Taylor Swift broke records when she claimed the entire first 10 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 after releasing her 10th album “Midnights,” becoming the first artist to ever gain this accomplishment. Just a couple of weeks later, she announced a 2023 stadium tour, called “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,”  that will take fans through all of her musical eras. 

Taylor Swift is an internationally recognized singer and songwriter who came to fame at the young age of 14 when she signed a music publishing contract with Sony/ATV. Throughout her career so far, she has been nominated for 46 grammys and won 11, including Album of the Year three times. The singer/songwriter’s career is still thriving almost 20 years later as she prepares for her sixth tour. 

Partnering with Ticketmaster, general sale tickets were confirmed to go on sale on Friday, November 18, following a presale on November 15 as well as Mastercard sales on November 16. In order to be considered for the presale, fans were required to sign up via Ticketmaster. To further chances of selection, fans were also able to get boosted through Verified Fan if they had shown some sort of previous support for Swift.  For those who received an email confirming their selection for the presale, the queue opened at 10:00 A.M. 

The ticketing process consisted of a series of steps with each step introducing a new page of the website. Beginning with the lobby, customers awaited the sale until they were directed to the next step where they were given a place in line. For some, the process took up to 8 hours. From there, customers were taken to the queue where they were able to select and purchase tickets. 

However, with record demand, Ticketmaster was unable to compute the unanticipated amount of support and prepare for such a high number of requests. As a result, the site began to experience difficulty and crashed several times, kicking customers out of line and restarting the whole process. The tour received so much support that the general sale was canceled and those not selected for presale or able to purchase through the Mastercard sale were not given a chance to acquire tickets.

For Taylor Swift fans at Indy hoping to buy tickets, some saw the effects of the overwhelmed system. Senior Ashley Perez described her experience with Ticketmaster, stating, “It was horrible. I was waiting in the queue for five and a half hours just to be kicked out when there were 106 people in front of me. Finally, I got in 45 minutes after I got kicked out, but there were close to no tickets available.”  

Many fans with similar experiences to Perez were outraged and called for Swift to draw attention to the subject. Swift finally made a statement on her Instagram story on November 16th sympathizing with fans. 

To close her announcement, she declared, “to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.” Swift has yet to expand on what this may mean, but some have speculated more show opportunities will be added to her tour to satisfy upset fans.