Taylor Swift reaviva el debate contra Ticketmaster

Like almost everything he does Taylor Swift, the announcement of his most recent tour caused a furor and uproar all. Selling tickets for the tour The Eras Tourhis first since 2018, crashed Ticketmaster’s systems on November 15, as thousands of people around the world tried to get a ticket.

According to a statement from Ticketmaster, the ticketing site filed an “unprecedented historical lawsuit” and reported that it had fixed technical problems. Complaints from users abounded and minutes later those same tickets began to appear on resale sites with prices of up to $27,000 per ticket.

It is not an isolated case and neither is it a new story. during the nineties Pearl Jam engaged in a battle with Ticketmaster to prevent their service during their 1995 tour, though 14 months later the band was forced to resume relations with the company.

Last summer, ticket sales for the US tour of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band 2023 received strong criticism for Ticketmaster’s dynamic system that raised the price of tickets up to $3,000.

All of us who have bought a ticket have faced that torture. Pre-sale systems that force you to use a credit card to gain access to a virtual room without guaranteeing anything; the high ticket prices that fans are willing to pay to see their favorite artist, and the world of scalping in which no one wants to intervene.

The return to the stage comes at a key moment for Taylor Swift. With his tenth album MidnightsSwift became the first artist to occupy the entire top 10 of the charts. Billboard. The album sold the equivalent of 1,578,000 copies in its first week in the United States, according to the monitoring service Luminate, and recorded 486 million views on streaming services. swift launched Midnights on October 21, under the production of Jack Antonoff. The album represents her return to a more pop sound.

During the pandemic, Taylor Swift transformed her image from the pop superstar to move into the realm of the singer-songwriter. With this I do not want to say that she was not before, but that the perception of her was more linked to country pop and her stereotypes. With Folklore y Evermorewhich includes collaborations with Bon Iver, Aaron Dessner de The National y Jack AntonoffSwift gained recognition and new fans who had not recognized her songwriting talents.

Swift has become a figure seeking to regain control of her recordings and own the rights to her music after Ithaca Holdings sold her catalog for about $300 million without her consent. This has led her to re-record her first six albums.

The sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour on Ticketmaster once again aroused criticism against this company in the United States. A number of Democratic legislators like Amy Klobuchar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bill Pascrell Jr. y David N. Cicilline they criticized the substantial power the company wields over the ticketing industry.

the congressman David Cicilline who is in charge of the House of Representatives committee on competition and antitrust asked the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Live Nation Entertainment raises prices and stifles competition.

In October, President Biden also made statements about the need to regulate “soaring fees” and “surprise charges” for online sales, without directly mentioning Ticketmaster.

Con Midnights, Taylor Swift reiterates her status as one of the most successful artists with million-dollar sales, records on the Billboard charts and streaming services. Without planning it, Swift also put the spotlight on Ticketmaster and her business practices.

antonio.becerril@eleconomista.mx