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Taylor Swift on Friday spoke out about the ticket debacle that occurred this week, as many fans were unable to buy tickets for her upcoming tour on Ticketmaster.
“Needless to say, I am extremely protective of my fans,” Swift wrote on Instagram on Friday. “It’s really hard for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and it’s excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen without recourse.”
Swift blamed Ticketmaster for the glitch, noting that there were several reasons “why people were having such a hard time” obtaining tickets.
The singer wrote, “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured.” “It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really bothers me that so many of them feel like they’ve gone through several bear attacks to get them.”
Swift said she would “try to figure out how this situation can be improved going forward.”
The singer’s New Eras Tour went on sale on Tuesday, but overwhelming demand hit ticketing sites, leaving fans fuming who couldn’t get tickets. Customers complained that Ticketmaster would not load, saying that the platform did not allow them to access tickets even if they had pre-sale codes for Verified Fans.
On Thursday, Ticketmaster announced that the sale to the general public, which was scheduled to begin on Friday, was canceled due to “extraordinarily high demand on the ticketing system and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”. Was.
Swift said, “For the people who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is I hope we get to sing these songs together.”
The issues for Ticketmaster began on Tuesday, when the site closed sales to “verified fans” — a mechanism aimed at eliminating bots that give out pre-sale codes to individuals.
In 2017 the “verified fan” platform was created to help Ticketmaster handle situations of heavy demand, but with over 3.5 million people pre-registering to become Swift “verified fans”, the system became overwhelmed. According to Ticketmaster, this is the largest registration in the company’s history.
“Historically, working with ‘Verified Fan’ invite codes has worked because we have been able to manage the volume of people coming to the site to purchase tickets,” the company wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “However, this time a staggering number of bot attacks, as well as fans who did not have invite codes, brought unprecedented traffic to our site.”
Ticketmaster said that “it usually takes us about an hour to sell through stadium shows,” but the site slowed some sales while others were delayed to “stabilize the system.” Due to which everything came to a standstill.
It appears the site avoided major problems when it launched a pre-sale for Capital One credit card holders on Wednesday. But the company’s inability to deal with demand for Swift’s tour, as well as a lack of tickets to meet further demand, essentially scrapped Friday’s planned sale to the general public.
Fans blamed Ticketmaster, while others, including members of Congress, heavily criticized the company’s control of the live music industry.
“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticketing market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically drive companies to innovate and improve their services,” Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in an open letter to its CEO on Wednesday. ” “This could result in the type of dramatic service failures seen this week, where consumers are the ones who pay the price.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal echoed Klobuchar’s concerns, tweeting that the tour was “a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger hurts consumers by creating a near-monopoly.”
“I have long urged the DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry,” he said. Told, “Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.”
The backlash also highlighted the enormity of Swift’s popularity.
The pop star has scored countless hits in her career, built up an ultra-loyal following of fans — known as “Swifties” — and recently claimed the top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 all at once. Became the first artist to do so. Her latest album, “Midnights,” came out last month.
Her Eras Tour – which begins in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17 and ends in Los Angeles on August 9 – takes in 52 stadiums across the US.
Ticketmaster noted Thursday that more than two million tickets for Swift’s upcoming tour were sold Tuesday — the most in a single day for an artist. The company also said that demand for Eras Tour tickets was double that of the top five tours of 2022 and the Super Bowl. joint,
Ticketmaster wrote on Thursday, “Based on the amount of traffic on our site, Taylor will need to do over 900 stadium shows (about 20 times the shows he’s been doing).” “It’s a stadium show every night for the next 2.5 years.”
Tickets for Swift’s upcoming tour resulted in very high prices on ticket resale sites, with some tickets being listed for thousands of dollars.
Since her debut album in 2006, Swift has also built herself into a cultural icon with immense influence for moving the needle on issues in the industry. She has taken on music streaming services such as Spotify (SPOT) and Apple Music regarding artist pay and is currently re-recording her songs to reclaim ownership of their masters.
In many aspects, as Swift goes, so goes the music industry.
Serona Elton, music industry professor at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, explained Swift’s popularity in terms of her success in both music sales and touring. Most music is now consumed via streaming, she said, which is more popular among younger generations that skew slightly female.
“The demographic group that is driving the highest percentage of music consumption sees herself in it, and it relates closely to what she sings about,” she said.
