At this year’s VMAS (Video Music Awards) on August 28, Taylor Swift won the Top Honor Award. While accepting her award Swift announced her new album will be released on October 21st. 

Many fans, also known as “Swifties”, were excited because they expected a new album announcement for a while. Now that her new album was coming they were ecstatic. 

Swift released more information about her new album Midnights on all social media platforms. Later that evening, she posted an informational post explaining the album to be: 

“We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t – right this minute – about to make some fateful life-altering mistake. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching – hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve … we’ll meet ourselves. Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight.” 

Swift also provided the album’s cover with an image of her with shortened hair holding a lighter and blue eye makeup focused in the background. She holds the lighter in the foreground, which is blurred. 

With all this news, Swifties became feral and even someone having to take stress breaks because of how much of an overload the announcement had been. 

What Swifties didn’t expect was how Swift would start revealing her track names in preparation for the album’s release. She created a video series named, “Midnight Mayhem With Me.”

The first episode consists of Swift sitting in front of metallic streamers with a bingo cage. She spun balls in the cage that correlated to the albums track, to which she spun out Track 13 named, “Mastermind”. 

She then revealed the name of each number she got. However, she would release these videos randomly every week. Unfortunately, this did not last long as the track names were leaked to the public, to which she released all album track names. 

The track names listed were… Track One: “Lavender Haze”, Track Two: “Maroon”, Track Three: “Anti-Hero”, Track Four: “Snow On The Beach” ft. Lana Del Ray, Track Five: “You’re On Your Own Kid”, Track Six: “Midnight Rain”, Track Seven: “Question…?”, Track Eight:” Vigilante Shit”, Track Nine: “Bejeweled”, Track Ten: “Labyrinth”, Track Eleven: “Karma”, Track Twelve: “Sweet Nothing”, and Track Thirteen: “Mastermind”. 

With these titles leaked many Swifties came up with theories and awaited the arrival of the album. However, four days before the album’s arrival, Swift dropped a planned out planner of things coming out that week for the album. 

On the planners first agenda, it started off with the date of October 20th, as it described, “Teaser trailer 3rd quarter of Thursday Night Football  on Prime Video  at midnight.” 

The second agenda date began with October 21st and stated, “(12 am EST) Midnight release. (3am EST) special very chaotic surprise. (8 am EST) ‘Anti-Hero’ music video premiere and ‘Anti-Hero’ challenge on youtube shorts. (8pm EST) lyric videos!” 

Continuing with its third date agenda, being October 22nd, it shows, “ Stream midnights. Pls grab the exclusive lavender edition vinyl art. Target?” On its fourth agenda it explains, “

October 23 2022: Visit your local record store? Steam midnights pls.” 

On its fifth agenda it presents “October 24 2022: The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon appearance” and continues with its sixth as, “October 25th 2022: (12 am EST) 2nd midnight music video release.” 

In both seventh and eighth adendas, it states “October 26th: Stream midnights and videos pls” and “October 27th: Stream midnights and videos!” In its ninth and final agenda it show,s “ 

October 28th: The Graham Norton Show appearance.” 

With all this information, many Swifties had started to prepare for all of the good things being brought their way. 

When October 21st finally came, fans went crazy. They streamed Midnights to the point where it became spotify’s most streamed album in a day. Everyone streamed the “Anti-Hero” music video leaving its view count today (December 14th) at 75 million with 2.6 million likes and 77 thousand comments. 

However, as more discussion emerged from the music video, some people had a problem with one specific scene. This scene presented Swift standing on a scale only for it to give her the word “Fat” as a weight. Many people had a problem with this because they believed it to be fatphobic. However, defenders of Swift were trying to voice that during 2015, she had been going through an eating disorder, which this scene reflected. The song’s meaning is being an anti-hero to your self and self worth, which many Swifties explained.  Most people went on and off about it, but subtly moved on from the topic. 

Later, on October 22nd, many Swifties made it a mission to buy the lavender editions of the album and as the week went on. 

On October 24th, Swift’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon gave information on the mysterious second music video. She explained that the music video will be for track nine: “Bejeweled”. The video would be a re-mark of Swift’s version of Cinderella. She announced the cast to be Laura Dern playing the evil step-mother, the Haim Sisters playing the evil step-sisters, Dita Von Teese playing the fairy goddess, and both Jack Antonoff and Pat McGrath making an appearance. 

Fallon then goes on to ask after this announcement, “This has maybe the most easter eggs.” To which Swift responded with,  “A psychotic amount.” 

Fallons question was asked after Swift claimed there to be many hidden details  placed in the video that she knew fans would love. 

After the show, the music video finally released at midnight. So far the video has 36 million views with 1.5 million likes and 49 thousand comments. 

