Raye has hit back at ticket touts who she says "overwhelmed" the sign-up process for an upcoming live show by using AI bots to create "hundreds of thousands of fake registrations". The Where Is My Husband! singer revealed there were 1.8 million sign-ups for her one-off 5,000-seat performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 October. To avoid a pre-sale which she felt scalpers could exploit, Raye said the sign-up list had been manually reviewed to identify a shortlist of people believed to be "real fans".
The award-winning artist said she had "never witnessed bots on this scale" and was changing the process as it is "so important" to her that fans can buy tickets at the face value price. "I'm not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes," she said in a statement shared on her social media accounts, external. "Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future." Raye said the fans manually selected would receive a pre-sale link and code by email at on Tuesday, with pre-sale opening shortly after.
She added that the remaining tickets would be available to all on general sale. This Symphony May Contain Hope show will showcase songs from her recent chart-topping second album, This Music May Contain Hope, which fuses old-school jazz with orchestral sound, blues, big band and soul. The 17-track record is a concept album which explores overcoming heartbreak, self-doubt and internet trolling.
Raye has enjoyed an impressive past few years since leaving her label after expressing frustration that they were holding out on releasing her debut album. She was later released from her contract and struck out as an independent artist. By the end of 2022, her dance track Escapism featuring US rapper 070 Shake had gone viral on TikTok and shot up the charts to number one.
She finally released her emotionally-charged debut album, My 21st Century Blues, in 2023, which was applauded by critics and peaked at number two in the charts. It went to on to win a record-breaking six Brit Awards, including album of the year, and was nominated for the acclaimed Mercury Prize. This summer, Raye was among the six British and Irish artists who headlined Reading and Leeds Festival.
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