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Imagine millions of fans anxiously waiting to purchase tickets for their favorite artist’s new tour showcasing their recent popular album. On Ticketmaster, the platform for releasing tour tickets, Taylors Swift’s “The Era’s Tour” appeared on Nov. 15. at 10 a.m., causing more than 14 million users to flock to the site, including bots, spurring massive delays and lockouts on the site. Essentially, Ticketmaster could not respond to the high bot traffic in releasing tickets, which came in direct contrast to the idea behind the “Verified Fan” program intended to allow real fans to purchase the tickets. With more than two million tickets sold that day, many fans were met with an “insufficient ticket releases” notice and were unable to buy tickets, even after waiting numerous hours for the site to load and receiving various codes to verify tickets. Unable to resolve the problems, Ticketmaster subsequently canceled Swift’s concert ticket sales to the general public, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”

Ticketmaster is a ticket sales and distribution company that has been mainly involved in the sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s concerts, in addition to numerous other popular artists. Over the past few years, the company has faced criticism for its high pricing and unfair business practices. Aside from this recent event, music fans have encountered issues involving this company, and many other factors make the company problematic as a whole.

Evidently, one of the main issues with Ticketmaster is the high fees it charges to event organizers and consumers. In purchasing tickets, fees can add up quickly, making tickets more expensive than they initially would have been. Some people have criticized Ticketmaster for not being transparent about the fees that it charges and for facilitating ticket “scalping,” which is the practice of buying tickets at face value and then reselling them at a higher price. To reform this aspect of their company, Ticketmaster should consider lowering its fees or offering more transparency about the fees they charge. This could be done by providing a detailed breakdown of all fees on its website or through a fee estimator tool that allows consumers to see the total cost of a ticket before they purchase it, which would eliminate any confusion regarding the inflation of prices.

Another issue with Ticketmaster is its poor customer service. Consumers have reported long wait times to speak with customer service representatives and difficulty resolving their issues. It should be considered that Ticketmaster has to resolve millions of ticket issues from fans, so the difficulty and time taken to tend to these problems should be expected. Nonetheless, to reform this aspect of the company, Ticketmaster could invest in improving its customer service framework. This could include hiring more customer service representatives, providing more sufficient training to existing representatives and implementing new technologies to help customers more easily find the information they need. In addition, to improve transparency and ease of use for customers, Ticketmaster could offer a more user-friendly interface and give more flexibility to customers to buy and sell tickets. This could include making it easier to transfer or resell tickets or even implementing a digital platform that would make it easy for customers to buy and sell tickets directly from one another.

Finally, Ticketmaster could work on developing a more sustainable business model. This could include investing in more environmentally-friendly practices, such as using digital tickets instead of paper ones or implementing more efficient ways of distributing tickets, such as mobile delivery. This would not only improve the company’s reputation but also would be beneficial for the earth. Ticketmaster could also explore new ways of distribution to reach more audiences. For instance, partnering with local venues, promoters and other event organizers to expand its reach and offer more diverse events.

In conclusion, Ticketmaster has the potential to be a valuable resource for both event organizers and consumers. However, to realize this potential, the company must address its high fees, poor customer service and lack of transparency. By implementing these suggestions and focusing on the company’s overall sustainability, it will be able to improve the overall customer experience and become a more reputable and well-regarded ticketing company. Fans of Taylor Swift and other artists should be able to purchase tickets without tremendous stress so that the true attention of concerts, which is to enjoy and appreciate music, is not overshadowed.