A few of Taylor Swift’s biggest controversies: From the Ticketmaster debacle to her private jet’s emissions, here are the pop star’s biggest controversies.
Taylor Swift has had quite the year. Not only did she have the best album of the year, the best pop song of the year, and the best single of the year, but she was also named Pop Diva of the Year at the American Music Awards, was named Teen Choice Award for Choice Breakout Female, and was named Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music and People’s Choice Awards over the Labor Day weekend. And she’s also had to deal with some massive controversies. Here are just a few:
Ticketmaster fiasco
The Ticketmaster fiasco (or any ticket resale affair, for that matter) happens when an artist’s popularity allows her to buy a large number of tickets to an event in exchange for a cut of the ticket price. As the saying goes, it’s the worst thing an artist can do to a venue because it’s not only making fans pay for a concert they probably don’t want to be at, but more importantly, it’s costing the venue money as well. Ticketmaster’s customers typically don’t understand that artists aren’t in business to make money off of ticket sales, especially in regards to high-end, high-demand, sell-out concerts like the Met Gala or the Academy Awards.
This whole ticket scalping issue was a result of a conflict over how much money Ticketmaster was allowed to charge each concert venue for their tickets. This was a problem because Ticketmaster didn’t want to give venues the huge discount they had negotiated with artists (usually 10-14 %) because they were worried that this money wouldn’t be coming back in to them from their box office. Artists were also concerned, because they believe it would encourage ticket scalping.
Ticketmaster was eventually ordered to pay $17 million to artists, a portion of which was given to the Grammys to pay for the tickets. This wasn’t just a “victory” for artists because their bottom line was taken away. This was a victory for artists, of course, because artists didn’t want to have to pay for their
