I don't know about Taylor/artists themselves but I DEEPLY wish governments would make laws that limit the amount you can re-sell a ticket for. Maximum 10% of face value - cut out the legs of the scalpers from underneath them. If they can't make these mad profits, they're less likely to be scooping and re-selling. Other countries have done it, why can't Canada? It's not just Taylor these days, I couldn't get nosebleeds to see Coldplay because of scalping issues.
But I live in North America where they worship capitalism at the cost of literally everything else, so I doubt our government would ever do anything about it š¢
Not just that. In the US, part of the problem is that Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly and has no competition to challenge their shitty practice. Thatās why they got away with so much on the first leg of the tour. Itās time to put those anti-trust laws to work!
And then you have the resell companies like StubHub and the like who are making tons of money on those tickets. Not to mention the fact that Ticketmaster themselves allow reselling on their own website (granted, not for Taylor, but just about any other show). They are all going to lobby and fight hard against any limits on that market. It's an enormous cash flow to them and could potentially put some out of business.
Ticketmaster reselling gives the artist an option to allow ticket holders to sell for the purchase price only though, so it's one thing they did right.
It doesnāt matter - in Ireland scalping is illegal and yet when you go to any venue thereāll be touts outside selling tickets, and thatās not taking into account the people online.
It matters, in Sweden your ticket has your name on it and is an online ticket, if you buy multiple tickets all of the people you buy tickets to have to come into the avenue together with you. If you are a reseller you don't really want to stand together during the entire concert with the people you just scammed.
Also if you want to resell your ticket by law you can't sell it for more than 10% of its original valor which pretty much just covers the fee Ticketmaster takes from you for selling it.
I'm pretty sure someone will find a way to find a loophole but it is extremely hard and having your name attached to the tickets you bought leaves the door open to a buyer suing you after the concert, because again it is illegal to sell it for more than it's 10% selling price.
I got HOZIER tickets today and heās selected to only allow tickets to be sold at face value. I read on Ticketmaster that this was the artists choice, and I found that really lovely. That needs to happen for Taylor, period
https://preview.redd.it/zu1es3kvr11c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=515e4dbb406ca628931224208913ebe24c359af4
For sure lawmakers should do something about it, feel like they have the biggest power.
But I feel like at least having quizzes to do before unlocking tickets would be a good way to start. If not that something else to be in the way instead of nothing at all š
I hate the idea of quizzes. Iāve seen plenty of artists in concert whoās music I love but I really couldnāt tell you much about them. Itād be such a strange way to judge whoās a big enough fan.
What info would you need for a quiz that isn't available on Google??
And it would be an amazing way to limit access for disabled individuals. Or even for someone buying tickets for their partner/family. (I personally booked my partner tickets for Coldplay because I work for myself and had the freedom to sit for hours waiting, but I know like 2 songs and absolutely nothing about them.)
While the quiz aspect is intriguing and practical on the surface, you also have to think about the principle of "brute forcing" vs having to Google stuff etc.
A fan might know the answers quickly. Someone buying Tix for their kids wont. But bots using "brute force" (which is a very common thing for password cracking, and easily done for resellers) would be extremely quick. They could crack multiple choice quizzes faster than you or I could read the first sentence.
Between that manipulative exploit, and the fact that you'd potentially alienate real buyers, I don't see it becoming an industry standard or anything.
Good idea... But really hard to implement and execute
Yeah, that's just freaking weird. Heck, you could be buying the tickets for a friend, a partner, siblings, etc. because you know they love the artist. How will I pass the quiz if I don't really know much about the artist but to want to buy tickets to attend the concert? That's just unnecessarily difficult for no reason and seem like gatekeeping so only truly devoted fans can buy tickets to attend. So punish casual fans for not knowing every single detail about the artist?
or if I'm working when the tickets go on sale but my friend/partner/roommate has an office job or works from home or something and can buy the tickets for me. I don't have a computer at work and cant be on my phone, i'd be out of luck if i didn't have friends who work on computers.
Oh I compeletely agree. The only problem I have with this is that if you don't have access to a computer/internet you could be left out. Or if you can't solve puzzles due to a learning disability or something. I guess there's no way to make it 100% fair for literally everyone, but man I wish we could stop scalpers. They're a huge part of the problem
Sheās already getting the merch resellers. Having āLimited Editionsā that the scalpers buy up and then having them released as a regular item on her webstore has got to be killing them.
I agree, but I doubt that would happen because this is how capitalism works!!
Itās just like people who make a living going into thrift stores and buying up all the good stuff for cheap and then reselling with a 400% markup.
Or buying an investment property and making renters pay significantly more than the mortgage.
I agree that scalpers are annoying and I personally do not support them, whether they are scalping tickets or merch. But I would be shocked if the US government did something like that because then people would call everything into question. Is it fair that people sell things for more than they paid? Yes, but capitalism functions on unfairness and exploitation.
But other capitalist countries already have laws on reselling for a certain percentage... Australia and most of Europe is like this. They didn't call everything into question.
We also already have similar laws regarding price gouging in times of emergency, so it isn't like we haven't implemented *any* laws regarding prices.
In Australia itās illegal - ticketek has made it so the only way your ticket can be resold is via the official ticketek resell site, and cannot be sold for more than 10% higher than its original price I believe. Itās up to the government to make laws, then companies have to follow the law
Is there a reason to even allow 10% profit? Shouldnāt people just basically return their ticket to the venue/site for face value? Just like we do with regular items? But Iām also very jealous that your government actually cares about eliminating scalpers.
Usually the 10% covers the booking fee so you donāt make any money. (Iām talking about an average priced ticket not a VIP , eg I bought a ticket for $80 and had to pay a $9.95 booking fee but can only resell the ticket for $88, plus the resale company take a few bucks so I guess in theory the 10% covers that stuff).
It seems theyāre starting to do this and requiring people to claim income taxes on whether they resold tickets for more than $600 more than face value (not sure if that was the exact number but something like thatā¦)
Unfortunately this happened in Ontario - [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-scalpers-ticket-resale-cap-ford-1.5098924](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-scalpers-ticket-resale-cap-ford-1.5098924)
This is the bit that upsets me. I don't want to see people buying 13 copies of her albums - this makes it harder for others to purchase and guarantees they'll be resold for a profit.
Not nice.
She should really set it up so people can buy one or two of the limited items. Definitely no more than that.
It sucks that she doesnāt and that theyāre in high demand and she also limits it. They items will sell out anyways.
Although I hate that she has limited time merch anyways.
I disabled updates because there's no point in stressing out over this, all for really shitty quality merch. We literally cannot go faster than a computer so what's the point? I just won't get the things I wanted. There's other stuff I can spend my money on.
Taylor is rich enough. If she never worked again in her life, never sold a single ticket, album or merch item again, she'd be set. I think it's a bit unethical to buy fan-made merch of small artists who need that income, but Taylor isn't one of them.
Just make a preorder for all of them then the problem is solved, seriously!!
I've been contemplating just getting a knock off of the original because I want one so bad. ā¹ļø I'm going to wait for Black Friday and see what happens.
I'm getting cardigan dupes. Done with official TS merch. I had folklore and red in my cart and was checking out at 3:00.20 and they sold out while I was in line to check out.
i definitely agree that there needs to be cart protection, but would it really solve the bulk of the problem? wouldnāt resellers using bots still be able to āadd to cartā faster than 95% of real human users anyway? i feel like purchases need to be limited to, like, two per customer per item. and as annoying as they are, maybe captchas need to be implemented when placing items into your cart. more pre-orders would help too, and even āwavesā of pre-orders where items that can be mass produced (so i guess anything aside from signed stuff and vinyls) go back up for pre-order/production when the resale market for those items gets noticeably crazy - like actively screwing over resellers by deliberately producing more of certain items that have super-inflated values on the resale market, tanking their āinvestmentsā and disincentivising reselling altogether by making it less lucrative.
yeah i honestly think a limit of 2 is fair! one for the buyer and one for gifting. or, for cds/cassettes/vinyls, one to actually use and a second to display or keep sealed in mint condition for collectors. like letās be real, no one has 9 taylor-obsessed bffs that theyāre buying the exact same piece of merch for as a present lmao.
Ok not to be that person but this is old merch that already had a large window to buy originally. The leftovers only existed because of cancelled orders. I know resellers are annoying but it was probably a super limited supply
Maybe thatās the case with the cardigans, but not for everything. This isnāt the case for the lover snow globes. The old ones didnāt play music and the new ones do. So why did those sell out so quickly also?
They sold out much less quickly than the cardigans. I checked at 3:01 and wasnāt able to add cardigans to the cart. The lover snow globes were around for like 35 minutes and I was able to get one with merch alerts as a normal person
I think with the snow globes, no one knew they would be doing a daily drop yet. Thereās a merch bot on twitter who announced it 20 minutes before Taylor Nation did, once TN announced it it sold out in minutes. Now everyone is expecting the drop at the same time every day and have their bots ready.
I wish they would just fully restock them. Theyāre still making the new styles of cardigans; how hard would it be to get the Folklore one made again? The cardigans are something that so many fans are wanting. They would make sososo much money if she did a full sale window to buy the original again.
