Shocking Revelation: RAYE Blames AI Bots for 1.8 Million Presale Sign-Ups!
RAYE has disclosed that "AI bots" and "scalpers" severely disrupted the ticket onsale for her Royal Albert Hall show, resulting in 1.8 million presale sign-ups for just 5,000 seats, with hundreds of thousands being fake. Her team is manually reviewing registrations to ensure real fans get tickets. This incident has prompted the artist to reconsider the future of ticketing.
British singer RAYE has recently highlighted significant disruptions in the ticket onsale for her highly anticipated show at London's Royal Albert Hall, attributing the issues to "AI bots" and "scalpers." The artist revealed on Instagram that an overwhelming 1.8 million presale sign-ups were recorded for the one-night-only event, scheduled for October 23 at the iconic 5,000-capacity venue. Shockingly, hundreds of thousands of these registrations were identified as fake, generated by AI bots used by scalpers.
RAYE expressed her dismay, stating, "We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope. Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations." She emphasized the unprecedented scale of bot activity, noting, "It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale. It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price."
In response to this challenge, RAYE confirmed that her team was compelled to implement extraordinary measures, manually reviewing the extensive sign-up list. This meticulous process was undertaken to ensure that genuine fans would have the opportunity to participate in the presale. She explained, "Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans."
Selected fans were expected to receive presale links and codes via email by 11:45 a.m. BST, with the initial sale commencing at midday. Any remaining tickets will subsequently be made available for general sale later in the week. The artist reflected on the broader implications of this experience, concluding, "I'm not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes. Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future."
The Royal Albert Hall performance will see RAYE reimagine her acclaimed album, "This Music May Contain Hope," alongside the Heritage Orchestra. This LP holds significant recognition, having been nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. The Mercury Prize ceremony is set to take place in Newcastle on October 22, the day before her London show, where RAYE is slated to perform alongside other nominated acts like Olivia Dean and Florence + the Machine. "This Music May Contain Hope" achieved commercial success, charting at No. 1 on the U.K.'s Official Albums Chart and reaching No. 11 on the Billboard 200.