Taylor Swift breaks her silence
Of course right after I published my lengthy newsletter that provided some critique of Taylor Swift after the events of November 15th, Miss Swift finally breaks her silence. Today, Swift posted a statement on Instagram story:
“Well it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.
There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.
And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
Like I said in my previous post, let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s easy to criticize hastily but if there’s anything I learned from what happened to Chadwick Boseman or Constance Wu, it’s that we—the everyday individuals—can never know everything going on behind the scenes.
From Swift’s message, it appears there’s nothing she can do about Ticketmaster’s inability to sell anymore tickets to the general public. However, there’s probably a good chance Swift will do more shows of some sort so that fans who were unable to get tickets can still see her perform. Time will tell.
In the meantime, the U.S. Justice Department has opened up an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster. According to The New York Times, “the investigation is focused on whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.” (Apparently this investigation started before the Eras Tour debacle.) Let’s we are nearing the end of Ticketmaster’s monopoly!
Also, check out this episode on tickets from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which explains the broken ticketing system:
Swift’s public statement is good, I don’t really have any problems with it. But the line “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could” reminded me of the greatest apology of all time—rapper Ja Rule’s apology after the Fyre Festival disaster, which he co-founded:
“We are working right now on getting everyone of [sic] the island SAFE. That is my immediate concern… I will make a statement soon I’m heartbroken at this moment. My partners and I wanted this to be an amazing event. It was NOT A SCAM as everyone is reporting I don’t know how everything went so far left but I’m working to make it right by making sure everyone is refunded… I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT... but I’m taking responsibility. I’m deeply sorry to everyone who was inconvenienced by this.”
There are so many amazing elements to Ja Rule’s apology I don’t even know where to begin. From “It was NOT A SCAM” to “I don’t know how everything went so far left but I’m working to make it right.” But the ultimate banger is “I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT.” I’m gonna use that line one day when I most need it.