£600 Taylor Swift tickets?

[Birdfeather]

We got a Taylor Swift code to try and purchase tickets for our daughters/friends.

The two dates we chose (in advance) to use our code against to try and get tickets, went on sale today.

Despite being in waiting room as soon as I was able and being 5600ish in queue once the sale
room opened, by the time my number came round I could not secure tickets.

Well that’s a lie - I could if I wanted to spend £300 or £600 on a VIP package.

AIBU or does that just price out the average fan? Or am I still living in the past remembering how £25 for a NKOTB ticket was expensive?!

I should add, the two sales were both today - the first this morning and I was in the sale room within 26 mins. The second and I was in the sale room within 19 mins.

There are still £600 and £300 tickets left now.

We got wait listed so had no chance, found standing tickets in Germany that were £350 each, and worth a weekend away with my daughter

But I thought the releasing codes thing was just to limit the number of people accessing the ticketing platforms on the sale days so they could cope with the numbers, to avoid the issues they had in the US with the ticket sites crashing? Not necessarily a ploy to create demand - as let's face it, she was always going to sell out.

And he was worth it x

So what's the solution? Ticketmaster/AXS/Any other ticket provider physically don't have the server capacity to handle demand. Would you rather spend 10+ hours on a crashed website (which is exactly what happened in the US WITH codes before any of the show had even been seen and created expectations) and still not get tickets?

To be honest Taylor/her team/ticketmaster have done everything they physically can to make the UK experience better than the US.

A lot of us pre-ordered midnights/signed up back in October for a well advertised presale which was easily the most seamless ticket buying experience i've ever had (I was in and out in 8 minutes, and all ticket prices and levels were available). They split all of the sales for different venues/dates across multiple dates. They split the sales across two different platforms. They're potentially making it a lead booker event (still tbc but if they do the ticket buyer has to be physically present at the venue which should ease resale)

Whichever way you want to spin it and whatever measures you put in place the demand is far far greater than number of tickets available. She isn't a machine, she can't physically perform enough shows to appease everyone..

Do you honestly think Taylor herself sat down with a pen and paper and decided how much to charge for tickets? Of course not! It’ll be the tour management/promotors who set the prices. She probably has no idea how much the tickets actually cost and even if she did there wouldn’t be much she could do about it.

Look at the scale of that show. Dancers, crew, enormous moving sets, props, costumes, lights, sound, graphics, even the flashing wristbands. All those people have to paid, have their travel and accommodation provided, all that stuff has to be paid for and moved from venue to venue. You think that comes cheap??

Depends how much you want to see her, the VIP ones are overpriced but if that is all there is,

I got an email at 6pm last night to say I was off of the waitlist for Edinburgh, only tickets left straight away were £660 each

I mentioned this on another thread but this is Taylor’s support act talking about how they were upset with Ticketmaster over pricing and tickets for their own recent tour. There was some suspicion that ticketmaster sold all the US Taylor tickets by error in the presale I think, and the servers were overwhelmed, by demand and bots. Some fans started legal action.
The info included in this article, about Robert Smith of The Cure trying to take on the big firms in support of his fans goes some way to explaining how much or little artists can do in terms of controlling sales/pricing:
https://loudwire.com/paramore-hayley-williams-calls-out-ticketmaster-get-it-together/

It's not unfair because when midnights was out it was advertised everywhere that pre-ordering it would give you presale for a future tour. A true Swiftie could not have missed that announcement. That's why I actually think it was a really fair way to get tickets into the hands of actual fans.

So what's the solution?

Well for a start they should prevent people reselling tickets through any other platform than the one that they bought from, and restrict resales on those to face value only. Or the person buying tickets has to be present for entry

That would stop everyone who only needed 2 tickets buying 4 just because they could profit from the other two

Just a rip off

large amounts of tickets held back to be “VIP” (i.e. massively overpriced). Plenty of these tickets available at european venues if you fancy wasting money.

Uber capitalist Taylor scalps her fans shock - this was from 2017 she has it down to a fine art now. Girrrlll power supreme !

