Is Taylor Swift's new ticketing method hurting or helping the industry?

Taylor Swift is gearing up to make her return to the industry through her upcoming “Reputation” album. While her new songs aren’t out yet, she’s shared a new Method for “real” fans to buy her tickets. Nowadays, there are just too many scalpers and bots that buy items and triple the price by selling it online. It seems like Swift, or at least the people managing her possible tour, have noticed this and are using a new method to ensure that only dedicated fans get her tickets.

However, is this new method really a way to reward fans or just another scam against Swifties?

Teaming up with Ticketmaster

According to The Guardian, Taylor Swift has partnered up with Ticketmaster to ensure that only legit fans earn a spot to queue for her tickets. Take note that this method doesn’t actually ensure them a ticket per se, just a spot in the queue. To earn a spot, you can pre-order her album and buy it for $48.09. To further boost your spot in the queue, you can buy her album 13 times or spend money on her expensive merchandise from her online shop.

If you don’t have any money, Swift’s got you covered.

To earn smaller boosts, you can repeatedly watch her new music video, or even post about her on social media. While the boost might not be enough for buying one of her t-shirts, at least you don’t have to spend money. However, the effort you have to put into investing so much time just to watch the same music video over and over again just for a small boost can get a bit tiresome, to say the least.

Rewarding or scamming?

Needless to say, this controversial ticketing method was a real shocker to some fans who believe that Swift and Ticketmaster are trying to grab as much money as they can. In essence, fans have to spend or invest a good amount of time for a spot in a queue that doesn’t even guarantee them tickets for her unannounced tour.

However, there’s no denying that this method is a great way to hugely reduce the number of scalpers, but it’s a bit too forceful for other Swifties who can’t shell out enough cash for merchandise and tickets.

It’s frustrating for both the fans and artists to have to buy an overpriced ticket. The extra fees don’t even return to the performer which is pretty much a scam. Then again, the Ticketmaster method also pressures the fans to invest resources just to buy a ticket. There’s no denying the complexity of having to see your favorite artists on stage without shedding a good amount of sweat, tears, and a good amount of cash.