On the 28th Taylor Swift appeared on the Graham Norton Show. She talked about the making of the “All Too Well” short film and the love and support she has gained from Midnights. 

On November 1st, it was released that a tour was coming. Swift announced that the Eras Tour Would be her first tour in almost three years since COVID canceled her last tour for her seventh album Lover. Her tickets were set to be released with a company,Ticketmaster. Presale tickets would be on the 15th and a general sale would go on the 18th. Also announced was a presale code that Swifties could possibly get if they were to wait in line for it. They would be emailed the presale code the day before or hours before the tickets went up. Many were told that tickets would be from $49 to $400. Swifties were ecstatic by this news and were excited for days leading up. However, this would all change on November 15th. 

During presales fans were sent a presale code. This code would help them get into the sale and get seats compared to people who were buying from general sale. When people were waiting in line for tickets in the queue, Ticketmaster crashed multiple times. It would get to the 2000 people mark and then crash. Even with people getting in and going to check out the site crashed. Many Swifties were saddened that they couldn’t get tickets, but the biggest uproar of it all was the prices. Swifties assumed that tickets were going to be cheap by the previous prices stated. However, when buying seats, prices ranged from $500 to $10,000 dollars. Resellers had noticed that people were willing to buy these prices and amped up prices to $96,000. This caused Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift herself to speak out about everything that happened.

The first statement came from Ticketmaster stating on Twitter  “We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened: https://t.co/1Gn4kRIvq8.” They later wrote up a statement on the business account stating that, “We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour. First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened:

WE KNEW A RECORD NUMBER OF FANS WANTED TICKETS TO TAYLOR’S TOUR

• By requiring registrations, Verified Fan is designed to help manage high demand shows – identifying real humans and weeding out bots. Keeping bots out of queues and avoiding overcrowding helps to make wait times shorter and onsales smoother. 
• Based on fan interest at registration we knew this would be big. Over 3.5 million people pre-registered for TaylorSwiftTix Presale powered by Verified Fan, which is the largest registration in history. 
• Historically, around 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets. Around 1.5 million people were sent codes to join the onsale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster. 
• The remaining 2 million Verified Fans were placed on a waiting list on the small chance that tickets might still be available after those who received codes had shopped. 

THE DEMAND FOR TICKETS TO TAYLOR’S TOUR BROKE RECORDS – AND PARTS OF OUR WEBSITE

• Historically, we’ve been able to manage huge volume coming into the site to shop for tickets, so those with Verified Fan codes have a smooth shopping process. However, this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.
• We handle onsales for countless top tours, some of the biggest sporting events, and more.  Never before has a Verified Fan onsale sparked so much attention – or traffic. This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform. Here’s a look at how that traffic compared to every other day on our site this year:

• It usually takes us about an hour to sell through a stadium show, but we slowed down some sales and pushed back others to stabilize the systems. The trade off was longer wait times in queue for some fans. 
• Overall, we estimate about 15% of interactions across the site experienced issues, and that’s 15% too many, including passcode validation errors that caused fans to lose tickets they had carted.

DESPITE THE DISRUPTIONS A NEW SALES RECORD WAS SET

• Over 2 million tickets were sold on Ticketmaster for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour on Nov. 15 – the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day.
• All 2 million tickets for the Verified Fan onsale were sold to Verified Fans. Only ticket buyers who were verified were permitted to enter a queue. Verification is tied to a user’s account and validated at login, which is why users only had to login to enter the queue. For additional security, ticket buyers also had to enter their unique code to complete their purchase. No one who wasn’t verified was allowed to enter the queue, but the huge traffic hitting the site overall meant we had to slow down queues to keep them stable.
• 2.4 million tickets have been sold for the tour overall across onsales for Verified Fans and Capital One cardholders, on both Ticketmaster and SeatGeek.
• Less than 5% of the tickets for the tour have been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market. Onsales that don’t use Verified Fan typically see 20-30% of inventory end up on secondary markets. 

The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world – that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour onsale it wasn’t. But we’re always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand onsales, which continue to test new limits. 

We’re working to shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand for the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour. Once we get through that, if there are any next steps, updates will be shared accordingly.

Even when a high demand onsale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed. For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years. While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.” 

With this statement, Swifties were still maddened by this whole situation because in their opinion things could have been put together in a more fashioned way. With Ticketmaster’s response Swifties were waiting on Swift’s. Later she posted on her Instagram,“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse. There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. 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. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them. And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”

After all this mess, many Swifties cooled down from the situation. Now many Swifties who got tour tickets are awaiting the arrival for the Eras Tour and the others are awaiting to watch from the side lines.