What ought to have been a second of pure pleasure for Radiohead followers rapidly become 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 have been left empty-handed. It occurred regardless of Radiohead’s try to outsmart scalpers with a brand new, tech-driven lottery system.
Followers annoyed 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 each time they toured once more, we’d go see them wherever that might be. When the European dates have been introduced, one in every of 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 rapidly fell aside.
“Out of the 4 of us, solely my London buddy bought 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 provide followers one other honest shot, solely deepened the chaos. Followers reported countless 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 comparable accounts of damaged queues and false bot detections. One purchaser who managed to get by mentioned, “I bought 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 bought kicked for being a bot, and after switching between WiFi and knowledge for 20 minutes, I lastly bought 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 bought tickets aren’t speaking about it due to the spam,” one fan admitted. “All of my tickets are accounted for, however I’m getting countless DMs asking if I’ll promote. It’s gotten actually annoying.”
Regardless of the backlash, some followers acknowledge that Radiohead’s intentions have been admirable, aiming to maintain tickets within the fingers of actual followers moderately than scalpers.
“Shopping for tickets for a massively widespread band is at all times a large number,” one commenter wrote. “Frankly, it at all times sucks for many who don’t get tickets. However I feel their purpose was completed — most tickets went to followers as an alternative of bots.”
Nonetheless, for a lot of who have 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 modern bands grew to become a reminder that even the perfect intentions can falter beneath the load of demand, and the boundaries of know-how.
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.
