Work ground to a halt on November 15th and November 16th in Gen Z and Millenial workplaces for an unusual reason. Taylor Swift tickets were on presale.
Tickets were supposed to go on sale at 10 a.m. local venue time on Ticketmaster on Tuesday, but thousands of Swifties (the name for dedicated Taylor Swift fans) took to Twitter to vent their anger at Ticketmaster for countless server errors. Ticketmaster even paused East Coast sales temporarily after millions of Taylor Swift fans flooded their servers.
These fans all had to be pre-verified fans in order to access the presale but then had to wait in queues for hours with thousands of other fans, throwing work to the wayside, while facing numerous errors.
Still in a 2000+ person queue for Taylor Swift in Tampa, got in right at 10am and it’s now 10:51am.
— Carlynn (Taylor’s Version) (@carlynnvictoria) November 15, 2022
Lots of people getting gateway timeouts, 502 errors, and Ticketmaster saying they can’t process “at this time” pic.twitter.com/NF33i1NFql
The drama continued on Wednesday as the postponed Capital One cardholder presale, starting at 2 p.m. local venue time, again caused fans to waste countless hours waiting in neverending queues.
Ticketmaster Admits Fault
Ten minutes after the West Coast ticket sales were supposed to go on sale, Ticketmaster finally posted an update on their Twitter saying that West Coast sales would be postponed until 3 p.m., admitting that the millions of fans who showed up to buy tickets had overwhelmed their servers:
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 15, 2022
Our editors were some of those desperately trying to buy tickets on the West Coast when Ticketmaster kept showing 500 server errors.
Even Politicians Get in on the Debacle
Democrat (AOC) tweeted the following:
Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 15, 2022
Break them up.
Fans even asked if Joe Bien had a plan to unpause the Ticketmaster queue:
what is joe biden’s plan to unpause the ticketmaster queue for taylor swift’s eras tour
— kay (@slutforfeelings) November 15, 2022
What Went Wrong
It’s hard to say why Ticketmaster wasn’t prepared for the influx of traffic. They saw Spotify crash a few weeks ago with the release of the new ‘Midnights’ album and had a clear estimate of how many Swifties were verified fans, and, therefore, eligible for the presale. Most tech companies stress-test their servers before major events. Amazon tests all of their services before Black Friday. Netflix stress tests their servers before major releases. So why didn’t Ticketmaster?
Related: Get Paid To Nap – 12 Ways To Earn Money While You Sleep
Twitter Goes Wild
With all the chaos, many went to Twitter to complain:
taylor swift walking onto stage with no one in the audience, because that ticketmaster queue never did move. pic.twitter.com/BEjNEB1G6N
— sarah 🕰 (@thisismenotryin) November 15, 2022
Swifties waiting for Ticketmaster to unpause the Taylor Swift presale queue: pic.twitter.com/Eh6NmTYB0J
— Mr. Perfectly Fine (@Ragingangel13_) November 15, 2022
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