Ticketmaster Details Taylor Swift Chaos

Pretty interesting blog post… but I’ll still never feel bad for Ticketmaster

 

Demand for this must have been insane but they have to do something about their servers being attacked by bots which doesn't help the whole experience.

 

There is so much beneath all of the phrasing they're using to try and cover the fact that they thought "we'll be fine based on trends." Y'all....

Taylor fucking Swift. Five years of no tour, with a cancelled Lover Fest as the cherry on top. A "historic, unprecedented" registration for presale codes... 15% of 3.5 billion interactions fucked up. This is ENTIRELY on you. But don't worry we'll get 'em next time wtf

 

"We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans"

Lmao

 

I don't understand . Whats changed? Its not like tickermaster.com hasn't exited for 20+ years. And it's not like there hasn't been mega shows before or high demand shows.

 

Time for Taylor to revolutionize ticket purchasing and maybe start her own ticket distribution for her own tours.

Has she said anything about this recent debacle?

 

I would love to see her cancel everything, everyone get refunds, throw a middle finger to TM and then her come back with a solid plan to ensure everyone gets a fair chance at affordable tickets.

 

Like said before above, I hope artists with a great deal of prestige can say - hey, we could create our own ticketing platform or buy directly in tandem with venues - screw Ticketmaster and Eventbrite out of the outrageous fees game and then issues like a presale boondoggle wouldn't happen either. I know Blink 182 also just going through a similar gauge for their tickets.

 

So TIDAL but for ticketmaster

 

That'd be cool, but there'd still be fees for tickets as whatever platform they create would have to maintain itself.

 

She would piss off a significant portion of her fan base that did get tickets if she did that. A lot of those people wouldn't take kindly to an action like that, and it would damage the relationship she has with her fan base. And i'm saying that as someone who didn't get tickets from either presale. Too late to do anything on this tour. i'm expecting significant changes for any future tours. Also, the method she came up to address scalping issues with Reputation was BANNED by Ticketmaster so no other artist could replicate it. She did different "boosts" that could increase your chances of getting selected for tickets, and from what I recall, there were no issues with the buying process like there was for this tour. It's saying something if they banned it after she was successful with it.

 

This is what I have never understood. What is the "Service fee" and why is Ticketmaster allowed to charge it. They operate a ticket website, the service fee is for them to run the website? Isn't that what any profit they make should go towards? Keeping their business alive? Why do we have to pay for them to run the website?

Also, if the on sale is completely botched like it was for Taylor and to a lesser degree for blink - how do they get away with charging a service fee at all? The service was shit, and now I have to pay extra for it?

 

Agree with the first part of your post - she would piss people off. Regarding the practice TM banned - it completely exploited fans to do bogus MLM marketing for TS. Personally happy I didn’t have to do any of that to get tickets this time around. Also, demand for the rep tour was night/day with this - she did 2 days in LA for that tour, while she’s doing 5 for this tour. It was also the advent of dynamic pricing - the ticket sales were very weak for a long time because many people were priced out. Also, her popularity for rep was receding just a bit in comparison to 1989.

Her popularity is just on a different planet now. She was going to open Sofi Stadium with 3 dates for Lover Fest, and now she’s doing 5 for a normal tour lol. My assumption is that nobody was better-suited to handle this level of demand than Ticketmaster (and I doubt they or another company would have performed better if the market could actually support another competitor that’s equal in size to TM). I give TM the benefit of the doubt here… they used their verified fan process, only allowed the selected fans to buy tickets for specific dates, and stuff was still a mess. It’s not like they didn’t try. Same stuff happens for the World Series and MLB uses their *own* platform (just like how people in this thread are suggesting artists should do). But baseball fans don’t complain as much on Twitter, so you never hear about it lol. Seems like we should just go back to waiting in line at sears. Otherwise, people need to keep a cool head and just wait for prices on stubhub to recede over the next year. With the amount of ticket supply in every city, I think many scalpers might get burned on this one.

 

The promoter/act get a cut of the ticket fee. I assume TIcketmaster, being a for profit company, also gets a cut since it allows venues/promoters to use their service.

 

Couldnt handle the demand, eh? Maybe you shouldn't be the ticket provider for 49 of her shows then

 

The problem is that all the big venues (basketball arenas and football stadiums in the US) have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster to sell all the tickets to events at the venue. So even if she wanted to do something about it on her own, in order to play at these large venues the tickets would have to be sold through Ticketmaster per their exclusive rights deals.

For example, Gilette Stadium is Massachusetts has a contract with Ticketmaster that all tickets to all events have to be sold through them. So if Taylor wants to play in Gilette stadium, tickets have to be sold by Ticketmaster due to their contract.

 

There's no way she could fight Ticketmaster with how powerful they are nowadays...

Pearl Jam already tried to fight them when they had less power and still lost

Only way is to get the government involved, but we'll see how that turns out with TM possibly lobbying to get their way (as called out in the video above).

 

I understand the sentiment but that would be total bullshit for those of us that did get tickets

 

As long as you understand the sentiment haha.

 

the veterinary hospital I work for recently implemented a hospital support fee to raise the wages of support staff. While also raising prices. Quite analogous. Obvi corporations are gonna make their money regardless of how they dress it up but it almost feels worse parsing out the various parts of it. Maybe that’s the one thing airlines do right. Just give it to us straight, what’s it gonna cost.

 

Giving a scammy company like TM the “benefit of the doubt” is so problematic. No sympathy for a company who exploits all concertgoers all of the time.

 

I think the more appropriate action would be to work with TM to void all of the tickets that immediately went up for resale at thousands and thousands of dollars. That just seems like a no-brainer to me and fairly easy to do. If TM actually cared about "the fans", prove it with little steps like this.

In regards to the demand, no kidding demand was high. They knew this. A simple solution would have been staggering the presale times - not every show needs to go on sale at the exact same day and time... right?