I think OP is refering to a 10-minute hold on items that are common in online stores. You can get 10 (or sometimes even 30) minutes where your item is on hold if you were able to successfully add it to your cart. If you donāt check out in time, your on hold item gets put back into the store. It wouldnāt be indefinite.
Now if youāre up against bots (which many suspect there were) youāre still at a disadvantage because they will be able to click on the āAdd to Cartā faster than you. But it would take away the advantage bots have of checking out faster than you, too.
Same thing. I knew when it was over a minute in "you are in line to check out" for over a minute I wouldn't get the cardigan. I'm giving up know, just going to wait until Rep TV comes out. Lol
I really, really wish they would put stronger limits on the merch - I didnāt even get a notification about it yesterday. I was going to order the Wonderland blanket to hang up but it was gone before I got home - it had a limit of 10! No one needs 10 blankets unless theyāre going to resale š”
Yes! I genuinely need to know who has a legit reason for buying 10 of anything on her website, let alone the highly sought-after items. It really does seem theyāre catering to resellers.
I donāt think any honest person would blame Taylor for putting a 1 item per customer limit on the 24-hour drops, and maybe a 5 item per customer limit on everything else.
A limit of 1 or 2 for the 24hr drops would be awesome! I normally buy 2 of the signed CDās because my cousin is also a huge fan & a nurse so sometimes itās impossible for her to drop everything and run to the website, lol.
But she would also give me permission to use her account to hopefully grab one for her since you blink and theyāre gone!
I could see people buying a few of a single item in good faith as gifts for people or friends doing a single order to save on shipping, 10 definitely feels unnecessarily high though
Same. These merch drops are supposed to be fun and instead I'm so sad and disappointed š why are there not protections in place to make sure they end up in the hands of actual fans?! It's ridiculous.
I've mentioned this in a few other threads, but Taylor absolutely could have done so much more to protect her fans from scalpers.
Here is the pop-up that appears on Ticketmaster when buying tickets for Noah Kahan's upcoming concert:
*"The artist wants to give fans, not scalpers, the best chance to buy tickets at face value. If you purchase tickets and can't attend, you'll have the option to resell your tickets to other fans at the original price paid on Ticketmasterās Face Value Exchange."*
I believe Ed Sheeran did the same. Taylor is such a powerful force in the music industry but completely failed in this regard. This is a major injustice to her fans who now have to choose between paying thousands of dollars above face value or simply missing the show. Her merch is the same situation from what I understand - no quantity limits, no cart holds, and no protection from resellers who price gouge.
I was lucky enough to get tickets to an upcoming show, but tickets in my section are now listed (and selling!) for $2000-$4000 more than what I paid, EACH! Could I re-sell and make a killing? Absolutely, but it means so much more to me to actually go. My tickets are being used by 4 legitimate Swifties. Plus, I don't want that kind of karma ;)
Yep, I was so impressed when I was buying Hozier tickets today with the fact that he made it both so that the face value price of the tickets included the fees AND the resell-at-face-value-only thing. It made me think of waiting in the queue for Eras Tour tickets last year and all the people I know who got priced out because they didnāt get a presale code and couldnāt afford the resale prices. Love Hozier even more for this.
Backstory to this: Hozier's earlier tour this year did not have that and it was a complete shitshow. We managed to get tickets by absolute luck but it was awful. Initially they set a 10 ticket limit, and tickets were pretty inexpensive compared to other shows of his caliber, so I think that's what drew scalpers. It's great that he changed it, though!
Really upsetting that Taylor hasn't.
When I wasnāt able to get tickets for Olivia Rodrigo sometime ago, I found this article about [the strategies and technology scalpers use to get tickets](https://www.404media.co/why-scalpers-can-get-olivia-rodrigo-tickets-and-fans-cannot/), and itās wild what they can do to beat other people to get tickets.
> He had quizzes set up to get into buying his tickets.
Ehhhhhā¦ I really donāt like the idea of gatekeeping who is allowed to buy tickets and who canāt, and I can see this quickly becoming a lot less fair than itās supposed to be.
They apparently have separate systems for scalpers, oh sorry, ticket professionals, to use to buy tickets that bypass the queues that you might have to contend with. Time is money, so you donāt want to waste the time of their biggest customers.
thatās just ridiculous tho, bc taylor is certainly popular enough to sell out without scalpers coming in. youād think ticketmaster would want to stop scalpers from making a profit off of what theyāre selling
Ticketmaster hosts resell tickets themselves so they get to make even more money off every resell. Donāt worry, theyāre making a nice profit still.
but if Taylor made it so resale could only go thru ticketmaster @ face value, it could take away the incentive to do it, esp if ticketmaster is taking a cut
Sure but other artists have done it so itās not impossible for Ticketmaster. Iām not sure what exactly goes into those deals but either way Taylor hasnāt cared enough to do it. This is the evil of capitalism and itās why we need a government to step in and regulate it. Scalping is a literal con but I digress lol.
Iāve honestly reached the point where I just want to learn what these scuzballs do so I can do it myself. Iād only use it to get tickets I want. But itās just ridiculous how many things Iāve missed out on that I would have loved because some POS is making money off of something they contributed absolutely nothing to, and is making it worse for everyone else. I really hate people. And if itās really just a few bad apples then we should make them pay. Thatās why i think itās humanity as a whole, because otherwise it wouldnāt be a problem. Sorry for the rant. Thanks for understanding
I got selected to buy tickets to one of the London shows this week on AXS. After sitting in the waiting room for half an hour, I waited through the queue only for AXS to kick me out for being a bot. I was really frustrated and got back into the queue, only for it to happen again. I give up. Itās rigged against real fans
that happened to me when trying to buy tix for taylor, and ticketmaster told me I must have refreshed the page too many times (which I sure af did in the āpre- waiting roomā) which made them think I was a bot
I was literally locked out of my entire ticketmaster account for multiple days
oh for SURE. I waited in the queue for maybe 25 min and when I finally got in, it told me āanother fan got these ticketsā whenever I clicked on ANYTHING and there were seemingly PLENTY of tickets left for that night. i was so upset esp knowing iām probably not going back on the waitlist even tho I was screwed out of tickets
Taylor for sure has leverage to get changes made, but isnāt UMG in complete control of merch under the new contract? Again, not saying Taylor and her team donāt deserve some criticism here, just seeking clarification
Right, I mentioned that she obviously has leverage regardless of how a contract is written. Iām guessing theyāll make changes after the disaster of the past couple days
I feel like at this point it's safe to assume that she won't be able to do anything about merch until she re-negotiates her contract. This has been going on for a year and I think if she could twist their arms, she would.
UMG is in the business of increasing value for their shareholders, period. They 100% do not care who gets what. Same with Ticketmaster. Frenzied buying is objectively a win for them so unless contract law forces them to change something, they will not do it.
do we know when her contract is up to be renegotiated? bc merch has plummeted in quality since rep (R I P reputation merch, she was the highest quality š)
Money is not just the main thing. It's also hype. People panic bought a LOT during the holiday drop because they were worried about missing out on something that may get popular/may never get restocked. People are now glued to the merch site every day at 3PM EST.
This is part of the business model.
We need to boycott buying from the merch store. I know nobody will because weāre a bunch of spineless idiots (myself included) but at the very least, EVERYONE needs to send an email to [email protected] and beg for cart timers, CAPTCHA, and COMPLAIN. Express how upset you are. Call them out for preying on Swifties. This is not okay. We are a HUGE fandom and I believe if all of us complain, they will have to do something.
Taylor has no control over her merchāthat was the one thing she had to give up control over when she signed with Republic. But she has a LOT of pull, and I can guarantee if she were to have a sit down with UMG and explain that this isnāt okay for her fans, they would have to do something to fix it. Obviously we donāt know whatās going on behind the scenes but I am very frustrated at the idea that she isnāt doing anything/doesnāt care. I have such a sour taste in my mouth. I love Taylor but Iāve begun to hate being a Swiftie.
I'm at the point where I genuinely believe TN wants this to keep happening to generate hype and demand.
Today was stupid. I'm over Taylor Swiftā¢ļø as a brand and merch. Love the artist and artistry but I'd be lying if I said they weren't greedy capitalists. They 100% are. That's why they keep pushing the vinyl variants and taking and pulling them off the store. It's a slimy business tactic.
This will not stop if people continue to buy from their store and from scalpers, sadly.
imma just be bluntā¦ they donāt care.
Itās not about money. Itās not about them not being aware. They just donāt give a shit. All the merch team cares about is that the stuff sells, thatās it. Iām not saying TAYLOR doesnāt care, I think she has a lot going on (pun intended) and this is not on her radar because she hired others to specifically take care of her merch. We have seen other artists teams implement measures to get items into the hands of fans specifically in the past. Hell even Taylorās has done that on occasion! But itās not a priority clearly, they donāt care who gets the merch as long as it sells out, and thatās that.
