By Sophia Hartford
Every Swiftie remembers that dreadful day last November when the Eras Tour tickets went on sale. Classes were skipped and laptops were open as we frantically waited to get to the front of the line. There was nothing I wanted more than to be able to get those tickets. I had gotten my presale code and I logged onto the website hours before the sale began. Yet, after three hours of waiting, I walked away with nothing. I was fortunate enough to be able to get tickets through Ticketmaster’s offer that came later for those with presale who did not get tickets, but that is, unfortunately, not always the case.
While I think there were a lot of factors that went into the fiasco that was the Eras Tour ticket sale, it also exposed some fundamental errors in the system. Ticketmaster uses a system called dynamic pricing in order to keep up with the demand of ticket prices. By the time that I had gotten onto the site to buy tickets, the prices were exponentially higher than their original face-value because of the high demand for the concert.
The other problem is Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system that determines who gets presale access and who does not. Moises Mendez II from TIME explains the process of Verified Fan, stating that the distribution of presale codes via the program is not based on any sort of fan status. People seeking to gain access to the early tickets only need to provide their email and the show they intend to go to in order to be able to sign up for presale.
GW first-year Jesse Gunnel shares his experience recently with buying Mitski tickets for her upcoming tour. He shared that he was disappointed in her presale program because she posted the code for fans on her Instagram. Since the code was made available to anybody who had access to Instagram, he did not find it an effective method of ensuring that fans had access to her tickets before the general public.
While I believe that Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system is flawed, there are other presale opportunities that I think give better access to fans hoping to get their tickets before the general public. Spotify offers exclusive offers to top listeners of artists such as early access to ticket sales. The program also occasionally offers this same opportunity to those who follow the artist on Spotify, according to the company website. This method ensures that those who are prioritized for getting tickets to see an artist are truly going out of love for the artist and their music.
Taylor Swift also introduced a new method to attempt to streamline tickets to her fans for her Reputation Stadium Tour back in 2017. In partnership with Ticketmaster, Swift launched a program called “Taylor Swift Tix” that gave priority sales to fans who watched her music videos, streamed her music, or bought merchandise from her store. While the program had a similar idea to that of Spotify, Jacob Shamsian from Insider reported that this system made fans upset, because it turned buying tickets for their beloved artist into a competition over who likes her more or who is willing to spend the most money on her products.
Because Live Nation Entertainment, the owner of Ticketmaster, has a near-monopoly over the ticket selling business, it has become incredibly difficult to fight back against these unfair practices. Too many times, I have been excited about a concert only to be faced with a sold-out show or tickets priced exponentially higher than their original face-value.
As college students, it is unrealistic to be paying this much for concerts; especially when ticket prices are expensive enough at their original price. By increasing ticket prices according to a concert’s demand, artists that have larger fan bases are becoming inaccessible to a significant number of their fans. While it could be argued that being able to attend a concert is a privilege, the art of live music calls for accessibility to ensure that all fans can afford to purchase a ticket, if they so desire.
