These past few years have been groundbreaking for the music industry in many ways. For one, on-demand streaming of music provides listening access to all within reach of technology. Equally as significant, the massive surge of young women gaining quick recognition in the music industry. Historically, the music industry has been male dominated, but lately, the capabilities of women are finally being recognized. Women have been sweeping the Grammys and gaining fans of all ages. Artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Billie Eilish and so many more young women in their early 20s have recently risen to fame, and are already headlining at venues like Madison Square Garden in New York City or the Kia Forum in California. Though with massive success, comes an enormous amount of people, especially young girls, trying to see you live.
When announcing a tour and selling tickets, most artists turn to Ticketmaster. That’s because most venues have deals with Ticketmaster, or are operated by Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. Venues like to use Ticketmaster to sell their seats because it turns a profit for them by selling tickets with service fees. That means that the original price of the ticket will be increased due to the fees from the venues, and money will be sent back to them. This powerful ticketing company has faced huge backlash over the years due to their poor management and disorganization. The way Ticketmaster manages ticket sales is through a process called “Artist Presales.” This is the sale of the tickets at a face value price, before the general public can reach them. Face value tickets are the original cost set by the artist, which is meant to be the price the seat is worth. For example, tickets for the farthest and highest rows are not priced as high as VIP seats or seats closer to the stage. The pre-sales are meant to create a space for real fans to buy face value tickets before scalpers get their hands on them, and without fears of being scammed. There is also a process involved in these pre-sales that is meant to identify real humans and expel the bots. Scalpers are people who buy tickets at the original price, and sell them for more. This occurrence has only increased in the 21st century, with the online ticket websites being the location where tickets are sold. When an artist announces an upcoming tour or show, they also announce when the presale is occurring and how to sign up for your preferred dates. Then the day of the presale, Ticketmaster sends you a code that you will put to enter the presale waiting room. This code gives select fans the ability to buy tickets before the general public.
Unfortunately, this process is not always as fantastic as it may seem. For example, when Taylor Swift announced the Eras Tour in November of 2022, too many people signed up as “verified fans” for the presale. The Eras Tour tour was record breaking, with Swift playing over 150 shows, bringing an economic boost to the cities she visited, and eventually becoming the highest grossing tour of all time, with $2 billion in ticket sales. Fans were itching to get their hands on tickets, because it was Swift’s first tour back from COVID and in 5-6 years. Therefore, on November 15th, 2022, there were 20 million people vying for tickets to see Taylor Swift in any of her 50+ shows of the first leg of the tour during the presale.
That massive amount of activity on their website caused it to crash and glitch for hundreds of fans. Not to mention the hours fans were spending in the Ticketmaster waiting room with thousands of people ahead of them in line. Many fans posted about their struggles with the ticketing company and explained their stories on the news. The main reason fans were upset was because there were so many bots and scalpers who signed up as verified fans for the sole purpose of buying tickets and selling them for outrageous prices – the most expensive ones reselling for 32,000 dollars (which could buy you a Hyundai Sonata and leave you money to spare). Fans were also upset because of the amount of time it would take them to enter the seating map after being in the waiting room for hours, just to see that all the tickets were sold out or to see that the only options left were nosebleeds.
Ticketmaster responded and said that the site was overwhelmed on the day of the sale due to fans who showed up without a code and “staggering number of bot attacks”. Ticketmaster sold 2 million tickets during sale on Nov. 15, which broke the Ticketmaster record for the most tickets sold for an artist in a single day. This affair even caused the Justice Department to open an investigation into Live Nation, to determine whether they abuse their power in the music industry. As well as many fans suing Ticketmaster. Politician David Cicilline from Rhode Island responded to the reactions from the “Swifties” on twitter by saying, “Ticketmasters excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s Taylor Swift tickets, and are symptoms of a larger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly.” Many Taylor Swift fans are upset to this day that Ticketmaster was not more prepared to handle the high demand of Swift’s tour, and many wonder if it will only get harder to buy tickets over time.
I have had my fair share of ticketmaster presales and they usually do not workout in my favor. That is because it is a complete gamble. It doesn’t matter how early before the presale you have the website open, or how quickly you can press “join the waiting room”. If you join the presale when it begins, your spot in line is completely random. This is an image of my spot in line during the Gracie Abrams Secret of US Deluxe tour presale. I did not get tickets for that tour, due to my spot in line. The only time I’ve gotten a good spot in line is during the presale for Sabrina Carpenter, in which I was number 900. That meant that it only took me around 5 minutes to enter the seat map with many seating options. Though most of the other times I’ve attempted buying tickets from presales, I’ve gotten numbers as high as 22,000, leaving me with no hope. I have noticed that less than ten minutes into the presale, there are already many tickets being sold for more than the original price on resale websites. That is because many scalpers join the presale, for the purpose of selling tickets for more money. That creates a disadvantage for the real fans who are buying tickets because these scalpers buying to sell are in front of them, selling out the available seats. For these reasons, fans have figured out many other ways to secure tickets for an upcoming concert.
The first possibility is to buy from a resale website, a great option for buying tickets without the rush of the presale process and the upsets of Ticketmaster. There are countless different resale websites, but some of the most prominent include StubHub, SeatGeek and Tick Pick. These websites are places where fans can buy and sell tickets. The downside is that these are also an outlet for scalpers who buy face value tickets during presales to sell them for hundreds of dollars more than the original price. It just depends on how much you are willing to spend on seeing your favorite artist live.
The second possibility is to buy from the box office, which has been a game changer for many people, including me. Every venue has a box office where tickets were sold everyday before online ticketing websites were formed. Now, the box office at most venues only sell tickets the day of the concert. For that reason, many desperate fans camp outside of the box office in the morning until they open, so they can be the first people to get their hands on tickets. Box office camping is a gamble. Sometimes they release tickets right when they open, and sometimes they don’t sell tickets until a few hours before the show. That is because most of the tickets the box office has are held for the artist that may have guests in the audience. Some venues keep other tickets for box office ticket sales as well. So sometimes you may be waiting from early morning to late afternoon, other times you can just show up right before the concert and they have tickets left. The benefit of this is that you can get face value tickets that are the set price of the artists, so you don’t have to buy seats that have been marked up on resale websites. I have used this method before when I was trying to get Gracie Abrams tickets at Radio City Music Hall in October, and it was the best decision. I got floor seats for the face value price of $100, while resale prices for the same seat were $500 and higher.
In conclusion, the way Ticketmaster organizes their ticket sales causes frustration among people trying to buy tickets. The presale process is time consuming and overall distressing. Therefore, as stated above, there are other ways of buying tickets that do not include wasting your time on pre-sales.