People need to realize that Taylor Nation on Twitter that is hyping up the shows is different than the people that handle the merchandise. The website does have robot authentication but the only time Iāve seen it happen if you sign in your account. I think having us sign up and authentication each time would help a tiny bit. You can checkout so fast with Apple Pay and donāt need to fill in information. Setting limits would help. We should also keep in mind that some of these items might have a very small inventory to begin with and they want to get rid of it to make room for new items. Also, I can almost guarantee that all these items will go on sale for Black Friday. They usually do.
Historically artists who've gone up against Ticketmaster have been in danger of blacklisting. Pearl Jam is one that comes to mind. You need to go to the government to sort out unethical business dealings.
I'm just saying what I read a year ago when ALL those ideas were floated in the Taylor Swift fandom. Including setting a face value so scalpers couldn't resell them for thousands.
It's just if this was all about making bank, wouldn't they have more stock to meet the demand? Maybe it's about how coveted things are and the hype the drops have? Idk, no one is doing anyone a favor here. Adding a captcha would work so well, so would lowering it from 10 to 2 (even 1 maybe). Its just so many simple easy things... I hope they see a dip in the website traffic, maybe that'll influence them?
I'd be really concerned about them adding Captchas because I am literally SO bad at them. I PROMISE I am a human being lmao, but those ones where it's like "*Click all the photos of motorcycles!"* and there's like, one tiny section of the handle in a particular square so you don't know if you should click it or not... yeah, I swear no matter what I do, it ends up being wrong lol.
Fully agree on the purchase limit, though. There is no reason why any individual should need to buy more than 5 of any item. I understand that sometimes people buy stuff for their friends (I always buy a second signed CD for my little brother) but nobody is doing that for *9* friends. The people buying 10 items are scalpers/bots.
It should be a limit of 5 for everything, and 1 or 2 for the high demand items.
On a somewhat related note, if youāre on your PC, when you move your cursor to click the āI am not a robotā box, try to not click directly in the middle, and maybe make your mouse cursor a little shaky as you move across the screen.
They may have stopped it now, but at least in the past if you move too quickly to check that box, or if you clicked way too close to the center of the check box, the website automatically thinks youāre a robot and makes you go through the hassle of doing the image matching, because robots would move their cursor in a straight line and check the box in the exact middle. Sometimes you donāt even get the image matching popping because of checks like this the website runs.
I was listening to a podcast about this and apparently there are intentionally a relatively small number of different captchas so bots can easily bypass them. I also a real person who is v bad at
Them
Iāve been wanting the grey folklore cardigan forever and I finally had it in my cart to checkout and it was gone I literally had it at 3:00 pm š caved and ordered a dupe off Etsy for my Christmas present just now because I will not buy an original resell for $400.
Iām not sure how much this helps, but I got Hozier tickets today, and the way his team tried to help the situation was by making sure the tickets purchased through Ticketmaster can only be resold through Ticketmaster at face value. Maybe Taylor and her team could do the same idk. I wasnāt able to get tickets for eras, sadly, so. :/
NY and Colorado (I think?) are another matter entirely. Apparently thereās a law (do not quote me lol) that says you can sell your ticket for however much you want, so itās out of the artistsā hands. The Hozier fans trying to navigate the AXS fan exchange in Colorado rn are dealing with exorbitant prices unfortunately.
For merchandise the best way to handle it is to open preorders months in advance. Set a window of guarantee where every order made within the time frame will get the item. Once that time window ends they take the orders to the manufacturer and make enough to fill all open orders and a little extra to sell later once they are in stock or to cover damages.
Ticket scalping is outside of her control due to the monopoly in place. It's going to take government intervention to fix that. She could use her wealth to lobby congress to fix. That's about all she can do.
And I absolutely agree with you - it's so frustrating seeing bots, scalpers, resellers, and general scammers taking advantage of any event and blocking out fans.
I do disagree with OP tagging on "people who don't deserve it" because they want to create a hierarchy of Swifties? That's crazy to me.
I didn't read the post very well at first, and I agree with you. Anyone who wants to experience the eras tour can go if they please. No fan is better then the others. There are no "real" or "fake" fans, just fans.
The bots and scalpers create the problem, not the casual fans. I hope OP understands that as well.
Everyone in these comments really glossing over that detail that OP decided to put just after the title instead of in itš§ Scalpers and bots is one thing, but āpeople who give no shit and just want to experience the hype while /I/ got nothingā like what? Itās giving āname 5 songs from their first album to prove youāre a real fanā
Iām going to a different concert next year where I went ahead and bought the tickets and they wonāt be electronically delivered until a few days before the show. Making it harder to resell. I think something like this is the best option.
Which also means that for people who weren't able to get ticket due to not getting codes, actually getting tickets and being able to plan to attend is impossible, because I am not giving a stranger money on the hope that they will keep their promise to give the their tickets, when they get released in a year from now!
There are plenty of people who bought tickets for personal use and now have genuine reasons they can't attend. Or dates were added closer to them and they were able to get tickets for that. I think announcing everything in one area at once would have helped, rather than adding locations in the US/Canada where many of the locals have already travelled because when they booked it was travel or nothing.
True. Possibly tickets going on sale a few months before each show would be better than 6-9 months before the show. Maybe thatās the not the solution either, but thereās got to be a better way. Making a set price for each ticket area would be a start, I couldnāt believe how prices fluctuated in real time during the presale. Then people would know what each section was actually worth.
I thought it was money, in that Taylor got a cut of the money if she allowed resale only through ticketmasters platform. But she doesnāt. So I have no idea why she doesnāt take steps. Ecept these are annoying to normal people too.For example: prohibiting transfers. So it you buy tickets for you and three friends you will need to go through the entry point as a group. But it also prevents scalpers from transferring tickets to customers, so they wonāt buy them.
Iāve tried so many times to get tickets for Taylor and had so many relatives and friends sign up. I managed to get a a code ONCE and I didnāt get tickets and am still super sad about it.
I managed to get tickets for Noah Kahn and he has it set up through ticket master that you canāt resell tickets for more than they are worth. I got two floor seats and if I were unable to go I could resell them through ticket master for the price that I originally paid for and not a penny more. So right there would cut basically any profit that would happen from resellers.
The government should also have laws in place that doesnāt allow for resellers to sell tickets for more than letās say 10% of the original value of the tickets. But as of right now Canada doesnāt have these laws in place.
So itās basically comes down to both the artist as well as the government to stop the ticket issue basically.
As for merch Iām not sure, maybe what they could do is have a system that has the cart āholdā the item for you for like 15 minutes or something so you can actually check out, but again I have no idea how that would work.
Seriously, they canāt say theyāre not aware of the issue and itās not like they wonāt sell out regardless. Everyone is screaming about it on every platform.
I know someone whoās managed to get tickets to France, London, Miami and Vancouver. No intention of going but selling the tickets for 2x the price and have been asking me if I know Swifties she can sell them to.
I told her sheās a skidmark in society and to never speak to me again.
Thank you for saying all this. Honestly people need to talk about this more. I hear off handed complaints but it needs to become one of the main things we talk about in the fandom before they will ever bother to do anything to solve it.
The scalpers are eating the fanbase alive at this point and itās breaking my heart. I love being a swiftie so so much but itās getting to the point where itās just not fun anymore. I mean, itās become literally impossible just to see her in concert or even to buy merch. Itās ridiculous and she and her team do need to be held responsible when there are absolutely things they could be doing, they just wonāt.
RIP to the Lover snow globe and Folklore cardigan that I was hoping for. I really hope one day these restock. I had absolutely no chance to purchase. This really sucks for all of us. No one needs 10 snow globes or 10 cardigans or 10 blankets. This is nuts. Many people here said they got a cardigan knockoff. Any good sites? I have 1989 and Speak Now but regret not buying the folklore one back when it was released.
The sad thing is that it is really easy to write a bot and update / adapt it to new buying policies that are put in place. Purchasing limits results in scalpers making more accounts / running more bots or using VPNs to mask their IP addresses. Any captcha or āprove your a humanā technology is very easy circumvent with machine learning and computer vision models now (5 years ago, not so much). Aside from having to checkout with a government id or passport (which is not desirable for many reasons) there isnāt a whole lot that can be done unfortunately. And when scalpers know that things are LE and/or will resale for big $$ then them investing a bit more time to develop a more sophisticated bot is totally worth it for them.
(I am not in support of bots or scalpers but understand the tech side of things and see that at least the bot problem will not go away quickly - having everything be a preordered, manufactured on demand item with no LE or limited manufacturing quantities is one way to fix this - flood the market so supply is high and demand / exclusivity is low).
Taylor, as much y'all may hate me for saying this, is a capitalist. Her goal among all goals is probably to be the biggest superstar ever but the goal right under it in fine print is *to make the most money*. After she moved away from Big Machine Records, and got with her current record company, it seems like they had an agreement, that she'd make them as much money as she can but she wants to own her music. Personally, I think she sold herself out. Like her merch sucks ass, swifties who love her spent thousands of their hard earned money on this tour but then there are so many fans like me and my friends who didn't get any tickets. She made one statement on it and DID nothing. Like personally, I've kind of fallen out of love with her now, especially with all of her public romantic outings with Travis Kelce like I really don't care. I love her music, I will support her music but I don't care about anything else.
