Taylor Swift has one of the strongest relationships with her audience of any prominent musicians.
So, when the pop superstar revealed that her next Eras Tour would feature a revisit of the most cherished songs from her renowned body of work, anticipation erupted like wildfire on social media.
But because of perplexing mismanagement on the part of distribution goliath Ticketmaster, that exhilaration has subsequently given way to outrage and disappointment.
Ticketmaster worsened the situation by halting public sales after several days in which customers griped about exorbitant costs (with seats offered for upwards of $19,000) or complained that they were unable to get tickets at all.
It was a betrayal so appalling that it could’ve inspired a Taylor Swift song.
It might be a while before we find out exactly how and why this happened, but in the meantime, Taylor has gotten in front of the situation by assuring fans that she’s heard their complaints, and she’s doing what she can to rectify the matter.
“Well. I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in-house,” Swift wrote on Instagram today.
“I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do,” the singer continued.
“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.”
Swift concluded by confirming that the situation is a complicated one, but she explained that she plans to do everything in her power to make sure it will never happen again.
“There is a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” she wrote.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times if they could handle this time of demand and we were assured they could.”
Tay wrapped things up on a humorous note, writing:
“Amazingly, 2.4 million people got tickets, but it pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
Her * comes after a week in which tens of thousands of fans flocked to Twitter and Instagram to complain about the ticket situation.
“THIS TOUR IS CALLED THE TAYLOR SWIFT ERAS TOUR. IT’S UNDER HER NAME. SHE NEEDS TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS,” one angry fan tweeted.
“Please say something this is devastating to the people who have loved and supported you for over a decade and came out of this with nothing @taylorswift13 please say anything,” another pleaded.
Well, Ticketmaster might have incurred the wrath of Swifties, but that’s not the mega-corp’s only problem.
According to a new report from TMZ, the company is the subject of a federal investigation into allegations of corrupt business practices, including violations of anti-trust statutes.
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the official Ticketmaster account tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
We’ll have further updates on this developing story as more information becomes available.
In the meantime, best of luck to all Swifties who still looking to score tix!
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