It’s Feb. 10, 2026, and I am in between classes, with my phone and my friends’ group chat ready for whatever updates need to be sent. One other person and I in this chat were tasked with securing three tickets to see Noah Kahan over the summer during his New York show.

I can say right away, we didn’t succeed in this task. When I was moved from the pre-sale screen to the waiting room line. I was somewhere in the 30,000’s, while my friend was in the 20,000’s, and our hope went away fast.

This was my first time truly going through a ticket master war on my own, but I have heard the horror stories from times past. I am a major Taylor Swift fan, and I remember watching the ticket chaos from the start of sales for the “Eras Tour” unfold on TikTok, and I observed when my mom was trying to get tickets for us (also didn’t happen).

After my experience trying to get tickets, I realized how bad Tickmaster’s system is. I am aware that not every venue uses Ticketmaster, so experiences can vary, but it should not be that hard to get tickets to a concert.

As well, I don’t put full blame on the artist; there isn’t a way to know just how much power and say they have in the process of the sales. Though I would assume they have some level of say in things like pricing or type of presale, they can’t change the website’s programming and setup.

A pre-sale shouldn’t feel like and end up being a general sale. The way Kahan’s pre-sale worked was that you were able to sign up for the pre-sale with your email, and then you were given access that day.

I didn’t like that setup. I can understand why, in theory, this should be a fair chance for every fan to grab tickets, but in the end, this leads to more fans being allowed to get tickets than the actual number of tickets before there is even a chance for people to try a general sale.

Personally, a good pre-sale system would be something everyone can sign up to try to participate in, but ends up being a lottery system with personalized codes.

I think it’s unnecessary to lock things to certain credit card users, and I do believe everyone deserves an even chance, but there should be a limit to the number of people allowed in during a pre-sale.

There are so many videos of people crashing out while trying to secure tickets to shows, for example, this TikTok from @b.randonbennett shows his reaction to his line placement within three different devices for a Harry Styles concert.

First off, there shouldn’t even be a need for multiple devices for obtaining tickets, but even outside of that, when a person who is really excited to see a concert gets greeted with waiting room numbers like 296,809, it’s going to cause a lot of disappointment.

When the “Great War” was going on with Swift’s sales, I remember the pre-sale being done with select codes, and yet there were still a lot of problems that occurred.

I believe a lot of the problems with Swift’s situation were more to do with Ticketmaster completely underestimating just how big her fanbase is and how loud her fans can be, and sending out more codes than there were tickets for sale.

There are other problems outside of the issues with the current pre-sale operation, such as the fact that ticket prices are unnecessarily high.

I understand that the bigger the artist you’re trying to see is, the more it is going to cost than a smaller one, but no one should be spending over $1,000 on a concert ticket.

Though outside problems, such as scalpers and the general economy, affect the outrageous prices people end up spending, the first sale is directly from the platform they are selling to.

When prices are that high, it’s just not affordable for the average person, and it makes it harder for fans to see the artist they enjoy.

With ridiculous prices, long waiting lines and having to rely on finicky websites that love to crash and glitch, concerts and other showcases that work in similar matters become even less accessible to the public.

Concerts and performances are something that people should get to experience at least once in their lives, yet it feels like there are many obstacles and challenges just to obtain tickets that will never happen.