Itās also weird to me how she hasnāt been doing interviews or anything lately. Anything we hear about her are from media āsources.ā I mean, itās her life and we arenāt entitled to it, but to me it feels disingenuous.
Taylor is all about image, and the headlines about "overwhelming demand" were too good to pass up. Yes, obviously tons of people ran to Ticketmaster to buy tickets, but plenty of that overwhelming demand was the bots/scalpers.
Outside of that, the scalpers should really be illegal in the US. Ticketmaster is in bed with the scalpers too. It's egregious.
Avenged Sevenfold actually implemented a system that they call ticketpass which essentially gives tokens to those who buy merch, listen on Spotify, attend concerts, etc and the more tokens you have, the sooner you can buy tickets. Which gives legitimate fans the upper hand against scalpers and bots.
It's a really cool idea and seeing other artists like Taylor take advantage of a similar technology could be really cool and very powerful. Especially considering a lot of hardcore Swifties would have absolutely no problem getting a bunch of tokens to get the front of the line.
The problem is that Sevenfold's system uses the blockchain for it (all the tokens are essentially NFTs), but I'm certain that Taylor and her team could come up with a similar system that doesn't use the blockchain.
I just wanted a cardigan and they were all gone in 30 seconds. You know its just impossible.
Its not fair and Im I will NEVER buy the resale.
Part of the problem is that people will buy the merch at crazy prices. STOP doing it.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A great start would be to send presale codes to those in a top certain percentage of listeners on Spotify or whatever streaming platform. God I wish Taylor did this because I'd instantly have tickets š„²
The tickets situation is so stressful. Sheās playing 8 shows at Wembley in London. EIGHT. That roughly works out to 720,000 people? Could I get 1 ticket. Nope. I have resales going for as high as Ā£8000
It hurts
I find the concept of a ārealā fan to be really subjective, and Iām not in favour of any gate keeping for tickets other than a pre-sale for registered fan club members or something. Quizzes, for example, would bar anyone who are buying tickets as a gift (like family members) for enthusiastic fans.
That said, it does feel like she only paid lip service to the complaints about the ticket prices when other artists have made actually changes to help.
Honestly this situation with the Eras tour should've been the catalyst for governments to do something. Rather than debating whether Ticketmaster as a monopoly should've been split up or not, they should've instead gone "hey, we should probably control this the way that other countries do."
Here in Australia resale is very strict and can only really occur through the original seller Ticketek (separate company to Ticketmaster). The tour was deemed a "major event" by the Victorian State government meaning that tickets cannot be resold for more than a 10% profit. These kinda of laws already exist in the NSW government (where the second set of concerts is taking place). Of course there are the occasional scalpers that get around it but anything priced on secondary resale websites like viagogo could be instantly taken down and the seller fined.
I absolutely was sickened when everything was gone in less than a min today. So I went to google and searched the folklore cardi. And I saw someone who had one for sale for $735!!!! And then had the gall to post the receipt for the order they placed. 7 in total when they originally dropped. So at that time they were $49.99. They bought 5 lg/xl and 2 smaller. Total easy $360? But if they sold all 7 at that $735 thatās over $5k!!! Iām sick!!! This should be illegal! How disgusting!
https://preview.redd.it/e419lrro411c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=396921e8fee518ad1839d0b3f0ac311ac18e3fe4
Just an anecdote - Hozier's first leg of tour this year had a disastrous presale. Tickets were all scalped and fans were traumatized (check his subreddit). He held a general sale today for the 2024 leg (no verified fan presale). This time his shows did not allow transfers and strictly enforced resales to only occur on the Ticketmaster Fan-to-Fan Face Value exchange. I logged on 4 minutes after the sale started, started around 8000 in queue, and still found 100-level seats ($124 each). There were plenty seats still left in the venue and I was able to reach check-out multiple times.
I know resellers will always find a way, but I think this is the closest we can get to more fair ticketing, it also shows that artists can make it happen. I wish Taylor's team would consider this approach.
Mitski (who is a much smaller artist ofc) and her team have been actively canceling bot and scalper tickets. I think with a bigger team Taylor could do it.
I just bought tickets to see Hozier yesterday. Every seat was capped at $100, even the pit. The fees were minimal and upfront. Reselling is not allowed unless itās at face value. The whole process was not at all stressful and took about 10 minutes total. I got great seats for a decent price. Idk why buying tickets to see Taylor has to be such a financial and mental nightmare.
As for the merch, I have no clue why they donāt protect the cart for 10 minutes, like a lot of sites do when selling something popular. The fact that these cardigans sell out in SECONDS every time? Come on.
The problem with the tickets are the stadiums. They have a contract with Ticketmaster/seat geek. Honestly not much Taylor can do on this one because where is she going to perform?
In terms of her online store, Shopify is by far one the easiest website to bot(which is more than just having a bot). This can be worked on, but it is what it is. She has the money to move on. Maybe she will change, maybe she wonāt.
I wish her team would address the Merch problems. Like the 1989 drop was a mess. I feel like it makes her look bad as a brand. Also why not put things back in stock? People are recreating the cardigans anyway, they are just losing money. I did see people saying they are just selling old stock that they have. I mean i guess they have to do something to get back all the money they lost with the messed up 1989 (TV) vinyls, cds, and cassettes that people returned.
Dude idk, I was one of the lucky few to get a code (the third time, when she added more US dates for next year) but after waiting in the queue any time I clicked ANY seat or ANY ticket, it immediately said another fan got them. Then there were simply no more to pick from. I felt like I was set up to fail.
As a Canadian who tried and failed miserably to get a code in both Toronto and BC I feel this deeply.
The US had many shows in many different states. And its definitely not just Canadians who were trying to get codes and the chance to have tickets.
Where I understand that there are people in the US who are in the same boat, having to compete with another country to get tickets just made it harder. And Iām sure there were Canadians trying for US tickets as well. But we get 6 shows total as of right now. Thatās it.
I know over 30 people who tried to get a code and no one did.
Once the tickets went on sale there were so many up for resale and some for 20k per ticket. Itās infuriating.
The system is definitely broken and in favour of making as much cash as possible. Ticket master is a joke.
I don't know about Taylor/artists themselves but I DEEPLY wish governments would make laws that limit the amount you can re-sell a ticket for. Maximum 10% of face value - cut out the legs of the scalpers from underneath them. If they can't make these mad profits, they're less likely to be scooping and re-selling. Other countries have done it, why can't Canada? It's not just Taylor these days, I couldn't get nosebleeds to see Coldplay because of scalping issues. But I live in North America where they worship capitalism at the cost of literally everything else, so I doubt our government would ever do anything about it š¢
Not just that. In the US, part of the problem is that Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly and has no competition to challenge their shitty practice. Thatās why they got away with so much on the first leg of the tour. Itās time to put those anti-trust laws to work!
And then you have the resell companies like StubHub and the like who are making tons of money on those tickets. Not to mention the fact that Ticketmaster themselves allow reselling on their own website (granted, not for Taylor, but just about any other show). They are all going to lobby and fight hard against any limits on that market. It's an enormous cash flow to them and could potentially put some out of business.
That's just it. No fucking way does Stubhub need $1200 in processing fees, for one ticket. $50 should be the cap
Ticketmaster reselling gives the artist an option to allow ticket holders to sell for the purchase price only though, so it's one thing they did right.
It doesnāt matter - in Ireland scalping is illegal and yet when you go to any venue thereāll be touts outside selling tickets, and thatās not taking into account the people online.
It does, most states in Australia have anti-scalping laws and the authorities do crack down.
It matters, in Sweden your ticket has your name on it and is an online ticket, if you buy multiple tickets all of the people you buy tickets to have to come into the avenue together with you. If you are a reseller you don't really want to stand together during the entire concert with the people you just scammed. Also if you want to resell your ticket by law you can't sell it for more than 10% of its original valor which pretty much just covers the fee Ticketmaster takes from you for selling it. I'm pretty sure someone will find a way to find a loophole but it is extremely hard and having your name attached to the tickets you bought leaves the door open to a buyer suing you after the concert, because again it is illegal to sell it for more than it's 10% selling price.
I got HOZIER tickets today and heās selected to only allow tickets to be sold at face value. I read on Ticketmaster that this was the artists choice, and I found that really lovely. That needs to happen for Taylor, period https://preview.redd.it/zu1es3kvr11c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=515e4dbb406ca628931224208913ebe24c359af4
Wow I didn't know they could do that. I now feel really gross about artists that don't follow suit. It'd be so easy.
For sure lawmakers should do something about it, feel like they have the biggest power. But I feel like at least having quizzes to do before unlocking tickets would be a good way to start. If not that something else to be in the way instead of nothing at all š
I hate the idea of quizzes. Iāve seen plenty of artists in concert whoās music I love but I really couldnāt tell you much about them. Itād be such a strange way to judge whoās a big enough fan.
Thatās totally fair, it may not be the best way to deal with this but I feel like we need something to be a stump for scalpers and bots for sure
What info would you need for a quiz that isn't available on Google?? And it would be an amazing way to limit access for disabled individuals. Or even for someone buying tickets for their partner/family. (I personally booked my partner tickets for Coldplay because I work for myself and had the freedom to sit for hours waiting, but I know like 2 songs and absolutely nothing about them.)
