Fans wanting to go to next year's Glastonbury will be able to reserve their tickets six months earlier than normal.

100,000 tickets will be available from October, providing would-be Glasto-goers leave a deposit of £50. The full amount will be required as usual on 1 April 2009 and anyone not wanted to pay the balance will be charged a fee of £10.

Michael Eavis claims that this new initiative is to avoid the on-sale dates of other major festivals - in the hope of avoiding this year's slow sales. Plus, he wanted to avoid the “confusion” of this year’s on-sale.

"Everybody wants to come,” the eternally cheerful Mr Eavis told the BBC. “Everywhere I go people say Oh, we should've been there and we're so fed up about it, because it was so good. "There was so much stuff going on - Trash City, Shangri-La, The Park - people are kicking themselves because they didn't go, so there really will be a big demand."

However, the Glasto boss warned that there would be a price hike for next year’s tickets. “We actually did [this year] cheap - we couldn't cover the costs at that price. It wasn't a loss, but it wasn't as good as it should've been.”

Despite this, and a stressful period in the run up to this year’s event that saw Eavis lose half a stone in weight through worry, he’s looking forward to 2009: "It's completely different to how we were talking six months ago when we were saying, Oh no is this the end? It's on its way out because we didn't sell out straight away... We had all those stories about the demise of the festival and they were completely wrong”

But don’t expect another Jay-Z in ’09. "We'll probably be going for the more traditional headliner next year because there are more of them around. After this year, everyone wants to come onboard because it was such a good do.”

Source:
http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2008/glastonbury-tickets-on-sale-in-october