I remember fondly a time when parents felt like failures if they couldn’t get their hands on the number one toy at Christmas. Now it’s if they didn’t get
Taylor Swift tickets. I have much sympathy for the families in Aberdeen and throughout
Scotland, who fell foul of an . That could have been me as I’ve tried just about every trick in the book to secure seats for the or in fact anywhere in the
UK. I’ve also tried
Paris,
Dublin and Amsterdam. And, in one moment of madness, Miami. It’s the Hatchimals and
Christmas 2016 all over again. I’ve come close to buying tickets from an online vendor at least twice, but at the last minute I’ve checked their websites on Trustpilot and decided against it. The terrible reviews alone weren’t enough to put me off because one in every 20 was positive, even if they sounded like they had all been written by the same piece of AI software. Were it not for the steep price I might still have taken my chances with even the sketchiest-looking websites, such is my desperation. Taylor Swift tickets break billion dollar record The hype around the Eras concerts is beyond anything I can remember, becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time and the first to break the one billion dollar mark in revenue. This week it earned the 34-year-old a place on the Forbes Billionaires List. She has made it all from songwriting and performing, rather than from lucrative side deals, and she is the first entertainer to be named Time’s Person of The Year. These are staggering achievements and show that if you want your child to do well in life, forget Stem subjects and buy them a guitar at age 12. I do like and admire Taylor Swift, she’s worked hard, played nice and has an undeniable talent for writing catchy songs. But I have a theory as to why she’s taken this relatively recent step from being a highly successful artist to one of the wealthiest and most influential people on Earth. And it’s the way in which the ticket sales for The Eras Tour were managed. Eras tickets almost impossible to get It was a stroke of marketing genius based on the familiar economic principles of supply and demand. It’s a world tour with 152 dates over 22 months on five continents at the largest stadiums on the planet. Anyone who really wanted to see her should have been able to, but then something happened. Tickets became so prized that absolutely everyone thought they needed one, even if all they’d ever done is sing along in the car to Shake It Off. There were pre-sale registrations, lotteries, virtual queues and website crashes. At one point Ticketmaster said 14 million users were trying to buy 625,000 tickets. The Eras Tour became so desirable, exclusive and elusive that everybody wanted in. It’s one of the greatest marketing triumphs in musical history. But it’s no comfort to a tweenager still planning their outfit to a concert they have almost zero chance of attending. Taylor Swift tribute act better be prepared Cruel Summer is a great song but Jumpin’ Jack Flash is a better one. My own musical loyalties lie firmly with The Stones, Bowie, Blondie and a dozen other artists of that era. Nevertheless, Taylor Swift has got me in such a tizzy I’ve discarded my own taste and common sense. I’ll try just about anything for a ticket and as we now know, I’m not alone. There has been some local benefit in all of this. The Taylor Swift Tribute by Xenna is close to being sold out. Let’s hope Xenna is ready for what’s about to hit her. She’ll be the closest most of us will get to seeing Tay-Tay and excitement is running high. I wouldn’t be surprised if some parents told their very young kids that Xenna is the real thing. And I wouldn’t blame them. Xenna would be wise to get some merch of her own to sell at the gig. If parents will pay £13 for a bucket of branded popcorn at The Eras Tour movie, we’ll buy anything.