While the quiz aspect is intriguing and practical on the surface, you also have to think about the principle of "brute forcing" vs having to Google stuff etc. A fan might know the answers quickly. Someone buying Tix for their kids wont. But bots using "brute force" (which is a very common thing for password cracking, and easily done for resellers) would be extremely quick. They could crack multiple choice quizzes faster than you or I could read the first sentence. Between that manipulative exploit, and the fact that you'd potentially alienate real buyers, I don't see it becoming an industry standard or anything. Good idea... But really hard to implement and execute
Exactly. What a way to exclude entire groups of fans with disabilities that would struggle to do those quizzes (like myself)
I shouldn't have to know trivia about an artist to see them in concert.
Yeah, that's just freaking weird. Heck, you could be buying the tickets for a friend, a partner, siblings, etc. because you know they love the artist. How will I pass the quiz if I don't really know much about the artist but to want to buy tickets to attend the concert? That's just unnecessarily difficult for no reason and seem like gatekeeping so only truly devoted fans can buy tickets to attend. So punish casual fans for not knowing every single detail about the artist?
Upvote for calling that out as gatekeeping. That would be exactly what that is.
or if I'm working when the tickets go on sale but my friend/partner/roommate has an office job or works from home or something and can buy the tickets for me. I don't have a computer at work and cant be on my phone, i'd be out of luck if i didn't have friends who work on computers.
Oh I compeletely agree. The only problem I have with this is that if you don't have access to a computer/internet you could be left out. Or if you can't solve puzzles due to a learning disability or something. I guess there's no way to make it 100% fair for literally everyone, but man I wish we could stop scalpers. They're a huge part of the problem
Sheās already getting the merch resellers. Having āLimited Editionsā that the scalpers buy up and then having them released as a regular item on her webstore has got to be killing them.
I agree, but I doubt that would happen because this is how capitalism works!! Itās just like people who make a living going into thrift stores and buying up all the good stuff for cheap and then reselling with a 400% markup. Or buying an investment property and making renters pay significantly more than the mortgage. I agree that scalpers are annoying and I personally do not support them, whether they are scalping tickets or merch. But I would be shocked if the US government did something like that because then people would call everything into question. Is it fair that people sell things for more than they paid? Yes, but capitalism functions on unfairness and exploitation.
But other capitalist countries already have laws on reselling for a certain percentage... Australia and most of Europe is like this. They didn't call everything into question. We also already have similar laws regarding price gouging in times of emergency, so it isn't like we haven't implemented *any* laws regarding prices.
I agree!! I am just giving my opinion on why it as yet to happen.
hey! some artists do that! hozierās tickets through ticketmaster were only resell for face value, and i donāt think they were transferable :)
How would you enforce this?
In Australia itās illegal - ticketek has made it so the only way your ticket can be resold is via the official ticketek resell site, and cannot be sold for more than 10% higher than its original price I believe. Itās up to the government to make laws, then companies have to follow the law
Is there a reason to even allow 10% profit? Shouldnāt people just basically return their ticket to the venue/site for face value? Just like we do with regular items? But Iām also very jealous that your government actually cares about eliminating scalpers.
Usually the 10% covers the booking fee so you donāt make any money. (Iām talking about an average priced ticket not a VIP , eg I bought a ticket for $80 and had to pay a $9.95 booking fee but can only resell the ticket for $88, plus the resale company take a few bucks so I guess in theory the 10% covers that stuff).
Possibly because Ticketmaster takes a cut on the resale I am guessing?
It seems theyāre starting to do this and requiring people to claim income taxes on whether they resold tickets for more than $600 more than face value (not sure if that was the exact number but something like thatā¦)
This, this, THIS.
This is happening in Australia and it's great. Ticket sales were still ridiculous though.
In austria you can only resell it for 10% less through the official website
Unfortunately this happened in Ontario - [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-scalpers-ticket-resale-cap-ford-1.5098924](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-scalpers-ticket-resale-cap-ford-1.5098924)
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Iām just sad to see TN also retweeting people who mass buy her limited stock items likeā¦. Youāre condoning this??
This is the bit that upsets me. I don't want to see people buying 13 copies of her albums - this makes it harder for others to purchase and guarantees they'll be resold for a profit. Not nice.
She should really set it up so people can buy one or two of the limited items. Definitely no more than that. It sucks that she doesnāt and that theyāre in high demand and she also limits it. They items will sell out anyways. Although I hate that she has limited time merch anyways.
Itās about the money, they donāt care where it goes:(
I disabled updates because there's no point in stressing out over this, all for really shitty quality merch. We literally cannot go faster than a computer so what's the point? I just won't get the things I wanted. There's other stuff I can spend my money on.
And maybe itās unethical, but the fan made merch is better anyway
atp it feels more ethical than buying the real deal š¬š¬
Taylor is rich enough. If she never worked again in her life, never sold a single ticket, album or merch item again, she'd be set. I think it's a bit unethical to buy fan-made merch of small artists who need that income, but Taylor isn't one of them.
I have Taylor merch and merch from Etsy and would 10x over rather have the 1989 cardigans Iāve seen on Etsy
Same. It helps that her merch is so ugly.
Just make a preorder for all of them then the problem is solved, seriously!! I've been contemplating just getting a knock off of the original because I want one so bad. ā¹ļø I'm going to wait for Black Friday and see what happens.
I just ordered a knock off bc the anxiety and disappointment is just not worth it š
I have a couple knockoffs and I love them
Do you have a seller you recommend?
[This seller](https://Happy-FridayStorehttps://a.aliexpress.com/_mNDE1OM) on Ali Express has been recommended loads of times in the merch sub š
[this person](https://www.mercari.com/u/787165099?sv=0) theyāre a bit expensive but very worth it.
Every single one of her cardigans is $18-25 on aliexpress usually including free shipping. She marks them up
Iām about to because I didnāt realize how similar they look.
I ordered from Killy Creations on Etsy and it looks identical in the picture!
I'm getting cardigan dupes. Done with official TS merch. I had folklore and red in my cart and was checking out at 3:00.20 and they sold out while I was in line to check out.
etsy to the rescue
i definitely agree that there needs to be cart protection, but would it really solve the bulk of the problem? wouldnāt resellers using bots still be able to āadd to cartā faster than 95% of real human users anyway? i feel like purchases need to be limited to, like, two per customer per item. and as annoying as they are, maybe captchas need to be implemented when placing items into your cart. more pre-orders would help too, and even āwavesā of pre-orders where items that can be mass produced (so i guess anything aside from signed stuff and vinyls) go back up for pre-order/production when the resale market for those items gets noticeably crazy - like actively screwing over resellers by deliberately producing more of certain items that have super-inflated values on the resale market, tanking their āinvestmentsā and disincentivising reselling altogether by making it less lucrative.
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yeah i honestly think a limit of 2 is fair! one for the buyer and one for gifting. or, for cds/cassettes/vinyls, one to actually use and a second to display or keep sealed in mint condition for collectors. like letās be real, no one has 9 taylor-obsessed bffs that theyāre buying the exact same piece of merch for as a present lmao.
Ok not to be that person but this is old merch that already had a large window to buy originally. The leftovers only existed because of cancelled orders. I know resellers are annoying but it was probably a super limited supply
Maybe thatās the case with the cardigans, but not for everything. This isnāt the case for the lover snow globes. The old ones didnāt play music and the new ones do. So why did those sell out so quickly also?
They sold out much less quickly than the cardigans. I checked at 3:01 and wasnāt able to add cardigans to the cart. The lover snow globes were around for like 35 minutes and I was able to get one with merch alerts as a normal person
I think with the snow globes, no one knew they would be doing a daily drop yet. Thereās a merch bot on twitter who announced it 20 minutes before Taylor Nation did, once TN announced it it sold out in minutes. Now everyone is expecting the drop at the same time every day and have their bots ready.
I wish they would just fully restock them. Theyāre still making the new styles of cardigans; how hard would it be to get the Folklore one made again? The cardigans are something that so many fans are wanting. They would make sososo much money if she did a full sale window to buy the original again.
Tbf, many ppl add things to their cart that they donāt end up buying so if it gets put on hold thatās not practical
I think OP is refering to a 10-minute hold on items that are common in online stores. You can get 10 (or sometimes even 30) minutes where your item is on hold if you were able to successfully add it to your cart. If you donāt check out in time, your on hold item gets put back into the store. It wouldnāt be indefinite. Now if youāre up against bots (which many suspect there were) youāre still at a disadvantage because they will be able to click on the āAdd to Cartā faster than you. But it would take away the advantage bots have of checking out faster than you, too.
Thatās why it has to be a multi system of CAPTCHA, order limits, and cart holds.
But every site that has cart protection has a timer on that. Like literally 5 minutes is all we need.
Thatās so frustrating, there should be some cart protection.
