How many records and how much money does one person need?

Remember two things.

There was a way to make sure bots didn’t buy the tickets and could have said no to dynamic pricing.

Both of those solutions would have cut into the bottom line.

Because you know that bottom line needs padding.

How many records and how much money does one person need?

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift Is a Capitalist

Ahead of the Capital One presale, a couple friends and I carefully strategized how much we would pay for tickets, and even concocted back-up plans for what we would do if we couldn’t get enough for everyone in our group. When we finally got to a screen showing us a stadium seating chart, we were offered just two “Karma is My Boyfriend” packages for $755 each, well out of our price range. (What made the packages a couple hundred dollars better than just plain floor seats? Reportedly, they come with extras like a VIP entrance to the stadium, an “Eras” tour tote, and a “crowd-free VIP shopping option.”) Not that we could have bought them anyway; within moments, one of them was gone from the screen. But maybe they had left the ether before the light from the computer even had time to reach our eyes in the first place—a colleague reported seeing tons of available tickets, only to spend 45 minutes clicking to find over and over that his selection was unavailable. And there wouldn’t be, as we had been promised, an opportunity to try again at a sale for the general public—Ticketmaster had to cancel that due to a lack of inventory.

Ticketmaster, which is essentially the only way to buy tickets for many concerts and sports events at big venues, was the villain of this whole debacle, everyone decided. “To try and fight Ticketmaster in 2022 is to try and wage a war against God,” wrote Kelsey McKinney in Defector. In Slate, Ron Knox observed that the mess had reignited calls from politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the Ticketmaster’s monopoly to be broken up—and perhaps could even radicalize Swifties themselves.

Slowly, it seemed to dawn on fans how much Swift herself stood to benefit even from this crappy ticket-buying experience. A viral TikTok features a woman sitting despondently in her car beneath text declaring that the whole debacle “was Taylor’s capitalistic circus on full display…I’m going to say I’m officially turned off by Taylor.” In the New Republic, Timothy Noah also ultimately lays the “blame” on Swift, in two ways. There’s the fact that she is mind-bendingly popular. On Tuesday, she sold 2 million tickets, Noah writes—“more than any previous act—Enrico Caruso, Rudy Vallee, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Michael Jackson—ever sold in a single day.” Then, there’s the issue of dynamic pricing. Swift, like many artists, consented to allow Ticketmaster to raise the prices on seats in response to demand. This isn’t necessarily as evil as it sounds, reasons Noah: Would you rather be price-gouged by Stubhub, or by Swift herself? I guess, sure, run me over, Taylor. And if tickets were cheaper, that might be a public good, but it would still leave a core problem: They would be in even more demand, and therefore less abundant.

On Friday, Swift released a statement on Instagram noting that she’s “trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward” and that while she’s glad 2.4 million people were able to get tickets, “it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” Ultimately, the number of Swift tickets available in this world is limited to how long she is willing to stand in front of a crowd and sing. I can only imagine that she might be sitting among her riches and, at some point, feel a little bit of exhaustion from the sheer number of people who are rioting angrily because they will not be able to get a visual on her this spring. The Beatles gave up on touring after six years; Swift has been doing it for more than double that. She could quit and be justified in doing it. And she’s done some laudable things over the years, like using her clout to help artists get some money when their songs are streamed during Apple Music’s free trial period, as David Turner described in Slate in 2018.

This summer, I got an email from Taylor Nation, Swift’s company. It wasn’t announcing new music, or alerting me of tour dates. It was letting me know about a Memorial Day sale on branded towels. Yes, my favorite poet was sending me a junk mailer: If I bought two towels, I could get 10 percent off. – Source