The Chicago Journal

Eras Tour Breaks Ticketmaster Records, Causes Traffic on Presale

Swifties have endured a tough week.

Taylor Swift fans who were eagerly awaiting the general public sale of her upcoming Eras tour will have to wait. On Thursday, Ticketmaster revealed that it is canceling the presale. 

“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the company said.

The news is on top of an alarming week for many Swifties. Initially, tickets were available to users who passed the qualifications in Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program. However, minutes into the process, people started complaining about site errors and lengthy waiting times. 

According to fans, they waited for over five hours. 

Ticketmaster has revealed that buyers wanting to purchase tickets for shows on the West Coast will only be able to do so from 3 p.m., rather than 10 am as originally scheduled. It includes shows in Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Santa Clara, California. 

As another addition to the unfortunate events, the Capital One Cardholder rescheduled its presale from Tuesday to Wednesday. Unfortunately, the sale would also only be available for a few hours. 

The Ticketmaster statement tried to explain the chaos. Moreover, it revealed that Swift’s tour broke a world record for highest-selling number in one day. It sold 2 million tickets on Tuesday night. 

Read also: Ralph Fiennes Reveals Interest in Playing Lord Voldemort Again

Eras Tour 

To be verified and participate in the presale: Ticketmaster pre-registered individuals “to help manage high demand shows – identifying real humans and weeding out bots. Keeping bots out of queues and avoiding overcrowding helps to make waits shorter and on sales smoother.” 

The company reports that they have received 3.5 million pre-registrations. And they sent codes to 1.5 million people in line while the rest waited patiently. 

“Historically, working with Verified Fan invited codes has worked as we’ve been able to manage the volume coming into the site to shop for tickets,” Ticketmaster stated. 

“However, this time, the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.” 

The company continued: “It usually takes us about an hour to sell through a stadium show. But we slowed down some sales and pushed back others to stabilize the systems. The trade-off was longer wait times in queue for some fans.” 

Ticketmaster further explained that considering the traffic volume they had this week, Swift must perform in more than 900 stadium shows to address the demand. 

“While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience, and that’s what we’re focused on,” the company said. 

The Swifties’ flocking came after Swift set additional dates on the Eras tour, not only once but twice. She wants to set a sum of 52 dates in the US today. The pop star is yet to announced international tour stops.

Read also: Kevin Conroy: The most iconic Batman projects he worked on

 

Taylor Swift takes entire top 10 of Billboard Hot 100

Taylor Swift captured the entire Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first artist to occupy the top spots.

Breaking the record

Taylor Swift’s Midnights topped the Hot 100 this week as ten songs filled every slot.

Midnights was released on October 21.

Taylor Swift’s feat has surpassed last year’s record set by Drake, who had nine spots in the top 10 of the Hot 100 chart.

Additionally, Anti-Hero replaces Unholy with Sam Smith and Kim Petras.

The two artists also made history by taking the No. 1 spot last week, becoming the first nonbinary and transgender artists to top the charts.

Read also: Taylor Swift ‘Anti-Hero’ music video gets edited

Midnights

Taylor Swift’s latest album continues to break records.

It is the most listened-to album in a day on both Spotify and Apple Music.

Her album also recorded the third-biggest streaming week ever for an album.

Previously, Taylor Swift’s album Red (Taylor’s Version) held the record for the artist’s most significant streaming week in 2021.

Swift’s latest album produced her 11th album No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Midnights recorded its biggest week for an album since Adele’s 25 seven years ago.

According to Billboard, Taylor Swift is now tied to Barbara Streisand for most #1 albums by a female artist.

Read also: Blink-182 to headline the 2023 When We Were Young music festival

Behind the album

The record-breaking artist revealed that Midnights is a take on the classic midnight confession trope.

Swift says she uses a conversational singing style to tell stories in an after-hours way.

The stories are inspired by self-loathing, revenge fantasies and questions of what could have been.

Taylor Swift has been working on new music and re-recording classic albums after Big Machine sold its catalog to Ithaca Holdings for over $ 300 million.

Ithaca Holdings is a private equity group.

So far, she has released re-recordings of the Fearless and Red albums.

Reference:

Taylor Swift becomes first artist to sweep the entire Top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100

Taylor Swift ‘Anti-Hero’ music video gets edited

Taylor Swift recently released a music video for “Anti-Hero,” but the criticism led to the video being edited after some fans complained.

