those tickets, without crashing” – but adds that Dice will expand carefully both in terms of adding new features to its app, and adding new cities and countries.

For now, the app features more than 100 concerts at once, with an editorial team working under DJ and journalist Jen Long to choose the gigs and write their listings. In time, the app will include features to help fans listen to the artists they don’t know already, with YouTube videos likely the first method.

Dice is also courting music fans with its Waiting List feature, where fans can join a queue for tickets for a sold-out concert in case more become available; exclusive concerts from some artists; and plans to recommend gigs and bands based on their past purchases.

“This is going to be a curated platform for a maximum of 200 shows at one point: it’s not any show, it’s the best shows in London,” says Hutcheon. “But once we add the personalisation engine in to it, we can start segmenting: if you’re really into clubs and dance music, we’ll show you less of the other stuff.”

“We’ve launched a product as lean as we’re comfortable with, but just as you’ll see more bands coming on board, you’ll also see the experience massively increase every few weeks,” adds co-founder Matt “Mills” Miller.

Dice isn’t just a digital startup: it has recruited a team of reps to attend every gig, greeting people who’ve bought tickets through the app, and telling other attendees what it is and how it works.

“They’re super-confident, super-engaged music fans,” says Mills. “And they’re talking directly to the fans and giving us their feedback, which is so rewarding.

That’s one reason for the cautious expansion, with plans to take Dice to cities across the UK first, then Europe before setting its sights on the US. For now, music will be its sole focus, too.

“Sports is definitely an area that needs change, where it’s hard to get hold of tickets,” says Mills. “But this guy’s passion [he motions to Hutcheon] is absolutely about music, and ours is about making the product right. We need to own music. Beyond that, only once we’ve learned about music can we take our learnings into other areas.”

For now, the Dice team are continuing to visit managers and artists to sell them on the potential benefits of the app: particularly the ability to get useful data on how their fanbases are growing, which can then be used to build their careers. Hutcheon says this is based on his own experience as a manager.

“I’ve been wanting to use data to help run artists’ businesses for a while now. We had the same ticketing companies trying to sell our tickets, everyone had the same 10% booking fee, and they would give us a CSV [spreadsheet] file with email addresses that were meaningless,” he says.

“In the music industry, we haven’t had access to the right data to make decisions. “Should my artist play in Paris? Who should they play with? Is this the right time to go to America? If Shepherds Bush sells out, should I do another or go to Brixton Academy? And so on.”

What about Dice’s business? The margins in selling mobile tickets are wafer-thin even with booking fees, so for now, Dice is relying on the resources of Hutcheon and ustwo, along with £1m of funding from investors.

The latter include VC firms (White Star Capital); music industry figures (Robbie Williams’ manager Tim Clarke and Metropolis Music founder Bob Angus); and the founders behind companies including Toptable, Deepmind, Secret Escapes and Voucher Codes.

“Our investors are clever people: they’re not taking a punt on us without knowing we have ideas about the future,” says Hutcheon.

“No booking fees might have initially been a bit of a headfuck, but it liberates your imagination about how we can generate ten times more money in the future. We have a lot of ideas that become possible once you remove all the friction between fans and artists.”

Anything involving selling fans’ data will have to be handled carefully, but Dice may have opportunities to sell more things to fans: merchandise, for example, or perhaps even recordings of gigs – an idea tried (albeit unsuccessfully) in 2013 by another British startup, Soundhalo.

ustwo’s close relationship with Apple – the company won an Apple Design Award for Monument Valley earlier this year – could also give it an early shot at integrating the new Apple Pay mobile payments technology when it eventually comes to the UK.

That could open up more ways to make money – attendees paying for drinks, pre-gig meals, perhaps even their cab home – although Dice might have to figure out how to add comparable features on Android if it goes down this route.

Still, Hutcheon is keen for Dice to be seen as more than just a technology startup. “Ultimately, it’s about humans,” he says. “As a manager, I couldn’t ever guarantee that fans would have the best experience. We’re trying to make that possible.”

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