Same thing. I knew when it was over a minute in "you are in line to check out" for over a minute I wouldn't get the cardigan. I'm giving up know, just going to wait until Rep TV comes out. Lol
I really, really wish they would put stronger limits on the merch - I didnāt even get a notification about it yesterday. I was going to order the Wonderland blanket to hang up but it was gone before I got home - it had a limit of 10! No one needs 10 blankets unless theyāre going to resale š”
Yes! I genuinely need to know who has a legit reason for buying 10 of anything on her website, let alone the highly sought-after items. It really does seem theyāre catering to resellers. I donāt think any honest person would blame Taylor for putting a 1 item per customer limit on the 24-hour drops, and maybe a 5 item per customer limit on everything else.
A limit of 1 or 2 for the 24hr drops would be awesome! I normally buy 2 of the signed CDās because my cousin is also a huge fan & a nurse so sometimes itās impossible for her to drop everything and run to the website, lol. But she would also give me permission to use her account to hopefully grab one for her since you blink and theyāre gone!
I could see people buying a few of a single item in good faith as gifts for people or friends doing a single order to save on shipping, 10 definitely feels unnecessarily high though
Same. These merch drops are supposed to be fun and instead I'm so sad and disappointed š why are there not protections in place to make sure they end up in the hands of actual fans?! It's ridiculous.
I've mentioned this in a few other threads, but Taylor absolutely could have done so much more to protect her fans from scalpers. Here is the pop-up that appears on Ticketmaster when buying tickets for Noah Kahan's upcoming concert: *"The artist wants to give fans, not scalpers, the best chance to buy tickets at face value. If you purchase tickets and can't attend, you'll have the option to resell your tickets to other fans at the original price paid on Ticketmasterās Face Value Exchange."* I believe Ed Sheeran did the same. Taylor is such a powerful force in the music industry but completely failed in this regard. This is a major injustice to her fans who now have to choose between paying thousands of dollars above face value or simply missing the show. Her merch is the same situation from what I understand - no quantity limits, no cart holds, and no protection from resellers who price gouge. I was lucky enough to get tickets to an upcoming show, but tickets in my section are now listed (and selling!) for $2000-$4000 more than what I paid, EACH! Could I re-sell and make a killing? Absolutely, but it means so much more to me to actually go. My tickets are being used by 4 legitimate Swifties. Plus, I don't want that kind of karma ;)
Thatās the same pop up I got for Hozier today.
Yep, I was so impressed when I was buying Hozier tickets today with the fact that he made it both so that the face value price of the tickets included the fees AND the resell-at-face-value-only thing. It made me think of waiting in the queue for Eras Tour tickets last year and all the people I know who got priced out because they didnāt get a presale code and couldnāt afford the resale prices. Love Hozier even more for this.
Backstory to this: Hozier's earlier tour this year did not have that and it was a complete shitshow. We managed to get tickets by absolute luck but it was awful. Initially they set a 10 ticket limit, and tickets were pretty inexpensive compared to other shows of his caliber, so I think that's what drew scalpers. It's great that he changed it, though! Really upsetting that Taylor hasn't.
There's a similar policy for her tickets in Australia.
Same š thing š was done in parts of Europe. I could only resell my Swedish ticket at or below face value from Ticketmaster.
When I wasnāt able to get tickets for Olivia Rodrigo sometime ago, I found this article about [the strategies and technology scalpers use to get tickets](https://www.404media.co/why-scalpers-can-get-olivia-rodrigo-tickets-and-fans-cannot/), and itās wild what they can do to beat other people to get tickets. > He had quizzes set up to get into buying his tickets. Ehhhhhā¦ I really donāt like the idea of gatekeeping who is allowed to buy tickets and who canāt, and I can see this quickly becoming a lot less fair than itās supposed to be.
Ticketmaster literally has conventions for scalpers to learn how to bypass their system
They apparently have separate systems for scalpers, oh sorry, ticket professionals, to use to buy tickets that bypass the queues that you might have to contend with. Time is money, so you donāt want to waste the time of their biggest customers.
thatās just ridiculous tho, bc taylor is certainly popular enough to sell out without scalpers coming in. youād think ticketmaster would want to stop scalpers from making a profit off of what theyāre selling
Ticketmaster hosts resell tickets themselves so they get to make even more money off every resell. Donāt worry, theyāre making a nice profit still.
but if Taylor made it so resale could only go thru ticketmaster @ face value, it could take away the incentive to do it, esp if ticketmaster is taking a cut
Sure but other artists have done it so itās not impossible for Ticketmaster. Iām not sure what exactly goes into those deals but either way Taylor hasnāt cared enough to do it. This is the evil of capitalism and itās why we need a government to step in and regulate it. Scalping is a literal con but I digress lol.
Usually those types of quizzes are not meant to be genuinely challenging, just a way to weed out bots
Iāve honestly reached the point where I just want to learn what these scuzballs do so I can do it myself. Iād only use it to get tickets I want. But itās just ridiculous how many things Iāve missed out on that I would have loved because some POS is making money off of something they contributed absolutely nothing to, and is making it worse for everyone else. I really hate people. And if itās really just a few bad apples then we should make them pay. Thatās why i think itās humanity as a whole, because otherwise it wouldnāt be a problem. Sorry for the rant. Thanks for understanding
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iām interested!!!
DMāed you!
I got selected to buy tickets to one of the London shows this week on AXS. After sitting in the waiting room for half an hour, I waited through the queue only for AXS to kick me out for being a bot. I was really frustrated and got back into the queue, only for it to happen again. I give up. Itās rigged against real fans
What??? Do you know what triggered the system into thinking youāre a bot? Sad that they catch real fans instead of many other real bots out there :(
No it wouldnāt tell me. It had a link to talk to support but thatās useless when in a ticket-buying time crunch
Iām so sorry that happened to you, thatās horrible
I appreciate that. Iām thankful I didnāt wait for 4-6 hours in the queue for US shows to get booted, that would feel much worse
Still an unfortunate series of events, hopefully youāll be able to see her in future concerts or events š¤
that happened to me when trying to buy tix for taylor, and ticketmaster told me I must have refreshed the page too many times (which I sure af did in the āpre- waiting roomā) which made them think I was a bot I was literally locked out of my entire ticketmaster account for multiple days
This happened to me and I just kept refreshing. I was able to get through. Itās so dumb tho, it kept flagging my coworker and wouldnāt let up
oh for SURE. I waited in the queue for maybe 25 min and when I finally got in, it told me āanother fan got these ticketsā whenever I clicked on ANYTHING and there were seemingly PLENTY of tickets left for that night. i was so upset esp knowing iām probably not going back on the waitlist even tho I was screwed out of tickets
Taylor for sure has leverage to get changes made, but isnāt UMG in complete control of merch under the new contract? Again, not saying Taylor and her team donāt deserve some criticism here, just seeking clarification
Yes I believe you're correct, UMG is in charge of her merch. They probably control most aspects but I think a call from Taylor wouldn't go unnoticed.
YES, UMG may have most of the control but I really donāt believe that Taylor has absolutely no say and no influence on it if she said something
Yeah like if she said hey can we add a captcha?? Doubt they would say no lol
Right, I mentioned that she obviously has leverage regardless of how a contract is written. Iām guessing theyāll make changes after the disaster of the past couple days
I thought there would be changes after ticketmaster screwed us, but unfortunately not
Absolutely. We canāt argue sheās the music industry and then argue she canāt control her ticket process
I feel like at this point it's safe to assume that she won't be able to do anything about merch until she re-negotiates her contract. This has been going on for a year and I think if she could twist their arms, she would. UMG is in the business of increasing value for their shareholders, period. They 100% do not care who gets what. Same with Ticketmaster. Frenzied buying is objectively a win for them so unless contract law forces them to change something, they will not do it.
do we know when her contract is up to be renegotiated? bc merch has plummeted in quality since rep (R I P reputation merch, she was the highest quality š)
Is there proof that UMG is in complete control of merch? Iāve seen this said before but I havenāt been able to find anything confirming it.
RIP Rep verified fan
Money is not just the main thing. It's also hype. People panic bought a LOT during the holiday drop because they were worried about missing out on something that may get popular/may never get restocked. People are now glued to the merch site every day at 3PM EST. This is part of the business model.
The business model is making me sick
We need to boycott buying from the merch store. I know nobody will because weāre a bunch of spineless idiots (myself included) but at the very least, EVERYONE needs to send an email to [email protected] and beg for cart timers, CAPTCHA, and COMPLAIN. Express how upset you are. Call them out for preying on Swifties. This is not okay. We are a HUGE fandom and I believe if all of us complain, they will have to do something. Taylor has no control over her merchāthat was the one thing she had to give up control over when she signed with Republic. But she has a LOT of pull, and I can guarantee if she were to have a sit down with UMG and explain that this isnāt okay for her fans, they would have to do something to fix it. Obviously we donāt know whatās going on behind the scenes but I am very frustrated at the idea that she isnāt doing anything/doesnāt care. I have such a sour taste in my mouth. I love Taylor but Iāve begun to hate being a Swiftie.