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/09/12/taylor-swift-look-what-capitalism-made-me-do/

A current example of Taylor Swift's role as a capitalist is the mechanism she has constructed to ensure tickets for her upcoming tour go first to fans, not to scalpers. She is doing this by having fans sign up on her website and buy her merchandise in order to earn a higher ticket priority. The more merchandise purchased, the better chance fans will have of securing concert tickets. This strategy has mixed impacts on fans, but a very positive impact on Taylor's bottom line.
Some fans would have managed to get tickets anyway, and this maneuver will cost them more money. More people will now manage to get tickets directly from the sale rather than through a reseller; based on her past tours, these fans will save money relative to buying tickets in the secondary market even accounting for the merchandise they purchase. Overall, fans will likely save money.
In addition, Taylor Swift will earn a lot of money from all the merchandise sales, which is currently the most profitable economic activity a musician has. In today's music industry, a performer makes little money from downloads or music streaming services. The real profits come from concert tours and much of the profit from touring actually comes from merchandise sales, not the ticket revenue. A tour such as Taylor Swift's is very expensive to mount so production costs eat into the profit. However, tour merchandise is inexpensive to produce and sports sky-high profit margins.

Absolute bullshit
People in the world are struggling to feed their kids yet in other news people are paying 600 pounds to see an untalented woman warble on a stage
FML
the saying a fool and their money has never been more apt

The VIP packages are a bit shit and overpriced for this tour. The Rep tour ones were amazing, a fancy box with load of stuff in.

I got standard seats for £90 each, they're the lowest seats in the highest tier, if that makes sense. I was pleasantly surprised how easy getting tickets was after the USA sale was horrific.

She's written 10 albums (one entirely by herself) across two/three genres, plays at least two instruments, has won countless awards for songwriting in both the country and pop music industries, directs her own music videos, and has broken a ridiculous numbers of all-time records and you call her untalented?

Fair enough if you don't like her but I'd like to see you do better.

Agreed, it's worked really well this way. Obviously it's canny marketing from her team because it guarantees sales - but it also means anyone who's got the code cares enough to have actually bought an album. Everyone I know who wanted tickets this time got them, which hasn't been the case for e.g. Beyonce tickets.

The sour grapes on here are something to behold. As a few posters have pointed out, the pre sale codes were available a year ago. She has absolutely rewarded her long standing, loyal fans. The vendors have phased the release of dates and tickets to stop websites from crashing, and it has worked.

she can’t perform enough shows to meet demand, but she is prioritising her fans. Will she make money from the tour? I hope so, touring is gruelling. She’s a talented young woman who writes her material and deserves to be rewarded for her work.

Oh come on..she reserves the presale tickets for fans who've actually bought the album from her store to ensure they have a chance at reasonable priced tickets for a massive stadium show and don't fall victim to touts. Everyone sells VIP packages and she has little control over Ticketmaster and their offshoots. DD is a fanatical fan and managed to get 4 in presale for about £90 each, which considering I spent over £300 on a ticket for the Reputation tour seems a bargain . Better system than most- tried to get Peter Kay tickets and not a hope

But there was? She issued presale codes to her fans who had bought an album from her store, doy she was looking after her fans.

DD got 2 tickets for Cardiff - £140 each but a really good view.

Should have added a clap for Swifty on the top of the NHS during the covid madness. https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-net-worth-spending-2018-8

The presale was great, but I can understand some fans not going in for it. At that time this level of hype wasn't known and a true fan can see how utterly unprecedented this is - her last tour she had 6 dates for the whole of Europe and didn't sell out everything! Just to say that I feel the smugness around "well I was a true fan so I preordered the album so I'm fine unlike you fake fans" from some posters doesn't feel kind. I don't think it was widely known there was a No Purchase Necessary clause, and many people (including 2 of my group of 4 who I know have been long time fans) really didn't see this coming.

I’ve been waitlisted for London and Liverpool. My DD’s are 9 and 7 and I haven’t even told them the tickets are being sold because I pretty much knew we didn’t have much chance of getting tickets so didn’t want to disappoint them.

The criticism aimed at her for making money is misogynistic IMO, something she has actually written songs about in the past. These tours cost an enormous amount to put on. There is nothing wrong with a young woman wanting to make money from her career, I don’t see people criticising similar male artists for “embracing capitalism” FFS

I paid £225 for two tickets at Wembley. I've paid more for other artists tbh - my youngest daughter is thrilled. But I wouldn't have paid more than £150 a ticket.

On sale from 3pm today 😭