The controversial scene

Anti-Hero is one of the songs on Midnights, Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album.

Apple Music released a music video for the song on Wednesday.

However, attentive fans were quick to point out a controversial scene.

The YouTube version initially featured a scene with the word “FAT,” albeit a brief scene.

The negative reception from fans prompted the music video editors to change the controversial scene.

The edited version is now up on YouTube.

Read also: Taylor Swift concludes VMA with new album announcement

Anti-Hero

Taylor Swift is the writer and director of the “Anti-Hero” music video.

Anti-Hero represents her “nightmarish scenarios and intrusive thoughts.”

The controversial scene showed Swift weighing herself on a bathroom scale.

A close-up shot of the scale shows the numbers replaced by the word “FAT.”

In addition, the updated version removes the scene that body positivity supporters are calling out for being fatphobic.

Since then, debates over the scene have flooded the internet.

Furthermore, the topic reached the talk show The View, where co-host Sunny Hostin pointed out that the critics missed the point of the scene.

Taylor Swift’s struggles

The ‘Anti-Hero’ music video references her past struggles with body image and eating disorders.

In the 2020 documentary “Miss Americana,” Taylor Swift shared that sometimes unflattering photos of her and horrifying comments about her figure trigger her.

Taylor Swift said her comments would cause her to starve herself and stop eating.

Read also: Sam Smith and Kim Petras prove a nonbinary and transgender artist can make it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100

Midnights

Despite the controversy, Midnights continues to be a very popular album.

Taylor Swift’s latest album was released last Friday, October 21.

The album’s popularity continues to climb at an incredible speed.

Within the first three days of its release, the album reached 1.2 album units in the United States.

Billboard uses the music data company Luminate for specific information.

In addition, Luminate data includes pre-orders in sales.

Finally, the release of the album Midnights propelled Taylor Swift to the rank of the most-streamed artist on Spotify in 24 hours.

Reference:

Taylor Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero’ music video appears to have been edited amid backlash

Taylor Swift concludes VMA with new album announcement

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor Swift has produced a total of four albums, including two new albums and two re-recordings.

It’s been two years since the release of “Folklore” and “Evermore”, but fans were thrilled to hear that a new album is in the works.

MTV Music Awards

At this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift took the top spot for Video of the Year.

Her victory is the first time an artist has won the award three times.

While that was reason enough to celebrate, fans went crazy when she took the stage to announce that a new album was coming.

Swift previously won Video of the Year in 2015 for her music video “Bad Blood” and later in 2019 for “You Need to Calm Down.”

This year, she hired another moonperson for All Too Well: The Short Film, a music video she directed.

The win made her the first artist to win Video of the Year for a music video she directed.

Taylor Swift previously co-directed You Need to Calm Down with Drew Kirsch. His win in the category also falls into the longest entry ever.

Read also: Community fans receive the news they waited years for: a Community movie

All Too Well

The music video for “All Too Well” ran for ten minutes and won awards for Best Long Form Video and Best Direction.

The video gaver Swift her second best director award after 2020’s The Man.

The ten minute version of “All Too Well” is a re-recorded “Taylor version” from 2012’s Red album.

While re-recording her music after Scooter Braun bought and sold the rights to her master recordings, Taylor Swift also recorded new music.

The announcement

As the VMAs drew to a close, Taylor Swift concluded her speech to the overwhelming fans, saying:

“I had sort of made up my mind that, if you were going to be this generous and give us this, I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand-new album comes out October 21. And I will tell you more at midnight.”

Read also: Controversial influencer Andrew Tate shuts down his program Hustlers University

Midnights

Within an hour, the artist announced the arrival of his 10th studio album, Midnights. midnight

The upcoming album will be Swift’s first full-length release since Folklore won her a Grammy in 2020.

According to the artist, the album contains 13 tracks from the sleepless nights of his life.

Her tweet reads:

“We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back.”

“We twist in our-self-made cages and pray that we aren’t — right this minute — about to make some fateful life-altering mistake.”

“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face.”

“For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go search — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve… we’ll meet ourselves.”

Besides Evermore and folklore, Taylor Swift’s other original music in 2021 was “Carolina,” a track from the movie Where the Crawdads Sing.

References:

Taylor Swift announces new album dropping October 21 after winning MTV VMA for Video of the Year

Taylor Swift takes home VMAs video of the year award, announces surprise album

Taylor Swift announces new album during historic VMAs speech: ‘I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you…’