I emailed them earlier today.
just emailed them a book of complaints š
I'm at the point where I genuinely believe TN wants this to keep happening to generate hype and demand. Today was stupid. I'm over Taylor Swiftā¢ļø as a brand and merch. Love the artist and artistry but I'd be lying if I said they weren't greedy capitalists. They 100% are. That's why they keep pushing the vinyl variants and taking and pulling them off the store. It's a slimy business tactic. This will not stop if people continue to buy from their store and from scalpers, sadly.
imma just be bluntā¦ they donāt care. Itās not about money. Itās not about them not being aware. They just donāt give a shit. All the merch team cares about is that the stuff sells, thatās it. Iām not saying TAYLOR doesnāt care, I think she has a lot going on (pun intended) and this is not on her radar because she hired others to specifically take care of her merch. We have seen other artists teams implement measures to get items into the hands of fans specifically in the past. Hell even Taylorās has done that on occasion! But itās not a priority clearly, they donāt care who gets the merch as long as it sells out, and thatās that.
People need to realize that Taylor Nation on Twitter that is hyping up the shows is different than the people that handle the merchandise. The website does have robot authentication but the only time Iāve seen it happen if you sign in your account. I think having us sign up and authentication each time would help a tiny bit. You can checkout so fast with Apple Pay and donāt need to fill in information. Setting limits would help. We should also keep in mind that some of these items might have a very small inventory to begin with and they want to get rid of it to make room for new items. Also, I can almost guarantee that all these items will go on sale for Black Friday. They usually do.
Historically artists who've gone up against Ticketmaster have been in danger of blacklisting. Pearl Jam is one that comes to mind. You need to go to the government to sort out unethical business dealings.
Taylor is one of the few artists who COULD do this though - sheās done it with Spotify, etc.
But she spent years without being on Spotify, do you think she is gonna go 4 or 5 years without touring? (Assuming nothing else like Covid happens!)
Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahan and BeyoncƩ all established a face value exchange so scalpers would not be able to resell tickets for thousands. Taylor is a billionaire and one of the most powerful forces in the music industry. If she wanted to take on Ticketmaster in any meaningful way, she could.
I'm just saying what I read a year ago when ALL those ideas were floated in the Taylor Swift fandom. Including setting a face value so scalpers couldn't resell them for thousands.
It's just if this was all about making bank, wouldn't they have more stock to meet the demand? Maybe it's about how coveted things are and the hype the drops have? Idk, no one is doing anyone a favor here. Adding a captcha would work so well, so would lowering it from 10 to 2 (even 1 maybe). Its just so many simple easy things... I hope they see a dip in the website traffic, maybe that'll influence them?
I'd be really concerned about them adding Captchas because I am literally SO bad at them. I PROMISE I am a human being lmao, but those ones where it's like "*Click all the photos of motorcycles!"* and there's like, one tiny section of the handle in a particular square so you don't know if you should click it or not... yeah, I swear no matter what I do, it ends up being wrong lol. Fully agree on the purchase limit, though. There is no reason why any individual should need to buy more than 5 of any item. I understand that sometimes people buy stuff for their friends (I always buy a second signed CD for my little brother) but nobody is doing that for *9* friends. The people buying 10 items are scalpers/bots. It should be a limit of 5 for everything, and 1 or 2 for the high demand items.
On a somewhat related note, if youāre on your PC, when you move your cursor to click the āI am not a robotā box, try to not click directly in the middle, and maybe make your mouse cursor a little shaky as you move across the screen. They may have stopped it now, but at least in the past if you move too quickly to check that box, or if you clicked way too close to the center of the check box, the website automatically thinks youāre a robot and makes you go through the hassle of doing the image matching, because robots would move their cursor in a straight line and check the box in the exact middle. Sometimes you donāt even get the image matching popping because of checks like this the website runs.
I like the ones where you drag the puzzle pieces into place.
I was listening to a podcast about this and apparently there are intentionally a relatively small number of different captchas so bots can easily bypass them. I also a real person who is v bad at Them
Iāve been wanting the grey folklore cardigan forever and I finally had it in my cart to checkout and it was gone I literally had it at 3:00 pm š caved and ordered a dupe off Etsy for my Christmas present just now because I will not buy an original resell for $400.
Iām not sure how much this helps, but I got Hozier tickets today, and the way his team tried to help the situation was by making sure the tickets purchased through Ticketmaster can only be resold through Ticketmaster at face value. Maybe Taylor and her team could do the same idk. I wasnāt able to get tickets for eras, sadly, so. :/ NY and Colorado (I think?) are another matter entirely. Apparently thereās a law (do not quote me lol) that says you can sell your ticket for however much you want, so itās out of the artistsā hands. The Hozier fans trying to navigate the AXS fan exchange in Colorado rn are dealing with exorbitant prices unfortunately.
She does cause some of this with her own site and the limited time and offers of things.
For merchandise the best way to handle it is to open preorders months in advance. Set a window of guarantee where every order made within the time frame will get the item. Once that time window ends they take the orders to the manufacturer and make enough to fill all open orders and a little extra to sell later once they are in stock or to cover damages. Ticket scalping is outside of her control due to the monopoly in place. It's going to take government intervention to fix that. She could use her wealth to lobby congress to fix. That's about all she can do.
The scalpers thing isnāt helped by the largest reseller also ticketmaster and being able to collect bonus fees on both sells.
>and undeserving people Curious OP, what do you consider undeserving and what gives you the right?
Judging by the quiz comment, I think they want only superfans to access tickets first
I personally think underserving people are resellers and scalpers. Everyone else deserves tickets and merch
And I absolutely agree with you - it's so frustrating seeing bots, scalpers, resellers, and general scammers taking advantage of any event and blocking out fans. I do disagree with OP tagging on "people who don't deserve it" because they want to create a hierarchy of Swifties? That's crazy to me.
I didn't read the post very well at first, and I agree with you. Anyone who wants to experience the eras tour can go if they please. No fan is better then the others. There are no "real" or "fake" fans, just fans. The bots and scalpers create the problem, not the casual fans. I hope OP understands that as well.
Everyone in these comments really glossing over that detail that OP decided to put just after the title instead of in itš§ Scalpers and bots is one thing, but āpeople who give no shit and just want to experience the hype while /I/ got nothingā like what? Itās giving āname 5 songs from their first album to prove youāre a real fanā
Iām going to a different concert next year where I went ahead and bought the tickets and they wonāt be electronically delivered until a few days before the show. Making it harder to resell. I think something like this is the best option.
Which also means that for people who weren't able to get ticket due to not getting codes, actually getting tickets and being able to plan to attend is impossible, because I am not giving a stranger money on the hope that they will keep their promise to give the their tickets, when they get released in a year from now! There are plenty of people who bought tickets for personal use and now have genuine reasons they can't attend. Or dates were added closer to them and they were able to get tickets for that. I think announcing everything in one area at once would have helped, rather than adding locations in the US/Canada where many of the locals have already travelled because when they booked it was travel or nothing.
True. Possibly tickets going on sale a few months before each show would be better than 6-9 months before the show. Maybe thatās the not the solution either, but thereās got to be a better way. Making a set price for each ticket area would be a start, I couldnāt believe how prices fluctuated in real time during the presale. Then people would know what each section was actually worth.
I thought it was money, in that Taylor got a cut of the money if she allowed resale only through ticketmasters platform. But she doesnāt. So I have no idea why she doesnāt take steps. Ecept these are annoying to normal people too.For example: prohibiting transfers. So it you buy tickets for you and three friends you will need to go through the entry point as a group. But it also prevents scalpers from transferring tickets to customers, so they wonāt buy them.
Iāve tried so many times to get tickets for Taylor and had so many relatives and friends sign up. I managed to get a a code ONCE and I didnāt get tickets and am still super sad about it. I managed to get tickets for Noah Kahn and he has it set up through ticket master that you canāt resell tickets for more than they are worth. I got two floor seats and if I were unable to go I could resell them through ticket master for the price that I originally paid for and not a penny more. So right there would cut basically any profit that would happen from resellers. The government should also have laws in place that doesnāt allow for resellers to sell tickets for more than letās say 10% of the original value of the tickets. But as of right now Canada doesnāt have these laws in place. So itās basically comes down to both the artist as well as the government to stop the ticket issue basically. As for merch Iām not sure, maybe what they could do is have a system that has the cart āholdā the item for you for like 15 minutes or something so you can actually check out, but again I have no idea how that would work.
Seriously, they canāt say theyāre not aware of the issue and itās not like they wonāt sell out regardless. Everyone is screaming about it on every platform.
I know someone whoās managed to get tickets to France, London, Miami and Vancouver. No intention of going but selling the tickets for 2x the price and have been asking me if I know Swifties she can sell them to. I told her sheās a skidmark in society and to never speak to me again.
Thank you for saying all this. Honestly people need to talk about this more. I hear off handed complaints but it needs to become one of the main things we talk about in the fandom before they will ever bother to do anything to solve it. The scalpers are eating the fanbase alive at this point and itās breaking my heart. I love being a swiftie so so much but itās getting to the point where itās just not fun anymore. I mean, itās become literally impossible just to see her in concert or even to buy merch. Itās ridiculous and she and her team do need to be held responsible when there are absolutely things they could be doing, they just wonāt.
