What ought to have been a second of pure pleasure for Radiohead followers shortly changed into a sh**present of frustration, confusion, and chaos. After tickets for the band’s long-awaited European tour went on sale, 1000’s of loyal followers had been left empty-handed. It occurred regardless of Radiohead’s try and outsmart scalpers with a brand new, tech-driven lottery system.
Followers pissed off with Radiohead tour tickets
One fan on Reddit described seeing Radiohead because the fruits of a lifelong bond — and it’s very private. “My spouse and I met over our mutual love of Radiohead,” he mentioned.
“We swore that every time they toured once more, we’d go see them wherever that might be. When the European dates had been introduced, one in all them landed on our anniversary. It felt like destiny.”
Like many diehard followers, the fan and his spouse, together with buddies in London, registered for the band’s official presale. The brand new system was designed to forestall scalping by tying ticket entry to registered emails and limiting followers to 1 venue choice. However regardless of the well-intentioned design, the rollout shortly fell aside.
“Out of the 4 of us, solely my London good friend received a code,” the fan defined. “When the sale got here, she had no luck. We thought there’d be one other wave, however that got here and went with nothing.”
The resale alternative, meant to present followers one other honest shot, solely deepened the chaos. Followers reported limitless error messages, “phantom” ticket listings that disappeared upon checkout, and hours of fruitless refreshing. “It was only one large mess that gave me extra anxiousness than it ought to have,” mentioned the fan. “We’ll hold our fingers crossed for a North American leg subsequent yr.”
Social media was flooded with related accounts of damaged queues and false bot detections. One purchaser who managed to get by mentioned, “I received tickets for London, went to fee, after which the verification failed — it canceled my tickets.”
One other fan echoed the frustration: “AXS has the worst bot identification. The pages wouldn’t load, I received kicked for being a bot, and after switching between WiFi and knowledge for 20 minutes, I lastly received by.”
These fortunate sufficient to safe tickets have discovered themselves staying quiet to keep away from being bombarded by messages from determined followers.
“I feel lots of people who received tickets aren’t speaking about it due to the spam,” one fan admitted. “All of my tickets are accounted for, however I’m getting limitless DMs asking if I’ll promote. It’s gotten actually annoying.”
Regardless of the backlash, some followers acknowledge that Radiohead’s intentions had been admirable, aiming to maintain tickets within the fingers of actual followers somewhat than scalpers.
“Shopping for tickets for a massively in style band is all the time a large number,” one commenter wrote. “Frankly, it all the time sucks for individuals who don’t get tickets. However I feel their aim was completed — most tickets went to followers as a substitute of bots.”
Nonetheless, for a lot of who had been shut out, the expertise has left a bitter style. What was meant to be an thrilling comeback for one of many world’s most revolutionary bands grew to become a reminder that even the most effective intentions can falter below the burden of demand, and the bounds of expertise.
Whether or not future dates will repair the system stays to be seen, however for now, 1000’s of devoted Radiohead followers are left ready, watching, and hoping for an additional likelihood to listen to their favourite band reside.
