The reputation Experience

While today is Taylor Swift’s 29th birthday, it is her fans who woke up this morning to find they had received a gift.

Making the announcement though social media and a YouTube trailer, Swift revealed that a professionally recorded version of the last date of her reputation stadium tour will land on Netflix the morning of New Years Eve. The tour, named for her latest album, was the highest grossing in U.S. history, selling over two million tickets and earning over $260 million domestically. Swift played 38 shows in 26 cities in the United States alone, plus 15 international dates.

Now this special, which is set to break records of its own (and likely Netflix’s servers), appears to be the cherry on top. For that reason, it seemed worthwhile to take a look back at just how successful this tour was from the very start.

Tickets to the tour were sold through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, which has been used fairly regularly over the past few years for large concerts and other in-demand shows. Users provide basic contact information and, after Ticketmaster ensures they are real fans and not a bot, a certain number of people get access to an exclusive presale. Theoretically, this allows fans to purchase tickets in a protected environment without all tickets getting snapped up by scalpers.

Taylor Swift took this idea, and turned it up a notch.

Instead of filling out a short form and waiting a few days, fans engaged in a multi week process where they completed various actions to raise their status. This involved watching videos, listening to the new singles, posting on social media, and yes, buying merchandise. That last one caused many people to call foul, claiming Swift was extorting more money from fans and allowing only those with proper funds to attend the tour.

My view, however, is much different. In fact, I now regard this ticket buying process as one of the smoothest Ticketmaster experiences I’ve had. Through the Verified Fan program, I took part in many of the free, easy actions while in no way allowing it to take over my life. The only merchandise I purchased was both a hard and digital copy of the album, something I would have done regardless of this program.

Following my participation, which could reasonably be classified as average, I was told that I had been granted access to the presale on a certain date. Mine was not the first day of the presale, nor the last, and the time I was given was pretty squarely in the middle as well.

Because the time was taken to control the number of people eligible for presale, and then to divide those people into various dates and times, when I logged on to buy tickets I was not fighting with hundreds of thousands of others who were crashing the system. Instead, I was able to calmly select tickets from the seating chart (instead of the usual system of Ticketmaster pre-selecting seats for you) in a relatively low-pressure environment. Yes, I ended up with tickets in the nosebleeds, but that was due to my personal budget and not the inability to choose better ones. I even had time to call a friend and discuss buying tickets when my original concert-mate fell through.

This brings me to the second potentially disastrous thing Swift did well – a concert in a football stadium. At my show – the second of three days at MetLife stadium in New Jersey – I was one of over 165,000 people watching one young woman perform. And it was incredible.

The success was due to many things, including large screens and multiple stages, but potentially Swift’s biggest asset was the light up bracelet every attendee received upon entry. These were also used during Swift’s previous 1989 tour, and she wisely brought them back. Using technology I can barely fathom, the bracelets lit up in various colors with pulses timed perfectly with the music. Some form of GPS tracking allowed them to create different shapes and effects in the audience. This made each individual concert-goer feel connected with the show and the other fans. It made it so the show wasn’t just on the stage – it was the whole stadium.

All of this made for a pretty great show. If only someone had filmed it.

The Taylor Swift reputation Stadium tour comes to Netflix worldwide on December 31st at 12:01am, Pacific Standard Time.