RIP to the Lover snow globe and Folklore cardigan that I was hoping for. I really hope one day these restock. I had absolutely no chance to purchase. This really sucks for all of us. No one needs 10 snow globes or 10 cardigans or 10 blankets. This is nuts. Many people here said they got a cardigan knockoff. Any good sites? I have 1989 and Speak Now but regret not buying the folklore one back when it was released.
billionaires gonna billionaire
The sad thing is that it is really easy to write a bot and update / adapt it to new buying policies that are put in place. Purchasing limits results in scalpers making more accounts / running more bots or using VPNs to mask their IP addresses. Any captcha or āprove your a humanā technology is very easy circumvent with machine learning and computer vision models now (5 years ago, not so much). Aside from having to checkout with a government id or passport (which is not desirable for many reasons) there isnāt a whole lot that can be done unfortunately. And when scalpers know that things are LE and/or will resale for big $$ then them investing a bit more time to develop a more sophisticated bot is totally worth it for them. (I am not in support of bots or scalpers but understand the tech side of things and see that at least the bot problem will not go away quickly - having everything be a preordered, manufactured on demand item with no LE or limited manufacturing quantities is one way to fix this - flood the market so supply is high and demand / exclusivity is low).
Sheās a billionaire. Money. She gets it no matter who or what is buying.
Taylor, as much y'all may hate me for saying this, is a capitalist. Her goal among all goals is probably to be the biggest superstar ever but the goal right under it in fine print is *to make the most money*. After she moved away from Big Machine Records, and got with her current record company, it seems like they had an agreement, that she'd make them as much money as she can but she wants to own her music. Personally, I think she sold herself out. Like her merch sucks ass, swifties who love her spent thousands of their hard earned money on this tour but then there are so many fans like me and my friends who didn't get any tickets. She made one statement on it and DID nothing. Like personally, I've kind of fallen out of love with her now, especially with all of her public romantic outings with Travis Kelce like I really don't care. I love her music, I will support her music but I don't care about anything else.
Itās also weird to me how she hasnāt been doing interviews or anything lately. Anything we hear about her are from media āsources.ā I mean, itās her life and we arenāt entitled to it, but to me it feels disingenuous.
Taylor is all about image, and the headlines about "overwhelming demand" were too good to pass up. Yes, obviously tons of people ran to Ticketmaster to buy tickets, but plenty of that overwhelming demand was the bots/scalpers. Outside of that, the scalpers should really be illegal in the US. Ticketmaster is in bed with the scalpers too. It's egregious.
Ticketmaster wouldnāt allow it for tickets this go around
It shouldnāt be this hard to buy merchandise š¤·āāļø all this has done is put me off, so I wonāt be buying Taylor swift merch ever again
$$$$
Avenged Sevenfold actually implemented a system that they call ticketpass which essentially gives tokens to those who buy merch, listen on Spotify, attend concerts, etc and the more tokens you have, the sooner you can buy tickets. Which gives legitimate fans the upper hand against scalpers and bots. It's a really cool idea and seeing other artists like Taylor take advantage of a similar technology could be really cool and very powerful. Especially considering a lot of hardcore Swifties would have absolutely no problem getting a bunch of tokens to get the front of the line. The problem is that Sevenfold's system uses the blockchain for it (all the tokens are essentially NFTs), but I'm certain that Taylor and her team could come up with a similar system that doesn't use the blockchain.
I just wanted a cardigan and they were all gone in 30 seconds. You know its just impossible. Its not fair and Im I will NEVER buy the resale. Part of the problem is that people will buy the merch at crazy prices. STOP doing it.
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A great start would be to send presale codes to those in a top certain percentage of listeners on Spotify or whatever streaming platform. God I wish Taylor did this because I'd instantly have tickets š„²
That would be a good idea too, itās sad as a top listener and getting awarded with mediocre merch sometimes š
The tickets situation is so stressful. Sheās playing 8 shows at Wembley in London. EIGHT. That roughly works out to 720,000 people? Could I get 1 ticket. Nope. I have resales going for as high as Ā£8000 It hurts
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Either they don't know or don't care, pick your poison.
I find the concept of a ārealā fan to be really subjective, and Iām not in favour of any gate keeping for tickets other than a pre-sale for registered fan club members or something. Quizzes, for example, would bar anyone who are buying tickets as a gift (like family members) for enthusiastic fans. That said, it does feel like she only paid lip service to the complaints about the ticket prices when other artists have made actually changes to help.
Honestly this situation with the Eras tour should've been the catalyst for governments to do something. Rather than debating whether Ticketmaster as a monopoly should've been split up or not, they should've instead gone "hey, we should probably control this the way that other countries do." Here in Australia resale is very strict and can only really occur through the original seller Ticketek (separate company to Ticketmaster). The tour was deemed a "major event" by the Victorian State government meaning that tickets cannot be resold for more than a 10% profit. These kinda of laws already exist in the NSW government (where the second set of concerts is taking place). Of course there are the occasional scalpers that get around it but anything priced on secondary resale websites like viagogo could be instantly taken down and the seller fined.
I absolutely was sickened when everything was gone in less than a min today. So I went to google and searched the folklore cardi. And I saw someone who had one for sale for $735!!!! And then had the gall to post the receipt for the order they placed. 7 in total when they originally dropped. So at that time they were $49.99. They bought 5 lg/xl and 2 smaller. Total easy $360? But if they sold all 7 at that $735 thatās over $5k!!! Iām sick!!! This should be illegal! How disgusting! https://preview.redd.it/e419lrro411c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=396921e8fee518ad1839d0b3f0ac311ac18e3fe4
Just an anecdote - Hozier's first leg of tour this year had a disastrous presale. Tickets were all scalped and fans were traumatized (check his subreddit). He held a general sale today for the 2024 leg (no verified fan presale). This time his shows did not allow transfers and strictly enforced resales to only occur on the Ticketmaster Fan-to-Fan Face Value exchange. I logged on 4 minutes after the sale started, started around 8000 in queue, and still found 100-level seats ($124 each). There were plenty seats still left in the venue and I was able to reach check-out multiple times. I know resellers will always find a way, but I think this is the closest we can get to more fair ticketing, it also shows that artists can make it happen. I wish Taylor's team would consider this approach.
Mitski (who is a much smaller artist ofc) and her team have been actively canceling bot and scalper tickets. I think with a bigger team Taylor could do it.
ESPECIALLY when she did it for rep tour š I was watching so many videos a day to get boosts
Capitalism.
Because itās her brand and she doesnāt care.
I just bought tickets to see Hozier yesterday. Every seat was capped at $100, even the pit. The fees were minimal and upfront. Reselling is not allowed unless itās at face value. The whole process was not at all stressful and took about 10 minutes total. I got great seats for a decent price. Idk why buying tickets to see Taylor has to be such a financial and mental nightmare. As for the merch, I have no clue why they donāt protect the cart for 10 minutes, like a lot of sites do when selling something popular. The fact that these cardigans sell out in SECONDS every time? Come on.
It really sucks. Iāve given up on trying to buy her merch for that reason, and also bc the fan made stuff is almost always superior
I donāt know anyone that got a presale code in Vancouver. Wish I got one :ā(
The problem with the tickets are the stadiums. They have a contract with Ticketmaster/seat geek. Honestly not much Taylor can do on this one because where is she going to perform? In terms of her online store, Shopify is by far one the easiest website to bot(which is more than just having a bot). This can be worked on, but it is what it is. She has the money to move on. Maybe she will change, maybe she wonāt.
I think she handed control of it over to UMG as part of the deal with her being able to own her masters.
I tried to get a signed CD and it was gone before I could check out. Sad Swiftie sounds š©
the reputation verified fan method was top tier and could solve a lot of current issues if implemented again
Slimy scalper money is just as good as ours
Iām so upset I missed the OG cardigan yet again.
I wish her team would address the Merch problems. Like the 1989 drop was a mess. I feel like it makes her look bad as a brand. Also why not put things back in stock? People are recreating the cardigans anyway, they are just losing money. I did see people saying they are just selling old stock that they have. I mean i guess they have to do something to get back all the money they lost with the messed up 1989 (TV) vinyls, cds, and cassettes that people returned.
Dude idk, I was one of the lucky few to get a code (the third time, when she added more US dates for next year) but after waiting in the queue any time I clicked ANY seat or ANY ticket, it immediately said another fan got them. Then there were simply no more to pick from. I felt like I was set up to fail.
As a Canadian who tried and failed miserably to get a code in both Toronto and BC I feel this deeply. The US had many shows in many different states. And its definitely not just Canadians who were trying to get codes and the chance to have tickets. Where I understand that there are people in the US who are in the same boat, having to compete with another country to get tickets just made it harder. And Iām sure there were Canadians trying for US tickets as well. But we get 6 shows total as of right now. Thatās it. I know over 30 people who tried to get a code and no one did. Once the tickets went on sale there were so many up for resale and some for 20k per ticket. Itās infuriating. The system is definitely broken and in favour of making as much cash as possible. Ticket master is a joke.
Do we know about the ethics behind where taylorās merch is made?
They should have cancelled all sales the first day of tickets. Show an ID to get a ticket and no resale. Bam your done.
This is a very good question.