From nightmare ticketing to online abuse, being a pop fan is becoming miserable | Kate Solomon

The stress of trying to get Taylor Swift tickets this week led to feelings of anger and loathing. It's all part of a music culture that feels increasingly greedy and combative

This week, hundreds of thousands of Taylor Swift fans around the UK, Ireland and Europe have been desperately trying to get tickets to the Eras tour, which kicks off in Paris in May 2024. When tickets for North America dates went on sale last year, it was a disaster: demand was so high that systems crashed, the sale had to be stopped and ticket prices spiralled out of control due to Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing" whereby costs increase with demand. Clearly Swift's team and Ticketmaster have worked hard to try to prevent the same thing happening here but it has involved dizzying bureaucracy: presale codes, waitlists and special ballots for general sale.

In our dedicated Swiftageddon group chat, we had been discussing strategy and making spreadsheets for weeks, ensuring we had credit cards and log-ins for every possible date we could make, though there was no indication in advance of how much tickets would be. Presale opened, and we dutifully took our places in the lobby, the waiting room and then the hundred-thousand-deep queue in which places were randomly assigned (military-grade planning only gets you so far).