Since the last time American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift had been on tour was mid 2018 promoting her sixth album “Reputation,” the releases of her newest album on Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, “Midnights” has caused trouble for many longtime Swifties. 

Although Swift had planned to begin a different tour for her seventh album, “Lover” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour was rescheduled and soon thereafter canceled. However, as regulations lifted, many artist slowly began to come back to live shows, including Swift. 

On the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 15, the presale for Swift’s Eras Tour started at 10 a.m. However, from the beginning, it was clear that the sale had been flooded with too many people, ultimately crashing the site. 

As many RCHS students logged onto their Ticketmaster accounts halfway through their second period class on Tuesday, Nov. 15, it was apparent that there were technical difficulties. Students witnessed as their multiple screens began to go blank and flash error messages before their eyes. 

“Honestly, Ticketmaster could’ve handled it a lot better,” senior Nathan Biloki said. When staring at his computer screen he’d realize he was kicked out of the queue. “You’d think they’d be better prepared for the amount of people buying tickets.” 

While in their second period statistics class, Biloki and his fellow classmate, senior Lilia D’Anna, were both attempting to purchase tickets. 

“I was so sad I wasn’t going to get any tickets,” D’Anna said. “I was stressed watching the website crash.” 

The reason behind this malfunction on the Ticketmaster website was that there was a “historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets for the TaylorSwiftTix Presale,” the official Ticketmaster Twitter account said on the morning of the presale. 

Shortly thereafter, Ticketmaster announced that the ticket presale would resume later in the day,  the countdown was now reading that the presale would commence at 3:00 p.m. 

Although fans were angered, many students were thankful for the fact that now they’d be able to purchase tickets using their own internet and not relying on the school’s internet. 

Freshman Danielle Cordero said she wasn’t mad about Ticketmaster crashing. While rushing home, Cordero believed that this had given her a better chance at getting tickets. 

“If it wasn’t for the site crashing earlier, I wouldn’t have Taylor tickets right now,” Cordero said.

However, many Swifties were not as fortunate as Cordero to score highly-coveted tickets to one of the shows. 

The day before the general sale, where many fans hoped they would get another chance to purchase tickets, Ticketmaster had taken to Twitter to release a new statement and notifying people about the cancelation of general ticket sales.

“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the official Ticketmaster Twitter account said. 

It is unclear whether or not Ticketmaster will set a new date for the general sale. For now, fans are left with Swift’s own statement posted as a story on Friday, Nov. 18 on her official Instagram account.

“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,” said Swift on Instagram.

Though unlikely, both Swift and many fans hope for more opportunities to come together and appreciate these songs.  

According to the New York Times, The Justice Department opened up an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster on Friday, Nov. 18.