Taylor Swift has become a force to reckon with in the music industry! With every album, the singer is proving that not only she has a loyal fanbase, but she also knows what and how to deliver it to them. Swifties were awaiting the release of Taylor’s tenth studio album ‘Midnights’. In the first week of the release, the album had 357 million streams. She became the most-streamed artist in a single day on Spotify.
After breaking records, the eventual step was to give her Swifties the surprise of their lifetime—a global tour. She announced that the ‘Eras Tour’ will kick off during spring across stadiums in the US before going overseas. The tour will take the Swifties through the journey of music in the present and past. Ticketmaster was the company responsible for the sales of the tickets. The tickets went live on November 15. But, chaos ensued due to an overwhelming response that led the company to cancel the ticket sales. This hugely upset the fans and the artist. Now, the company is getting dragged into the US Congress after the fiasco.
Also Read: Taylor Swift Concert Tickets Are Almost 95,000 USD On Ticketmaster
US Congress’ Antitrust Panel Will Hold A Hearing On The Issue
The Swifties were hopeful that Taylor Swift would hit the road after five years after her last tour. Artists like Girl in Red, Muna, Haim, Phoebe Bridgers, Paramore, Gayle, and others are going to join the artist for the tour. On November 15th, 2022, the tickets went live, but the systems at Ticketmaster crashed. On their site, they had a system called the “Verified Fan Program” to help them weed out bots and estimate the number of people engaging with the site to buy the tickets. The estimated numbers were 3.5 million who pre-registered.
However, things didn’t go as planned. Out of the 3.5 million fans, two million fans were sent to the waiting list and 1.5 million people could only buy the tickets. But, attacks of bots and many unregistered fans drove the traffic leading to shutting the systems for a while. On that very day, they sold 2 million tickets. In their official statement, they said, “The Eras on sale made one thing clear: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force and continues to set records”.
However, after the disastrous episode, the antitrust panel in the US Congress arranged a hearing. Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota and Senator Mike Lee from Utah on Tuesday announced the hearing will take place due to a lack of competition in the industry and monopoly leading to debacles like these. Swifties could not purchase tickets as Ticketmaster canceled the general sales of the tickets.
Also Read: “It Really Pisses Me Of”: Taylor Swift Finally Speaks Out Against Ticketmaster ‘Eras Tour’ Disaster
Taylor Swift Reacted To The Ticketmaster Debacle
The “All Too Well” artist had bad blood with the ticket-selling company. Ticketmaster canceled the sales of the tickets due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” But, the artist did not stand back, but she reacted to the whole situation. Taylor said that it “pissed her off” that the 2.4 million people got the tickets after going “through several bear attacks to get them”.
In her long statement on Instagram, she explained for decades why she and her team are doing it by themselves without the interference of an outside entity. Swift said, “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse”.
In the statement, she also mentioned that she and her team asked the company if they can pull this off and they “assured they could”. But, the ‘Bad Blood’ artist is trying to figure out the situation moving forward. In the end, Taylor extended her gratitude toward her fans and hoped “to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs”.
Also Read: “More Music That I Put Out, The Happier I Was”: Taylor Swift’s Acceptance Speech At 2022 AMAs
